Customer Reviews

Yongary: Monster From the Deep

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Why do people watch and love Asian Kaiju (giant monster) films? Why am I still watching them thirty years after "Monster Week on the 4:30 Movie"? (All the 40-something New Yorkers reading this just smiled).

Well, dang it, there's just something about those stylish moments when Yongary (or Godzilla or Gamera or whatever) lumbers onto the screen against a lame backdrop sunset over a toy city in smoldering slow-motion flames. For a brief half-second, some primal reaction in you gasps and says "Crikey, look at the SIZE of that thing! That city's in big trouble!" (Maybe it's instinctive. Maybe it triggers our ice age ancestor's survival mechanism when a big ol' wooly mammoth would come trumpeting round the bend). But right away your cynicism returns and you start giggling again at the toy tanks, rubber suits, atrocious acting, and, in Yongary's case, the all-too-visible flamethrower in his mouth. But those gasping moments are there in spite of it all.

This film is much longer than it should be, but it's tons of fun, and there really isn't a dull moment. It's such a formulaic Kaiju film that you actually enjoy spotting all the formula elements. There are many, many scenes-more than usual in these films-of Yongary stomping doll houses and cardboard bridges to rubble (these are the money shots, after all). Alternating with these are many, many scenes of those ubiquitous Kaiju "meetings": generals, scientists, and politicians ( let's call them GSPs), sitting around in a room with a large map, mumbling about the monster, it's current location, and methods for destroying it. In an early scene, before the monster's appearance, the GSPs are alarmed that an earthquake with a moving epicenter is heading straight for Korea. One of the major characters (whose name we never learn) mentions that his Mommy used to tell him about a monster associated with earthquakes. A general says "Oh, yeah, Yongary!" or something. And from that point on, it ain't no earthquake, it's a monster. Observation: earthquakes. Conclusion: legendary Korean monster has reawakened. If only life were really like this! If only someone could invent a flashlight that causes honeymooners to itch and monsters to dance to surfing tunes. If only you could take your entire extended family with you in a helicopter when you go to drop the secret weapon you invented on the monster. If only I could win the lottery spend the rest of my life propped up in a four-poster bed watching movies like this on a giant plasma screen. Well, for a few hours last night I lived my dream.

Oh, just one last thing about the infamous flamethrower pipe in the monster's head. Give credit where it's due. Godzilla's fire breath was always animated, as I remember. These Korean monster makers were messing with real fire! Must have been fun to work with.

Yongary is another Godzilla clone, only this time made in Korea. This is Korea's first kaiju entry, and even though a lot of things are borrowed from Godzilla and Gamera, the movie is pretty good. The story is that earthquakes start to happen around Korea and they eventually find out it's not earthquakes but really Yongary moving around under the Earth. Yongary goes around all kaiju and begins to attack buildings while the citizens run in terror. It is later found out that Yongary is after one thing, oil. He eats oil just like Gamera eats fire. With him wrecking the city, he must be stopped and fast. Overall, I was impressed with the special fx, some parts were cheesy, in the movie, when the buildings would collapse, fire would break out which I thought was a neat touch. Yongary himself was pretty cool, he could breathe fire like Showa Gamera, but he also has a horn on his nose that could shoot out lasers, which was really cool. He cut one of the airplanes attacking him in half with his nose laser. The movie also features the infamous Yongary dance. On the movie, when Yongary wakes up he starts to dance! It plays 60's music as Yongary gets his freak on! I won't tell the complete story, don't want to spoil the entire story for those who haven't seen it. After Godzilla and Gamera, I would say that Yongary is the next best kaiju created by a different company. If you love kaiju movies, you'll eat this up and love it as much as Yongary loves oil!

Cheesy and campy `kaiju' film inspired by the success of Godzilla series, some would describe "Yongary" (1967) as Korean answer to the more famous Japanese monster. Actually the truths are a little more complicated than a simple rip-off, but anyway, if you like this kind of film, old-fashioned rubber-suit monster genre, you might find "Yongary" pretty entertaining, if technically much inferior to other films of the same ilk.

