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Tyrant Dreams of Denmark’s Monster ‘X’!

The classic Reynold Brown AIP one-sheet poster art, iconic to we wee monster lovers of the ’60s, whatever we thought of the movie! Here’s a worthwhile website for Reynold Brown info and art, though it’s incomplete and apparently still under construction; nevertheless, check it out.

Here’s another splashier Reynold Brown poster gallery that features his most iconic sf movie poster art.

 

How Pink Was Sidney?
How Pissed Off Was Arkoff?
How Dean Owen Made Waves &
How Reptilicus Became Reptisaurus — Revealed!  

At last, we’re into the real story of what happened in 1961-63 concerning producer American producer Sidney Pink, who made the first Danish monster movie, which was distributed by American-International Pictures (hereafter AIP), who then licensed a novel and comic book adaptation to the Connecticut-based publisher of both Charlton Comics and Monarch Books. 

First things first: for those of you still wondering what this is all about, and why I even care about this stuff, here’s some content and context you can entertain yourself with for, oh, about 15 minutes.

Here, constant readers, is the AIP preview trailer that helped make Reptilicus the boxoffice moneymaker it was (1 minute, 57 seconds); an essential refresher, before we get into the movie, the paperback, the comic book, the lawsuit, and the resolution and transformation.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is a YouTube 10 minute condensation of Reptilicus — while it’s always best to see the film itself, in this case, I feel it worthwhile to make an exception. If you’ve never seen Reptilicus, take a look; if you have, read on.

Reptilicus flies: Rare photo of the effects AIP cut from the US version. Given their procession of astonishingly stupid and cheapjack monsters, it’s amazing that any monster could be considered too ridiculous for AIP to unleash it!

And finally, you need to have some idea what it was that was too wretched for even AIP to release without some tampering. Here’s some of the missing footage, 56 seconds trimmed from the AIP American version featuring the flying Reptilicus; this will also give you a taste of the original Danish version producer Sidney Pink delivered to AIP honchos Sam Arkoff and James Nicholson.

Now, the film’s reputation has outlived every other film Sidney Pink ever made — his other Ib Melchoir sf opuses Angry Red Planet and Journey to the Seventh Planet barely come close, though they’re superior to Pink’s Danish giant monster opus. Fun as those films are, they just don’t have the allure and timeless wretchedness of the Danish dragon. 

Approaching a half-century in age, Reptilicus is surprisingly ranking in ‘Top Ten’ favorite monster lists in the 21st Century (placing #7 on Cinemassacre’s rogue’s gallery — over one million hits, making this a monster reference point indeed! — one step behind the Stay Puffed Marshmallow Man).

In the past decade, we’ve seen Reptilicus fan fiction pop up from time to time (most recently in an issue of G-Fan), always a sign of longevity and a cult following in fantasy and sf circles.

The rampaging venom-spitting CGI Basilisk in director Griff Furst’s Sci-Fi Channel made-in-Bulgaria quickie Basilisk: The Serpent King (November, 2006; not yet on DVD, pictured at right) smacked of Reptilicus in design: a conscious homage? The venom-spew shots sure looked like CGI revamps of the acid-spitting shots AIP added to the beloved American version of Reptilicus we’ve all grown up with. 

But that’s hardly cult status, is it?

How about this: reportedly, Lars Von Trier has the original Danish one-sheet to Reptilicus adorning his office wall,

and at least one 1990s band (co-produced by the so-called godfather of the Icelandic avant-garde, Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson) adopted the puppet saurian’s name as their own, spawning “a perfect example of early 90’s Darkwave/Industrial.”

Reptilicus is G.I. Markússon and Jóhann Eiriksson, and they’re into what my son Daniel and his amigos have been toying with: “a collaborative effort of two Icelanders who will take anything sonic from the environment and organize it into what might be called the semblance of music…. the main concern is with pushing the boundaries of what is considered “listenable” …sampling and [working with] the electronic treating of various elements in combination with traditional instruments they make collages where the guideline is functional rather then aesthetic…” — here’s their discography, which is extensive.

Now, that’s 21st Century cult stature. Take that, Konga and Gorgo!

