Spiste horisonter (1950)

... aka: Eaten Horizons

... aka: Eaten Horizonts

... aka: Gegessene Horizonte

... aka: Horizons mangés

Directed by:

Wilhelm Freddie

Jørgen Roos

I wonder why "surreal" isn't considered a legitimate film genre? I mean, that makes much more sense to me than having a useless genre like "thriller," which is little more than a generic blanket term for already established genres like action, crime, suspense and horror. Anytime someone refers to something as a thriller, I never even know what kind of film to expect. On the other hand, I do have a good idea what I'm getting with a surreal film even though they're all over the map as far as tone, execution and content are concerned. These are imagery-based pieces where perplexing and often seemingly-unrelated images are to work on a more subconscious level or represent something to the filmmaker but don't necessarily mean so much to your average everyday moviegoer. While some people enjoy spending time trying to decipher the puzzle or extract their own meaning or have their subconscious mind stimulated, others are like "WTF. Whatever," shrug in confusion and move on with their lives.

Nowadays, I've noticed that a lot of surreal films, for lack of a better place to put them, are being thrown into the horror genre and I suppose that's as good a place as any. Even though many disagree with me, I've always considered stuff like Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou (1929) and Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid's Meshes of a Afternoon (1943) to be at least partially horror. Furthermore, surrealists always look for memorable imagery that will stick with the viewer. The more bizarre, graphic, uncomfortable, unnerving, shocking and / or subversive, the better. That often lands these pieces in the horror genre as well.

This one consists of about three minutes of weird stuff that's seemingly random but probably symbolic of something. A woman is fastened to a black wall with white pieces of fabric. An arm with sun and scorpion tattoos draws shapes in a dark puddle of blood. Two men (played by the directors) sit at a table. One has his foot rested on a loaf of bread that disappears. The loaf of bread reemerges inside a room then appears on a silver platter and then appears on the chest of a nude woman. White boxes then flash on top of the woman's legs.

The two men show up, roll the woman onto her stomach, remove a rectangular cut of skin from her back and inside is... MANWICH! A bubbling pot of Manwich! Well, at least it looks a lot like the Manwich I had for dinner a few weeks ago. The men dip spoons into it and eat it and then refuse to tell us what they're eating so I'm then forced to sit here and think about what they're eating and wonder if it's some kind of Danish dish I've never heard of before or if Sloppy Joe's have been around longer than I thought. One of the men then sticks his arm into the back hole and removes the loaf of meat-sauce soaked bread. We then enter a small room where a ball bounces around, cutouts of kid's beaming faces appear and the kids cheer. Nursery music then plays as the bread spins around, opens up and then more meaty goodness comes oozing out. The end.

I'm sure this has something to do with men consuming / using women and then knocking them up and then the loaf is supposed to be the bouncing baby-bread bi-product of the bonking or something. I wish I had more time to sit here and think about it in greater detail, but I've already spent too much time on Google trying to find out when Sloppy Joe's were invented (apparently in the 1940s) and when Manwich was first sold in stores (that would be 1969).

Roos did an absolutely brilliant job shooting Carl Theodor Dreyer's great short They Caught the Ferry (1949), which was made to promote road safety, and went on to a long career as a documentary filmmaker that lasted up until his death in 1998. Co-director Freddie was a controversial artist (mostly a sculptor and painter) whose art pieces were often banned as pornography. Some of his other work was highly critical of fascism and Nazism, so he was forced to flee his home country during WWII and hide out in Sweden. He passed away in 1995.

★★

Reptilicus (1961)

... aka: Monstruo invencible (Invincible Monster)

... aka: Reptilicus - Il mostro distruggitore (Reptilicus - The Destroyer Monster)

... aka: Reptilicus le monstre des mers (Reptilicus: The Sea Monster)

Directed by:

Poul Bang (Danish version)

Sidney W. Pink (English version)

"Somewhere in the forbidding tundra mountains of Lapland" a group of miners trying to find copper instead make a gross discovery when the drill drags up fossilized bones with bloody, leathery, pulsating flesh inside. Project head Svend Viltorft (Bent Mejding) immediately suspends drilling and calls in some experts to evaluate the situation. Copenhagen-based scientist Dr. Otto Martens (Asbjørn Andersen), his associate Dr. Peter Dalby ("Poul Wildaker" / Povl Wøldike) and newspaper reporter Hans Karlsen all promptly fly in. Despite the presence of fresh blood and skin, the scientists theorize that Svend and his crew have simply drilled into a prehistoric creature that has been frozen underground; the freshness of the blood attributed to heat friction from the drill thawing it out. However, they suspect this creature is a giant reptile and not a giant mammal. The specimen is flown back to the city aquarium for further study. Once everything is cleaned up and some additional bone fragments are found, the scientists discover they have the remnants of a creature's entire tail. Using it, they speculate it was around 90 feet tall and walked the Earth "between 70 to 100 million years" ago.

