Back on 21 December 2020, I felt like watching another B-movie of the monster variety, so this time I chose Reptisaurus, a TV movie currently available to watch for free in its entirety on YouTube (check out the link at the end of this review).
Directed by Christopher Ray (in his directorial debut), and released in 2009, Reptisaurus concerns a highly-classified, genetically-engineered dragon-like beast, a fusion of bat and snake DNA (yeah, right), created covertly by the US military for potential future use as a formidable bio-weapon.
Needless to say, however, the GM dragon soon escapes, grows huge at an accelerated pace, and runs (or rather flies) amok upon the small uncharted Pacific island containing the laboratory of its two scientist creators. One of these scientists, the corrupt senior one (naturally!), is rescued, leaving the honest junior one behind to be killed, along with what is left of their colleagues, all of whom have already been slaughtered.
Onto this island of living nightmare are subsequently stranded five young people after their boat apparently sank (no precise details are given), where they are found by two soldiers dropped off there by the military in order to secretly kill the dragon, so that news of its existence never reaches any members of the general public (too late!).
After reluctantly joining forces, most of the seven succeed in reaching the laboratory safely, except for one of the young people, who becomes increasingly hysterical and after encountering the dragon loses her head completely - and literally!
So what do the survivors do now at the laboratory, where they find the abandoned young scientist still alive? Is there any way of killing the dragon before it kills them, and how can they get off the island when radio communication is seemingly non-functional?
Reptisaurus is a typical example of the B-monster movies churned out on a regular basis nowadays, although the CGI dragon is definitely superior to many of the monsters featured in these flicks. Moreover, the movie even stars a familiar actor, Gil Gerard (best known as Captain William 'Buck' Rogers in the popular late 1970s/early 1980s TV series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century). Here he plays General Morgenstern, a ruthless big brass in the American military who shows no compunction in sacrificing human lives (or "collateral damage", as he terms it) if this means that the monster's existence and extermination can remain forever concealed from the outside world.
Interestingly, according to an on-screen credit Reptisaurus was based upon a comic book entitled Reptisaurus the Terrible. This publication ran to several issues during the early 1960s, and was in turn derived from an earlier two-issue incarnation published in 1961 and entitled Reptilicus, because it was based upon the infamously inane 1961 Danish-American monster movie of that same name. And as if such a notable tangle of titles were not already confusing enough, in some DVD releases Reptisaurus was retitled as Sky Fighter.
If you wish to do as I did and watch Reptisaurus for free on YouTube, while it is still available to do so there, just click here, or click here if you'd like to view a taster in the form of an official trailer for it.
And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE!
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