Mine Is Still Bigger Than Yours (The Giant Behemoth, Reptilicus And Yongary On The Rampage). By Steven G. Farrell.
I recently concluded an article, Mine is Bigger Than Yours: Godzilla, Gorgo and the Beaston the Rampage, and it was put up here on BRWC. The original article was about 6,500-words, and I deemed it too long for a comfortable read on a film blog. I decided to focus upon The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Godzilla: King of Monsters and Gorgo. The first two films are rightly considered film classics in the horror genre while the third one has a large cult following. During the editing process I deleted two films from the original article: The Giant Behemoth, a 1959 British production, and Repitlicus, a 1962 Danish movie. I decided to rework this material from my original discussion of Big Monster movies in the Fifties and the Sixties. I have added the Korean film, Yongary, Monster from the Deep (1967,) to balance out my two essays. It also adds South Korea to the list of countries that included the USA, the United Kingdom, Japan and Denmark in an attempt to destroy the modern world with a big monster.
The Giant Behemoth was the United Kingdom’s answer to The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and Godzilla: King on Monsters, the two films which were box office successes: both are still screened often on American television. The Giant Behemoth, on the other hand, makes very rare appearances over here in the States. I have only seen it once, and that was on YouTube. It is a puzzle why Gene Evans, an American actor who normally played soldiers and cowboys, was selected to play the leading role of American scientist, Steve Karnes. His character is likeable enough, but he didn’t have leading man looks or charisma. Dr. Karnes was in London to present a paper about the possible dangerous fallout from radiation at a conference when dead fish begin to wash up on the shores of Cornwall, the southeasternmost region in the United Kingdom. Karnes and Professor James Rickfor (Andre Morell) are sent down to investigate because of the fear of radiation sickness. They met a young fisherman John (John Turner) and a pretty village girl Jean Trevethan (Leigh Madison), who give the scientist some details including the last word of Jean’s fisherman father Thomas (Henri Vidon) which was “Behemoth.” The father was surprised and murdered by the beast by the shores of the village. Behemoth is the name of the monster in the Book of Revelation. John had been badly burnt by touching the Behemoth dead victim, Jean’s father. At this point, John and Jean disappeared from the film. This was an unfortunate decision because they could have provided a romantic backdrop to the film.
Steve Karnes was quickly able to identify the Behemoth at a dinosaur museum with the assistance of Dr. Samson. This character, played by Irish actor Jack MacGowran, is my favorite cast member in the movie. The good doctor’s estimated that the beast could be up to 200 feet tall. MacGowran chewed up the scenery as an eccentric palaeontologist by mugging his way up until his death in a helicopter. The creature is a Paleosurus, who is able to omit an electric pulse similar to that of an electric eel. The fictional monster was created by Willis O’Brien, using stop-motion animation in a Los Angeles studio while the rest of the film was filmed in the United Kingdom by Eugene Laurie. O’Brien’s portfolio included the original King Kong. Laurie directed three big monster movies: The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, The Behemoth and Gorgo. Sadly, The Giant Behemoth was the lowest movie on the totem pole.
When it is determined that the Behemoth is dying from radiation sickness and heading towards London’s Thames River to die (much like the Beast returning to the Hudson River as part of his instinct for his ancestral burial ground), the military leaders are cocksure that the prehistoric creature will never be able to swim past their radar tracking system. However, when the Behemoth overturns a ferryboat, smashes through London Bridge, and proceeds to contaminate the city center with its electric pulses, there is a meeting to resolve the problem. It is Steve Karnes who suggested using a x-class submarine to submerge into the Thames River armed with a torpedo capped with a radium head. Why an American scientist is in a meeting with British military leaders and then going on the mission to destroy the monster is a bit of a mystery. It almost implies to an American audience that only an American can handle such an important task. Luckily, the mission is a success and the torpedo finds its way into the belly via its mouth, thus killing it instantly.
The British Board of Film Censors issued The Giant Behemoth an X certificate. Two-minutes were snipped from the cut to receive a better rating. It didn’t matter, for the film was a box office flop in Europe, as well as the USA. The British, true to their stiff upper lip mentality, didn’t give up until they came up with a much higher quality monster only two years later with Gorgo.
