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February 14, 2022

Movie Review: Repligator (1996)

by Peggy Christie

I received my first CHC movie package a few days ago. Though I am slightly intimidated by the daunting task of watching five movies AND reviewing them (oh, the humanity!), I did squeak out a little girly giggle as I perused the offerings. And let me tell you, there was no doubt in my mind as to which movie I would watch first, though you might not believe a single word of my review unless you watch it, too. I think the guys at CHC wanted to test my mettle.

Repligator is a comedy/horror/exploitation amalgam of hilarity. Picture this:

 A secret government facility - is there any other kind - where multiple scientists must compete with each other for Uncle Sam's monetary teat in order to fund their experiments and projects. Dr. Fields' brainwashing project gets little props while Dr. Oliver's Replicator has the upper mucky-mucks a twitter.

Cue Colonel Sergeant and General Mills who have come to witness Dr. Oliver's machine firsthand. Dr. Fields invites himself along, hoping to witness an epic failure and gain Oliver's funding. Into the Replicator goes the oldest looking Private I've ever seen still holding his government issued assault weapon and wearing a WWII metal army helmet. Too late the grunt realizes he's in deep kimchi when the Replicator zaps him out of existence. Minutes later he is rematerialized outside of Oliver's lab. Only the Private that comes back in is...a woman.

Whoops! Seems in the replication process, the human DNA strand is stretched and the male coding fades or falls apart or goes to the bathroom to take a dump and only the female coding is left behind. Though Private Waring doesn't really understand what's changed at first (really?), he's cool with his newfound attraction to Dr. Oliver. Dr. Fields take this opportunity to convince the military higher-ups to let him take over the project, install his brainwashing program, and voila! He can create an army of bouncy big-breasted babes that will shock the enemy into submission. Or death.

But Dr. Oliver thinks that if he runs Private Waring back through the Replicator, he can fix her. While Oliver and Fields fight over the machine, Private Waring, Dr. Hardy (Oliver's homely female partner), and Dr. West (Fields' geeky toothy assistant) fall into the Replicator and poof! As before, they reemerge outside the lab for what I can only assume is the dramatic entrance factor.

Waring is just as girly; Hardy is now gorgeous; and West is a woman. This time, however, Fields' brainwashing program, with added rampant nymphomania - because plain old nymphomania just wasn't classy enough - has made our nubile lovelies extra, um, well, horny.

This is when things get weird.

Waring takes Colonel Sergeant into the privacy of a nearby office cubicle to get a little bow chicka bow wow. The second major flaw of the Teplicator reveals itself as Waring turns into an alligator and kills the Colonel.

Yep.

Here's the deal. The twice baked potato, I mean Private Waring, had her DNA stretched again by going through the Replicator the second time, kicking the female coding to the curb like yesterday's one night stand and allowing the primordial coding to take over. Along with Fields' nympho instructions, when she experienced an orgasm Waring got her reptile freak on.

Once that happens, the cinematic floodgates open and serious shit hits the fan. Anyone who goes through the Replicator, which ends up being almost everybody, generates the ability to spontaneously orgasm, turn into alligators, and run amok.

Oh, yeah. Anyone who is killed by an alligator mutant comes back as a zombie.

Eventually Oliver and Hardy fix the programming and put everyone back the right way just in time for the facility to explode.

This has got to be my longest review ever. And I could have expanded the above to three pages because there was just so much god damned shit going on in this movie.

I watched it without my husband thinking I was saving him from 90 minutes of writhing pain. Seems I'm going to have to watch it again with him. It was that amusing.

Don't get me wrong. It was pretty bad. Awful, actually. It was physically painful to watch the actors deliver their lines as though they'd eaten an entire jar of peanut butter and chased it with a sleeve of Saltines - fumbled, stilted, or just awkward. The writer, Keith Kjornes who also played Dr. Oliver, threw in every comedic trope, meme, joke, routine, or homage he could think of. It was like watching the Three Stooges act out a Scooby-Doo episode with the scripts from the worst Star Trek episodes (“Arena” and “Spock's Brain” spring to mind) after smoking a three-foot bong filled with Draino-laced weed.

That said, however, Kjornes' acting was decent and I adored Randy Clower as Dr. Fields. He played such a great douche bag. Kjornes wrote Repligator as a comedy and he succeeded in delivering the goods because it was so over the top with camp. Even as I groaned with the crappy jokes I was almost howling with laughter simultaneously.

We all know a low budget picture when we see one and the creators of this film took advantage of that to add to the comedic atmosphere. At one point in the movie the power at the government facility overloaded the system which automatically sent an emergency signal to the White House which then sent the Special Forces to save the day. And since the budget on this was probably $5.86, the producers come up with a ‘unit’ of rescue soldiers consisting of three guys in black sweats, ski masks, and flip flops. With white socks, no less.

I recommend you find a copy of Repligator, any copy, and watch it. Then maybe you’ll believe me.

3.5 Hatchets



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