Among serious sf movie fans, Reptilicus has a following not only among devotees of bad monster movies and giant monster movies, but among a more discriminating circle of Ib Melchior fans. Producer Sidney Pink collaborate with Danish-American novelist and screenwriter Ib Melchior (the son of Wagnerian opera star Lauritz Melchior) on all three of his sf films; sadly, neither Pink nor Melchior have much positive to say about one another, which I won’t get into here. Suffice to say Melchior continued to scribe and/or co-write (sometimes as the American reworking AIP coproductions overseas) some exceptional films during this period, primary among them Planet of the Vampires, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, The Time Travelers and others, including an unproduced script entitled Space Family Robinson that somehow spawned, sans credit to Melchior, both the Gold Key comicbook series (art by Dan Spiegel) and Irwin Allen’s popular CBS-TV series Lost in Space. Pink completely downplays Melchior’s role in writing Reptilicus, though given both men’s track records, I tend to chalk up what few imaginative concepts the film boasts to Melchior. Count me among the Melchior fans, folks.

Technically, there are actually three versions of Reptilicus, only two of which are extant. 

As DVD Savant and diehard Reptilicus devotee Kip Doto explain (here), “…the Danish cut of Reptilicus and the film that A.I.P. overhauled are two different movies. The version of the film that A.I.P. overhauled was directed by Sid Pink, the original unedited version of which is apparently lost. The Danish language version was directed by Saga Studio head Poul [Paol?] Bang.”

In his autobiography So You Want to Make Movies: My Life as an Independent Film Producer (Pineapple Press, Inc., 1989), Pink romanticizes and rhapsodizes over his monster movie at great length (see chapter 9, “Reptilicus Learns to Fly” and the surrounding text, pp.82-83,  90-102, 114-115, 125-131), though I hasten to add he doesn’t pretend for a moment it’s a great movie. He plays up his role to the hilt, though, and seems to find the special effects far more convincing than any other human being on the planet, but hey — it’s his movie. He made it, and I love it, so give the man his due. Still, it’s tough sledding through much of Pink’s autobiography while keeping one’s feet firmly on terra firma.

First of all, Pink loooooved his Reptilicus. “I found a magnificent puppeteer who created a Reptilicus that even in miniature was fierce enough to cast fear into any heart.” Uh, ya. OK, Mr. Pink.

But that ain’t all, folks. Pink may have honestly “marveled at the accuracy and beauty of the miniatures” (adding, “but was even more amazed at the low cost” — spoken like a true cheapjack producer!), but what was onscreen then and now is patently fake in the miniature cities and landscapes departments.

Pink admits to the shoddiness of his saurian star: “Everything was going fine until we tried to get that damned puppet to walk, fly, or move in any way. Whatever we tried looked phoney. We were forced to use wires to propel the monster, but they were so evident that the technique was useless. We had the whole film in the can but our star refused to work…” (Pink, pg. 99).

According to Pink, Danish special effects and stop-motion expert Bent Barfod came to the rescue. “Bent was a genius; he made that damned Reptilicus fly, swim, roar, and smash our miniature buildings. He even made the monster pick up a pedestrian in the Raadhus Plaza and fling him into the fleeing crowd. He made it all come true and then stated flatly no one could ever get him to do it again…” (Pink, pg. 101). Bent went on, however, to do the special effects for Pink’s Journey to the Seventh Planet immediately after Reptilicus was completed. 

Rest assured, this is not only the biggest piece of tail onscreen in Reptilicus, it’s the only active piece of tail in the film — unlike Dean Owen’s novelization!

From the beginning, Reptilicus reduced audiences to tears — of hilarity. “I was amazed when, on opening night, the scenes of Reptilicus smashing the buildings of Copenhagen were greeted with gales of laughter even bigger than those the accompanied the comedy scenes of beloved Dirch Passer,” Pink wrote. “After the screening, I asked Saga Studio owner Fleming Olsen what the laugh meant. He replied, ‘We Danes feel that our buildings are indestructible, and we know that when we come out of the theatre they will still be standing. To us that scene is hilarious.’ So much for the weird Danish sense of humor.” (Pink, Ibid.)

Too bad Pink didn’t recognize (or acknowledge) the enormous generosity of Danish courtesy and hospitality Olsen was demonstating; Olsen was no doubt trying to play down how utterly risible Reptilicus, in all his puppet glory, was to one and all.  

Incredibly, this prompted Pink to arrive at the conclusion that (get this) “Paol Bang’s version was worse.” I kid you not: “I remember how shocked I was at how badly Paol had directed that film. It was slow, maddeningly slow, and only the wizardry of Bent Barfod saved it. The ability to make Reptilicus a real threat together with that almost unbelievable bridge scene made it a big success in Denmark…. Reptilicus went on to be a multimillion dollar grossing picture for AIP, and today its TV appearances are still generating income for both the Danes and me. Who says that a picture has to be good to be successful?” (Pink, Ibid.).

Not I, Mr. Pink! 