Reptilicus (1962), a Danish and American joint production. introduced the big monsters’ genre to the moviegoers in the very early sixties. What makes Reptilicus unique is that the project involved two films being shot simultaneously, involving basically the same cast, crew and script; but one film being filmed in the Danish language while the other was for release in the USA. The project became a hodge-podge mess that required extensive editing and redubbing. The American version cut out about 12 minutes, mostly dealing with a love affair between two younger people, but also deleting a scene where Reptilicus is flying in the sky. Another cut from the Danish version I was able locate on YouTube, entitled The Repitilicus Song. Dirch Passer, the comic relief, sung the song. Oddly enough, his character is “Peterson” in the American version and “Dirk Mikkelsen” in the Danish final cut. I think that scene should have been left intact for the American release. The only other time I can recollect two separate movies being produced at the same time was when Dracula (1931) had two films going at once: an English film version being shot during the day and a Spanish version being shot at night.
Workmen drilling for copper in Lapland, Finland find their machine suddenly jammed up with a bloody piece of skin tissue. When this sickening specimen is dug up it turns out to be the fossil of a frozen tail of a giant reptile. A young Danish actor, Bent Mejding (played by Svend Viltoft) is the young man who finds his hands all covered in prehistoric blood. Oddly enough, Bent stays in for the rest of the movie to provide one of the romantic leads. The chunk of green flesh is sent to a-scientific-research laboratory in Copenhagen, the capital of the country, where the viewer is introduced to the Martens: Professor Otto Martens (Arbjorn Anderson), the head scientist assigned to the case, and his beautiful and blond daughters Lise (Ann Symner) and Karen (Mimi Henrich). The two ladies added to the scenery, as well as to the minor love subplots. Dirch Dosser as Peterson, the night watchman, was mildly amusing as the film’s clown. He also won my respect when he sang The Reptilicus Song with a handful of charming Danish girls and boys. I thought he was a funny and well-meaning clod. I think Dosser connected well with the youngsters in the audience.
In the middle of the movie, before the death and destruction begins, the film becomes a travelogue for the beautiful city of Copenhagen, highlighting its’ tourist attractions to foreign audiences. This section of the film finishes in the Trivoli Gardens, a fashionable night club, that includes a non sequitur love song by Birth Wilke, a beautiful female and real-life night club singer; one that has nothing to do with the theme of the movie. I wonder if this spin through the city was for the benefit of the financial interests of one or more of the backers. We don’t do this sort of sightseeing tour with New York City, Tokyo or London in the other movies I have discussed.
The movie introduced two American characters, both played by Danish actors: a very cranky Carl Ottosen as Brigadier General Mark Grayson and UNESCO Representative Connie Miller (Marla Behrens). There seemed to be a spark of a love interested between Grayson and Miller who begin to refer to one another by their first names. I’m not sure why because the general is one of the most unpleasant characters to ever be the male lead of any horror picture anywhere. There was no spark between the characters as there was between the younger lovers, Bent and Karen.
The fossil is put into a frozen storage. Due to human error, the door to the vault is left open and the tail begins to thaw out during a thunderstorm that had nothing whatsoever to do with the eventual results. Lise Martens notices that the slab of reptile meat is starting to heal itself. These scenes with the tissue l are very off-putting to me, but it is explained to reporters by Dr. Martens that the tail is regenerating itself. One of the Reporter dubs the fossil as “Reptilicusl.” Dr. Martens never pinpoints what sort of prehistoric species Reptilicus is, but he states that is about 70 millions-years old, and was at a stage in evolution where sea creatures were transforming into land bound mammals. Later on, Dr. Martens assures General Grayson that Reptilicus can only survive under water for a few days as it regenerates, because it was essentially made to walk on the ground.
Nobody seems to be unduly alarmed until the creature finally transforms to its original form: a 90-foot-long snake-like creature who spits out a green acid slime and devours livestock and humans. The monster has comically small legs and batwings attached to its’ side. One of his claws is blown off of his body as he rests in the water to regenerate as the Danish navy drops depth charges to kill him. In the Danish version, Reptilicus flies, but not in the American version. Repitilicus and his tiny batwings look silly both versions. The monster was a puppet, or a marionette, pulled by strings to destroy paper replicas of the Lanebo Bridge and downtown Copenhagen. The closeup of the monster, filmed in slow motion, looks cartoonish. Most of the time Repticilus resembles a cheesy dragon float in a San Francisco Chinese New Year’s Parade. He even sported very long whispers in some sort of parody of the ancient philosopher Confuscius. It is never shown what the effects his spitting green slime has on people or buildings. The slime was only later added during the editing process. The imagery was included to mimic Godzilla’s atomic spits.
