REPTILICUS

   Film (1962). Cinemagic/AIP. Dir Sidney Pink, starring Carl Ottosen, Ann Smyrner. Screenplay Ib Melchior, Pink. 90 mins. Colour.

   In this, the Danish cinema's only excursion into the monster genre, the tail of a buried dinosaur is exhumed and taken to a laboratory where it regenerates an entire new body, which proceeds to behave like RADON. Generally thought to be the worst MONSTER MOVIE ever made, R is notable for the visible strings holding up the puppet dinosaur and for the fact that AIP found it necessary to cut all flying scenes before the US release. The novelization, Reptilicus * (1961) by Dean OWEN, was released before the film and alleged in a lawsuit brought by Pink to contain gratuitous passages of "lewd, lascivious and wanton desire"; there was also a 1961 comic book, Reptilicus, which fittingly changed its name in \#3 to Reptisaurus the Terrible.

   JB/PN