Yongary, monstre des abysses

I mean...the company is called Kuk Dong. If you speak Swedish, that is quite funny. Otherwise its just random. Umm...movie review.

A giant monsters appears after a space shuttle launch. It goes to crush a model of a Korean city. An annoying kid uses his flashlight to make Yonggary dance. After much pointless destruction, a random scientist dumps a load of toxins on Yonggary and he dies a painful, withering death.

It's standard stuff here, folks, but very quaint and amusing in it's production. It's got some random stuff, like the Korean priest shouting repent in one of the crowd scenes, and the epileptic rave scene. Otherwise it's Godzilla from start to finish, complete with terrible models, a supremely cheesy space sequence, and pointless, unintroduced characters.

Yonggary has got a neat cutting beam that he slices a motorcycle and a jet fighter(straight out of Team America) in half with.

If you want some late night cheese, this is it.

Earthquakes in central Korea turn out to be the work of Yongary, a prehistoric gasoline-eating reptile that soon goes on a rampage through Seoul.

Allegedly, there is no more Korean print of this film and what circulates today is an American television print. This means we are stuck with the American dialogue rather than the original, and the editing may be quite different. Thus, we are watching (and critiquing) a film not as it was ever intended to be seen.

While much of what remains is amusing, it does tend to get boring. With Godzilla it never gets old, but with Yongary we can only see him smashing things for so long before it seems like the same old thing over and over. What other tricks do we have? None?

Yongary comes out of the sea and destroys Seoul.

Some of you who have looked at this masterpiece of Korean cinema may claim that this is nothing but Godzilla with a name change and set in Korea. True, Yongary comes out of the sea, is played by a guy in a rubber iguana suit and has atomic-fire breath. He stomps down various medium high-rises in Seoul while the populace flees, each carrying the item most precious to them (no babies, but one man seems to be carrying a bowling ball). However, he has a horn on the end of his nose, like a rhinoceros, so nothing at all like Godzilla.

In addition, this monster isn't defeated by chance. There's a small boy who has invented an itching ray, you see, and has the knowledge to operate the controls of a oil-storage facility.

I look forward to the many sequels in which Yongary becomes the boy's best friend. A kid like that must attract bullies, and when someone is yanking up your underwear, there's nothing like an atomic-fire-breathing giant lizard to help you out.

Cheapo Korean GODZILLA rip-off. Yonggary has a nose that glows when excited, likes to dance to rock 'n' roll, and is vulnerable to itching powder. Going Godzilla one better, Yonggary breathes fire AND shoots lasers from his nose. An allegedly cute eight year old boy befriends him; you keep hoping a building will fall on the boy or he'll get run over by a tank or be trampled by the mobs fleeing in terror to shut him up. The weirdest sequence occurs early in the movie: on his wedding night, just when his new bride is getting amorous, an astronaut is summoned on a secret mission; the next scene you see, he's blasting off into space in an enormous phallic rocket ship.

Yonggary (1967) is much like Gamera, a cash crop film, aping off the success of other pilfered monsters, better ones. The film opens with what I thought was a rather nice shot of space with rolling credits, followed by a fine cast of mediocre actors and a young boy in shorts, the evil omen for any giant monster movie fan of terrible things to come. The story and plot run through very worn out terrain, mysterious happenings somewhere, a loving couple, monster attack, and discovery of weapon to kill the monster. The film was geared to children, as most kaiju films of this time (late 60s), one would expect this in itself would diagnose Yonggary as terminally unwatchable, but the kid aspect is what to me kept it entertaining, Yonggary dancing, drinking, etc. were all bizarre enouph to keep a smile, bad editing also played it part. As for the action sequences, Yonggary's arrival and first rampage was well done, not very convincing mind you, but thats never really the point in these films, to look interesting and incite nostalgic inner child hollaring.

Yonggary is by far one of the most forgettable Kaiju monsters to grace East Asian screens, his physical appearance is right down the middle neutral to anything that may catch attention; his skin color bland, his design simple and uninspired and his range of emotion nonexistent. However , despite all of this, I had fun watching it, unlike Gappa, pretension toward seriousness is out the window, thus making the inevitable moral lesson and speech at the end all the more bearable.

One of the better, lesser kaiju films. 6/10