Yongary, monstre des abysses

Yongary is a terrific Monster with fantastic powers(albeit a little too much like Godzilla). Particularly I like his horn which shoots laser beams.

However the film itself drags on incessantly, stars an annoying little kid in short shorts and has less than spectacular special effects. Particularly bad is when the flame-shooting device used for Yongary to breathe fire is so obviously visible on screen. Also the eventual outcome for Yongary may be too much for some children.

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.

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.

While this is by far the most blatant Godzilla rip-off I have seen, it's far better than Godzilla could ever hope to be. The English dub is ridiculous. At one point a soldier actually repeats two lines. The green screen work is hit and miss, sometimes it seems like they might be trying to be bad for the comedic effect. There were a couple times I actually laughed out loud. As bad as this movie may be, I still liked it.

1967's "Yongary Monster from the Deep" ("Taekoesu Yonggary" or The Great Monster Yongary) served as South Korea's entry in the kaiju sweepstakes, using technicians from Japan's Toei Studios to help on special effects. With the year's competition being Toho's "King Kong Escapes," Shochiku's "The X From Outer Space," and Nikkatsu's "Monster from a Prehistoric Planet" (plus one apiece from Godzilla and Gamera), it would be no surprise that poor Yongary doesn't earn the kind of recognition he otherwise might have, if only because of his status as a Korean rarity. Scriptwise it greatly resembles a Gamera film, with 8 year old Icho the brat so annoying even his big sister isn't safe from his latest prank, an itch-causing flashlight shining on her newlywed vehicle to force the couple into a scratching fit in the middle of the road. Hubby just happens to be Korea's only viable astronaut, called away from an obviously uncomfortable honeymoon to venture beyond mere head space, discovering an earthquake that awakens a legendary monster known as Yongary, emerging at the half hour mark to begin stomping buildings and such. Amazingly, military leaders and politicians never leave headquarters as they argue the merits of their futile efforts, leaving little Icho to do all the heavy lifting like spotting Yongary's feasting on gasoline and energy reserves. Naturally, the boy's brother is a brilliant scientist who deduces that the right combination of ammonia dropped on the unlucky Yongary will assuredly prove fatal, but not until after he shares a tango in the night with Icho to a guitar instrumental. Yongary shoots flames from an open mouth like Gamera (the nozzle clearly visible) but in all other respects looks and acts like Godzilla, smaller spikes down his back, a long tail, and a horn on his nose. We go from smashing up a battered metropolis to boozing on gas at an oil refinery before ending at a lonely stream where the final dropoff puts the quivering beast to bed permanently, his blood flowing into the water a disquieting touch. Derided for years as a cheap knockoff, it was obviously a risky undertaking for director Kim Ki-Duk, special effects completed in three months to huge box office returns in Korea alone, picked up for a small screen dub by AIP-TV to become the nation's best remembered monster picture.