The only giant monster movie ever made in Denmark, Reptilicus features perhaps the fakiest-looking beastie since The Giant Claw's infamous space buzzard. Your eyes will roll with incredulity as the prehistoric, acid-spitting behemoth (actually a bad rubber puppet) lays waste to downtown Copenhagen. And there's a musical number to boot!
    An oil exploration crew is drilling above the Arctic Circle in Norway when their rig's drill bit brings up a bloody piece of flesh. The crew leader, engineer Svend Viltorft (Bent Mejding), contacts the University of Copenhagen about the strange find. (What? No dinosaur experts at the University of Oslo?) Two learned paleontologists, Prof. Martens (Asbjørn Andersen) and his assistant Dr. Dalby (Povl Wøldike), are dispatched to check it out. They hypothesize that the flesh belongs to a previously unknown prehistoric creature frozen beneath the tundra. A chunk of the thing's tail is excavated and flown to the university's aquarium. Svend tags along for no discernible reason.
    While the handsome engineer makes time with Martens' pretty young daughters, Lise (Ann Smyrner) and Karen (Mimi Heinrich), the professor and Dalby begin their preliminary studies of the frozen tail sample. Martens hires a complete idiot, overalls-wearing Mr. Petersen (Dirch Passer), to act as night watchman. Petersen — the dimwitted mutant child of Jack Elam and Joe Piscopo — is supposedly on hand for comic relief but instead ends up shaming not only the nation of Denmark but the entire continent of Europe as well. (I thought rubes like this only existed in the United States...) Cringe in horror as Petersen does the Charleston with the aid of an electric eel! (I'm not kidding.) Surprisingly, it's not Petersen that screws up and causes the creature to begin regenerating but Dalby, who falls asleep one night with the freezer door open. The scientists are astounded to learn that from the tail section brought down from Lapland, an entire new creature is forming. The story makes international news; a reporter dubs the life form "Reptilicus". The Godzilla of Scandinavia is born!
    Enter Brigadier General Mark Grayson, U.S. Army (played by Danish actor Carl Ottosen), sent by the United Nations to command the "protective forces" guarding Reptilicus — all of five people. Grayson is an asshole, the quintessential "Ugly American" writ large. Barking at everyone, with a constant scowl, he's the most thoroughly detestable hero since The Green Slime's smarmy Commander Rankin. (I was hoping against hope that the monster would make a snack of him, but no such luck.) Angry about his assignment, Grayson's Danish Army aide Captain Brandt (Ole Wisborg) and U.N. liaison Connie Miller (Bodil Miller) hope that a sightseeing tour of Copenhagen will cool his temper. Thus the surly general — along with the audience — is treated to a whirlwind tour of the city, with voice-overs of the characters pointing out various landmarks and such. ("They say the Danes are practically born on bicycles," we're informed. Fascinating.) The trio end their tour at a nightclub, enjoying songstress Birthe Wilke's rendition of a kitschy lounge number entitled "Tivoli Nights". All just pointless padding at its most blatant. Oh, the humanity! Fortunately we're soon into the thick of some monster action as Reptilicus escapes from the lab (gobbling poor Dalby on the way out — why couldn't it have been Petersen?) and begins terrorizing the area. He has a grand time capsizing freighters, smashing buildings and spitting very colorful green acid slime at people. Denmark's armed forces respond, of course, but the creature's bony scales ("Like armor!") prove impervious to tank and artillery fire. The army does manage to drive it into the sea, from which it later emerges to terrorize the Baltic coast. Grayson (who suddenly seems to be running the entire country under U.N. mandate) wants to use more powerful weaponry but Prof. Martens warns against such tactics. If Reptilicus is blown to bits, its power of regeneration means that an entirely new monster will grow from each individual piece!
    An American-Danish co-production, Reptilicus features European actors speaking their dialog in English that was later dubbed by other performers anyway. The DVD packaging proclaims that some 900,000 people (!) participated as extras in the movie. Understandably, the panicked crowd sequences have a notch up on much better "giant critter on the loose" flicks in this regard. One scene, which features members of Copenhagen's athletic club riding bicycles off a bridge into a canal, is unforgettable. Practically the entire Danish military also joins in, its soldiers and sailors cooking off lots of practice rounds while smartly manning their shiny, new-looking hardware. The special effects, however, are incredibly, astoundingly bad. The monster is just a rubber puppet being pulled across cheesy tabletop models of buildings and landscapes; the poor beastie seems to have a hard time controlling his neck half the time. Its deadly acidic upchuck is realized with animation. The only time we actually see a human getting eaten (a luckless farmer, just sitting down to dinner himself), a badly drawn cartoon of the victim is superimposed onto the monster's slathering maw. The rubber-suited monster wrestling/model smashing of Japan's Toho Studios looks like the wizardry of Industrial Light and Magic in comparison.
    It's truly a shame this flick never found itself under the crosshairs of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 gang. With its goofy characters, laughable effects and major plot boners (even after the monster has been terrorizing the Baltic Sea — sinking ships and attacking fishing villages, we're told — throngs of sunworshipping Danes have no qualms about hitting the beach), Reptilicus provides ample material for skewering. Because of its old fashioned, straight-faced silliness I actually had a pretty good time.