One of the few interesting points to this film is to see how General Grayson attempts to encircle the monster and to destroy it with concentrated fire. Twice he is warned by Dr. Martens that to scatter the pieces of the creature could possibly create millions of additional monsters. Another poignant scene has the bridge keeper at Langelo, for reasons of his own, pulling the level to start to lift up the bridge, causing the death of several hysterical people caught in midair as the bridge goes up. It is a bit funny, in a morbid 21st century sense of humor way, to get a laugh at the people on bicycles crashing down into the water. However, when they cut to the crying bridge keeper, who turns away in shameful grief brings the film back to more a serious level. His good intentions were an error in judgment, resulting in the death of his fellow Danish countrymen.
The resolution comes when the doctor, the two daughters, Marla, Grayson and Bent rush to the laboratory to mix a concoction that could be used as a hypo to put the monster to sleep long enough for Dr. Martens to put an end to its life without scattering the pieces (how, I don’t know how). The sleep serum is put into the head of a rocket that is launched from a bazooka. I doubt if any general would be the sharpshooter selected to launch the hypodermic cocktail.The one and only hypo bullet enters Reptilicus’s month and put it to sleep. Grayson has the honor of saving civilization. He also offers the final homily of, “it’s a good thing there are no more like him.” The shot shifts to burning Copenhagen. The camera pans to the blue sky. Finally, there is a zoom shot on surface of the blue water. The final shot is of Reptilicus’s detached claw, starting to regenerate itself.
One harsh critic wrote this about the film: “Awkward dubbing of foreign actors, special effects that look like they cost a buck fifty, laughable dialogue, wince-inducing comic relief from a dim-witted character. If there ever a movie was made that deserved to be showcased on the cult series,Mystery Science Theater 300, it’s this one.”
I would tend to rate this film a bit higher than that. Like The Giant Behemoth, I’d give it an A for effort and a C for results. I think having three beautiful ladies in film humanized the story for me and made it sexier. Especially when you compared this film to Gorgo, where not one single line is uttered by a female character.
I will conclude this paper with Yongary, Monster from the Deep (1967), a Korean entry into the kaiju (big monster movies) genre. This monster was 1600 feet tall, making it eight times taller than all of the other pre-historic monsters I have covered in my two articles. It was a joint Korean (Keukdang Entertainment Company) and Japanese (Toel Company) venture. It was directed by Kim- Kiduk in an effort to rake in the big money like the Godzilla franchise. The movie was released directly to American television in 1969, and has never become a hit either here or in Asia. I have seen this film on American television a few times over the years. For purpose of this paper, I watched it again on YouTube. Even the producers of the film were unhappy with the rubber suit of the monster, but they didn’t have enough time or money to design another one.
Yongary was based upon an old Korean legend about a monster connected to earthquakes. This creature was released by a nuclear bomb tested in the Arabian desert by a fictional Middle Eastern country. The explosion had a ripple effect that made its’ way to the Panmunjam region in South Korea. This site was selected by the producers because it is where the armistice ending the Korean War was signed in 1953. For once, the Americans aren’t at fault for releasing this beast from the bowels of the earth. However, the destruction caused by the monster reminded Koreans of the horrors of the Korean War that was fought the United States, South Korea and North Korea.
The rubber suit that was used for Yongary costed $5,000 to make, whereas actor Cho-Kyounmin was only paid $400 to wear it. The monster energized itself by drinking oil out of the refinery tanks. He did a very strange dance after drinking the gasoline as though he had become high from the intake. Yongary is put to sleep with ammonia spray and left to die by loss of blood where he had fallen. Il-woo (Oh Yeoung) is the romantic lead, as well as the scientist who comes up with the spry to put Yongary to sleep. It’s interesting to see how the South Koreans interjected themselves into the international scene by sending a spacecraft into outer space to spy on the test conducted in the Middle East. The astronaut Yoo Young (played by Kwang Ho Lee) is the secondary hero. The South Koreans also figured out how to handle the monster without running to the United Nations or the United States for assistance. The cast of characters are likeable enough. Most of the action involves the Yoo family: Young, Yoo Soona (Nam Jeoung), the female lead and girlfriend of the scientist. and Yoo Icho (Lee Sun-jae), a little boy who provided the comedy relief for the film. I think Yoo Icho’s part was expanded to appeal to the Saturday matinee crowd. The monster isn’t frightening in the least like Godzilla, Gorgo or the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. It is more on the comical side like the Behemoth and Reptilicus.
The Behemoth, Reptilicus and Yongary, Monster of the Deep are most definitely second-rate entries in the big monster genre, but even second-rate can be fun to watch.
The End
