Reviews

The actors in this movie are the usual suspects of "Carry on"-style danish comedy. Dirch Passer - the janitor - was Denmarks greatest comedian for two decades. His scenes are obviously only in the movie to sell this freakshow to the ordinary family cinema-goers, and the incredibly stupid song he sings has been pulled out of the US version (lucky you).

At Saga studios they just wanted to forget that they had made it - for twenty years after its production you had to give a round of beer to everybody in the room if you even mentioned the name Reptilicus.

A must see!

A neurotic loner who has raised himself on books instead of real life, loses his sense of reality and thinks he is Don Quixote - who, in Cervantes novel, thought he was a knight several hundred years to late for knighthood. The soul of the original story is present all the way. But instead of fighting windmills, this modern version lets Don fight oilpumps, and his Sancho Panza is an overweight outsider, and so forth. Things go from hilarious to embarrasing. The modern world slowly catches up in the last quarter of the movie, and he might end on antipsychotic medicine and antidepressants. But things take a turn once again. This might not be the masterpiece of the year, but it is areal good antidote to the navel-gazing paranoia that haunts many american movies and TV-shows these days. This is about accepting the weirdness of the world, so that you can live in it and with it.

Rejsen til Saturn by Claus Deleuran is one of the best Danish comics ever created - some will say the best. Deleuran had the idea for the story already as a child in the 1950's, and in the 1970's, he decided to realize the project. The result was a 60 page book, where every Picture on every page bristled with ideas and childlike fantasy. Everything made with a painstaking sense for detail. The humor was not rude as in the movie - it was more Tati than Will Ferrell. Later on Deleuran started an enormous project - The Illustrated history of Denmark - but unfortunate he died in the middle of making book 9. Its descriptions are so detailed, that he had only reached the Middle ages by then. And no one was or will be able to take over the Work after a genius like him. And now this. I don't know how or why the rights ended with these producers, maybe they have sweet-talked some of the people close to him or declared their willingness to do it with respect for his art. But this has (apart from the idea of a spaceship with Danes) nothing to do with the feel of the original Work. Instead you get a lot of tasteless jokes in the vein of mediocre stand-up. Disgraceful!

In the south of Denmark many people watched German television in the seventies. It was before satellite or cable TV, and Denmark only had one channel, which was very culturally conservative. So when my redheaded playmate Jan told me about a really scary show they were showing in the children's programs on German TV, I had to watch it. And did scare me? Yes. Images are burned into my memory: An Archer who walks out of a painting and shoots a man in the room, a giant eye filling the sky and driving a man to madness etc. After a short while German TV realized it was actually made for adults (actually because of countless horrified parents calling in and complaining)and took it of.

It kind of became the stuff of legends for people my age when we talked about TV from our childhood: "Do you remember that Japanese show on ZDF - with the ghost in the lake - and the eye in the sky???", but no one remembered the name or knew what it actually was.

Along came the internet, and suddenly I found out, that a lot of people in Germany had the same fixation (probably born around 1960 all of them). They tried to get it shown on TV Again - but with no results. But a German video-company specializing in cult-TV released it on DVD, so I could watch it Again.

Did it hold up to the expectations? No, of course not, nothing can live up to the thrills you had with movies, books and comics as an 11 year old. But it has its charm - and is actually still quite creepy at times.

I give it 6 for the actual quality, and 10 for the nightmares it gave me as a child.