Reptilicus (1962)

Early 1961 saw an unusual uptick in European-made giant monster movies: over two months, Gorgo and Konga premiered in Britain and elsewhere in the English-speaking world, while the Danish-made Reptilicus debuted in its home country. This represented a rather singular mad rush to cash in on the success of Godzilla and other Japanese-made monster movies, but it sputtered out as soon as it began, leaving us with only a few very odd attempts to recreate the kaiju film with different sensibilities. The rest of the world got their chance to partake in Denmark’s only giant monster movie after a year-long delay, as instead of simply dubbing the existing movie, our old pals Sidney W. Pink (acting as director and producer) and Danish expat Ib Melchior (as co-writer) essentially remade the movie, originally directed by Poul Bang, with most of the cast returning. The final product became rather infamous, ending up a modern Mystery Science Theatre 3000 punching bag and finding its way onto “Worst Movies of All Time” lists—by my estimation, it’s not even the worst Sid Pink & Ib Melchior movie I’ve watched, but there are definitely some issues that may be worth formally addressing.

Creature Classic Companion: The War of the Gargantuas (1966) (+ Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965))

Of all the non-Godzilla kaiju movies from the Toho’s Showa era run, The War of the Gargantuas (called Frankenstein’s Monsters: Sanda vs. Gaira in Japan) is one that really stuck with certain members of the audience on both sides of the world—it was used as a reference point by Quentin Tarantino in Kill Bill Vol. 2,is a favourite of directors like Guillermo Del Toro, and, no joke, inspired Brad Pitt to become an actor. Part of what makes it unique among the Ishiro Honda/Eiji Tsuburaya collaborations of the sixties stems from the unusual circumstances of its development: it’s a bizarre pseudo-sequel to Frankenstein Conquers The World (Japanese title Frankenstein vs. Baragon), a film produced a year earlier that had its origins in the same international deal that led to King Kong vs. Godzilla. Originally, King Kong animator Willis O’Brien had been pitching a King Kong vs. Frankenstein concept around Hollywood before a producer unscrupulously sold it Toho without O’Brien’s involvement, with the idea morphing into separate King Kong vs. Godzilla and Frankenstein vs. Godzilla scripts, the latter being rewritten to remove the Big G (the whole thing would remain a Japan/US co-production, with producer Henry G. Saperstein from UPA heavily involved in both Frankenstein and Gargantuas.) Frankenstein Conquers the World feels like a sort of prototype, giving Honda and Tsuburaya a chance to test out something new for their giant monster movies: a monster played by an actor without a full suit, giving him a wider range of emotion and more opportunity for the audience to sympathize. That, alongside the smaller scale of the monster action, was something that appealed to both directors, and would continue in its follow-up to an even greater effect, creating a conflict between monster brothers with diametrically opposed natures, a traditional narrative that nonetheless is highly engaging when presented in the form of a kaiju rumble.