More passion than anyone in the American edit: Karen (Mimi Heinrich) and Svend (Bent Mejding) simmer in the Danish version, a timid hint of the Svend and Karen action Dean Owen’s novel reveled in.

Pink himself supervised the Danish English-dubbed version. “Denmark was not a country that specializes in redubbing foreign films (they prefer seeing movies in their original versions,” Pink wrote (pg. 110); true, and among Marge’s and my very dear friends in Denmark, Kim Jensen (hey, Kim and Regina!) stands tall (literally), and he makes his living subtitling movies for theatrical release in Denmark. Apparently subtitling is the tradition adhered to, and so it was in Pink’s day, wrestling to prepare suitable English versions of Reptilicus and Journey to the Seventh Planet. Thus, “…their experience was limited to redubbing the voices of their actors into the original Danish of their scripts.” Pink himself dubbed the voice of General Grayson, played by Carl Ottoson: “Carl spoke with a thick Danish accent almost impossible to understand…” (Ibid.). Pink secured local talent — US Embassy official Jim Brown (not the football player/actor) and “the wives and women who worked in the military and consular offices of the US embassy” — to “get the final action and dialogue cutting done.”  

As Pink explains at length in his autobiography, he had no experience working with sound — dubbing, sound effects (foley work), musical scores, etc., it was all new to Pink, so it’s not hard to take Sam Arkoff at his word when he says the versions of both Reptilicus and Journey Pink delivered to AIP were unreleasable for their soundtracks alone.  More on that later.

The enduring charm of Reptilicus remains in part the audacity of faking a monster attacking Copenhagen via a puppet show, really and truly, with almost as ludicrous a monster as The Giant Claw (1957).

Pink didn’t get it, but he remained a shrewd enough businessman to hold on to it: “As disappointed and ashamed as I was about Reptilicus, he continues his erratic course in my life… I sold all of my rights to Angry Red Planet and Journey to the Seventh Planet, but I kept my share of Reptilicus. To this day I don’t know why, but Reptilicus is the most consistently successful film I have ever made as a director, writer, and producer. Year after year the TV rights are used and reused by most of the cities in the US. The popularity of this film is beyond me, but it is a perennial performer…” (Pink, pp. 101-102). 

Pink and Melchior indeed collaborate on more compelling and, by traditional terms, more entertaining science-fiction films: both Angry Red Planet and Journey to the Seventh Planet are better films, in every way, compromised and flawed as they are (Pink on Journey: “…To my dying day I shall maintain that Journey was and is a great sci-fi story…”; pg. 103).

As with Reptilicus, Projects Unlimited was again engaged by AIP to ‘fix’ the US version of Journey, supplanting Bent’s monster effects (widely seen in the AIP stills that Forry Ackerman published in Spaceman and Famous Monsters of Filmland, as did other monster magazine publishers); I would dearly love to see the original Danish version, sans the AIP repairs, but nothing has ever surfaced. Lacking the mystique and popularity of Reptilicus, the interest just hasn’t been there to rescue whatever was cut from Pink’s delivered version of Journey, and lacking the enduring popularity of Dirk Passer (the only reason the Danish DVD is available!), it’s never surfaced in the Danish video or DVD market.

Pink later delivered the borderline horror film Pyro to AIP, and I’ve always had a soft spot in my skull for that modest variation on ‘fire-scarred psychopath’ archetype (as in Mystery of the Wax Museum, House of Wax, Face Behind the Mask, Face of Fire, etc.), which I first saw as a teenager on late-night television. 

After the revamp, this is how AIP previewed Journey to the Seventh Planet, with “Enticing 7th Planet Beauties” and mucho monsters; it remains among my favorite early ’60s sf movies. If you look quick and close after the brain says, “…your fears have created the means of your destruction,” you can just barely glimpse part of the Danish monster effects creations replaced in the American version by one of Projects Unlimited’s critters.

Thanks to the Jess Franco and Soledad Miranda cult, this clip (8 min, 24 sec.) from Sidney Pink’s Pyro is in reach, which — like the Reptilicus clip — provides a one-stop synopsis of this hard-to-find film, and provides a peek at the burned visage makeup Barry Sullivan sports; check it out (too bad it doesn’t include the film’s calliope-like theme music, which was memorable).

 Now, Sidney Pink is glib about a few things in his autobiography, and among them is what went on behind the scenes concerning the release of Reptilicus and Journey. Though he’s pretty candid about his own shortcomings, Pink launches without much transition from the Danish release of Reptilicus to Journey’s production and — then, it’s like AIP’s bookkeeping is the first fly in the ointment, sans any explanation of what went down with the prep of the American editions of the two films before AIP even had any bookkeeping or boxoffice to deal with.