Such an important discovery deserves to be protected at all costs, so for some reason they hire Mr. Peterson (Dirch Passer), an overalls-and-flannel country bumpkin halfwit whose sole responsibility is to make sure the freezer where the tail is housed stays at the same temperature at all times. I was almost positive this clod was going to do something stupid to unleash the monster (I mean, why else is he even here?) but, amazingly, it's actually Dr. Dalby who does. Working late, he falls asleep at his desk, the freezer door cracks open and the tail thaws out.

The following day, the scientists discover that the tail has not started decomposing as they feared. In fact, quite the opposite. It is now regenerating tissue and blood. In just a few days, it doubles in size. Once word gets out about what's going on, cranky American brigadier general Mark Grayson (Carl Ottosen) comes in to oversee matters for the United Nations and the team hire on American scientist Connie Miller (played by Miss Germany 1958, Marlies Behrens), who's greeted with a hilariously sexist comment ("We are not accustomed to seeing such a beautiful woman connected to science") by her new boss.

Not exactly alarmed by the strange new developments with the rapidly-growing creature (which is eventually dubbed "Reptilicus" by the press), Dr. Martens puts it in a nutrient bath incubator and allows it to continue to grow. Late one stormy night when the power goes out, Reptilicus kills Dr. Dalby and escapes from the building. Grayson quickly gets the military, local police and scientific community together to plot the best course of action. After a farmer reports 14 dead cows, they track the creature to the country, where the military open fire with machine guns, missiles and tanks but are unable to stop the giant reptile. Oh, did I forget to mention it also has impossible-to-penetrate armor-like scales? An attempt to fry it with a flamethrower also fails when the creature slithers back into the sea.

A warship is sent out to find Reptilicus and they finally locate it resting at the bottom of the sea. They attempt to kill it with bombs until Connie reminds them if they do and the creature is blown into a zillion pieces then each of those pieces has a chance to become a new Reptilicus. However, by the time they stop, at least one piece is blown off the reptile. Now all they can do is sit and wait the creature out as it leaves a trail of sunken freighters, cruise ships and sludge-covered beachgoers along the Baltic Sea in its wake. Oh, did I forget to mention it also shoots "burning acid slime" out of its mouth?

I've found that a lot of times, 50s and 60s monster movies aren't anywhere near as bad as many people make them out to be. Just because the special effects don't hold up to today's standards (not that a lot of CGI is really any more convincing) doesn't mean the film as a whole is poor. In fact, a lot of these actually have decent acting and scripts, with good ideas and a purpose / moral at their core. Reptilicus, on the other hand, it genuinely terrible! Not only do you get the awful special effects of a floppy puppet monster "rampaging" (being yanked around with a string) through a miniature model city, but everything else about this is just as bad... if not worse! 

Saving the day here is the truly heinous English-language dubbing, which transforms what is often a pretty bland monster movie padded with military stock footage and tourism-promoting travelogue (including a musical number where the performer sings the praises of Copenhagen!) into a frequently-hilarious bad movie classic. When the voiceover actors aren't awkwardly pausing every other word to match lips ("I have never seen... bone fragments... like this... before") they're given riotously moronic lines ("You'll have to fire point blank... at very close range!") or turning most of the characters (especially the military "hero") into insufferable asshats. What's especially funny is that this was deemed the BETTER English-language version out of two options. Danish and English versions were filmed simultaneously but the latter was supposedly so bad the audio track had to be scrapped and replaced with this new dub-job, which makes me wish the other English version was available just so I could see how bad it was!

And the award for "Worst Movie with the Best Posters" goes to...

Historically, this was Denmark's first giant monster movie and may still be their only giant monster movie as far as I can tell. And it looks like half of Copenhagen showed up to appear in the film as panicking townsfolk fleeing the beast! Many of the actors, including Ann Smyrner and Mimi Heinrich (who play Dr. Martens' man-hungry daughters), also appeared in Pink's JOURNEY TO THE SEVENTH PLANET (1961). American distributor / producer Samuel Z. Arkoff and his American International Pictures released this theatrically in the U. S. and are also responsible for adding the green slime to the Reptilicus arsenal of weapons and a new score by Les Baxter. Danish-born Ib Melchior (THE ANGRY RED PLANET) wrote the script with Pink and also provides voices for the English version, as does genre regular Robert Cornthwaite. A novelization and a brief comic book series were also released.

The initial DVD was from MGM and part of their Midnite Movies line. Shout Factory then acquired the rights and released this on a double Blu-ray along with the crappy (and not really in a good, amusing way like this one) Italian killer octopus flick TENTACLES (1977).

SBIG