 It’s hard to tag a timeframe in Pink’s autobio on Reptilicus. Pink links the AIP boxoffice reports for Angry Red Planet and Reptilicus thus: “Knowing Hollywood as I did, I should have been prepared for what ultimately followed…. I checked the receipts on Angry Red Planet and Reptilicus. Both were doing very well, but the more they grossed, the more expenses were found to eat up our share. As I recall it, Red Planet had grossed in excess of $700,000 [very solid boxoffice in 1961 terms]… Reptilicus had been in release a very short time and was doing sensational business, exceeding even Planet in its early runs, but it also faced monumental costs to recoup…” (Ibid., pg. 114).

Pink’s concerns prompted him to immediately launch an audit of AIP’s books, which inevitably led to acrimony. 

Adding great insult to injury, Pink was also horrified at the fruit of AIP’s licensing of Reptilicus to — Charlton, specifically Monarch Books.

So outraged was Pink that he initiated legal action “against AIP for copyright infringement. They had, by contract, the right to publish a synopses of Reptilicus not to exceed 50,000 words. Instead, they published a paperback (allegedly to help the picture) and, without my permission as the original author, changed the story line to include several very strong sexual encounters between our hero and various Danish women. They also depicted some rather graphic sex scenes between our second lead and his paramour.” 

Indeed they did.

Now, it’s impossible to say who ‘they’ were, as in the responsible parties, but we can take an educated guess. Pink’s assumption was AIP was to blame: but really, did AIP request such tart adaptations? That’s highly unlikely.

The evidence of the books themselves would seem to indicate that Monarch Books was the culprit; as noted in the earlier postings, Dean Owen edited and wrote for Charlton’s men’s magazine division. Whether on their own impetus, or directed by the editor(s) at Monarch Books, Owen and his fellow authors of the entire Monarch Books movie adaptation line added sexual material to their adaptations — and for all we know, Dean Owen himself may have edited the line.

Now, these books weren’t all derivative of AIP product. They were licensed from a number of film distributors and producers. Monarch Books offered adaptations of two AIP films — Reptilicus and Konga — one MGM pickup of a King Brothers production — Gorgo — and one Universal-International pickup from Hammer Films — The Brides of Dracula — and it’s inconcievable that three different licensors would be specifically requesting Monarch ‘juice up’ their product. 

Karen (Mimi Heinrich) and Svend (Bent Mejding) warm up on the beach, enjoying a more torrid kiss than any AIP movie pre-1967, that’s for sure — or any Sidney Pink movie, ever!

To acquaint those of you new to Myrant with what, precisely, author Dean Owen did to Reptilicus for the Monarch Books adaptation — and to reacquaint those of you who’ve been paying attention all along with the enormity of Dean Owen’s ‘enhancements’ — here’s the blow-by-blow Myrant recap:

Monster Memories, Charlton Chills, Part 1: The Charlton monster magazines; intro to this entire multi-part sprawl;

Monster Memories, Part 2: more on the Charlton monster zines, including the Steve Ditko cover and art, intro of Dean Owen and Monarch monster movie paperbacks, including the first Reptilicus sex passage excerpt, intro to the entire Reptilicus debacle;

“A Danish Interlude with Reptilicus, Karen and Svend…” Being the second Reptilicus novel sex scene excerpts;

“It’s What You Want, Isn’t It?” — the third dose of Reptilisex from the novel;

Reptilisex Continues With “If Only She Hadn’t Met Detleff”;

General Grayson gets into the act: “We don’t know how long it will be before Reptilicus is sighted over Copenhagen, but until he is, let’s make every moment count…”

… and then, Rapetilicus: The Final Sexcerpts!

“Reptilicus was intended for a family audience,” Pink insisted, “and the bulk of its potential came from children. I was most upset that parents reading this paperback would be led to believe these scenes were in the picture and might not permit their children to see it.”

A legit concern for the producer — though, per usual, he was selling his audience short.

Every kid in my circle made damn sure none of our parents laid eyes on a single page of the Monarch monster paperbacks!

[To be continued...]

________________

Ted Newsom’s 2000 review of Kip Doto’s Reptilicus: The Screenplay is here, the definitive book on the film which I’ll be citing at some length tomorrow.

Eight years is a loooong time in publishing, but you might drop a postcard to Kip Doto, P.O. Box 8050, Coral Springs, Florida, 33075 to see if (a) he’s still there and (b) the book is still available.

You can still pick up the real McCoy on DVD for less than $9; snag it while you can, monster movie lovers!