The story is a usual one. A nuclear experiment wakes up a legendary monster named Yongary, which attacks the central city of Korea. There are ho-hum sequences about a newly-wed astronaut and his reconnoiter mission in orbit which defy every scientific logic, and one precocious 8-year-old boy named Icho, who plays a mischievous trick on him and his bride. There is no serious tone that prevails over the first Godzilla film, the fear of living in the Cold War era.

The attacks of the monster and counterattacks from the humans are presented with miniature models, but the total effects of the city destruction scenes are nothing great even by the standard of the 1960s. Some effects look cheap; the fire nozzle in the monster's mouth is visible and there are glaring gaps in color and lighting between the miniature sequences and live-action ones. Still the miniature tanks, jet fighters and helicopters are all OK, if nothing special, so are the most building wreckage scenes.

As I said before, many people think "Yongary" as rip-off of Godzilla (it is). Godzilla was (and is) the moneymaking franchise for Japanese company Toho and other studios created their original monsters in response to Godzilla, such as Gamera produced by Daiei. The special effects of "Yongary" are in fact provided by the team who supported Gamera films so if you look carefully, you will notice that the designs of Yongary are closer to that of Gamera (without tortoiseshell) than to Godzilla.

I must say all in all "Yongary" is a sub-par monster flick with so-so effects. And I don't say much about the film's ending, which is just terrible.

The film was remade in 1999 as "2001 Yonggary" (aka "Reptilian") starring Harrison Young.

A scientist and a young chicky get married and immediately are harassed by her young VERY obnoxious brother. No honeymoon though for the groom -- a LARGE,angry,lizard (man in a rubber suit)has emerged from ocean depths. Yongary destroys a bunch of cheap Korean doll houses and desimates the Korean oil refineries (fun), using the blow-torch in his mouth -- check closely and you can see the pipe the SFX (Ha ha ha ha!)team used. We find out that he was only causing this ruckus because he was low on fuel. That pretty much covers most of the movie, other than a scene where he starts to , I guess, dance (?) a jig -- chessy fun but a good rainy day C- grade flick. One HUGE drawback -- very grainy DVD transfer.

This old Yongary film has never had a DVD release in the U.S.A
Finally, here it is!

A nuclear test in China releases a giant dinosaur from hibernation. The monster rampages through Korea, ready to stomp and destroy! Made when Godzilla reached the height of his popularity, Yongary, Monster from the Deep was a blatant attempt to capitalize on the sucess of that most popular of movie dinosaurs. This movie is quite similar to Giant Monster Gamera, made at about the same time. It was dubbed and released in the US, much to the delight of b-movie fans!

Not an easy title to find, I bought it more to compleate my collection than to actually watch it. The first Korean Kaiju, it's quickly established that this was made to cash in on Toho's success with only a tiny fraction of the budget. While amusing at times, the cheap production often gets in the way of doing something that rarely adds much to a movie's cost - good writing. It's just not that good.

Now the newer version, also known ( and shown on Sci-Fi Channel) as "Reptillian" is a much better film - dispite some of the worse gajin actors since the international version of "Gamera the Invinceble". With it's own glitches being much more entertaining than the original, this is a remake that delivers and is worth getting.

Kaiju people have their own way of rating films and are usually very forgiving of compromised production values, the original "Yongary" just isn't that good.

Note: I originally wrote this review for the Yongary/Konga double feature, but it seemed appropriate to list it here also.

8<------------------------------------------------------------>8

It sure is refreshing to see some city other than Tokyo being stomped into the ground by a giant monster. Until the Heisei Gamera trilogy, every Kaiju just made a bee-line for Tokyo, it got kind of boring after a while.

But being Korean and not Japanese, Yongary had no choice but to go after Seoul. He probably could not get a tourist visa and Japanese immigration officials are notoriously strict. But that aside, I thought he was a pretty cool monster, although in the end you kind of feel sorry for him. After all, how would you feel if you were knocked out of bed by a nuclear test in the nebulous "Middle East" (where was that, anyway??), and then when you went out for a drink and to do a little dancing, they started firing on you with artillery?? I would be damned surly about that myself. And then to add insult to injury they started spraying you with nasty chemicals that got you stoned and you eventually died from an overdose?? Not very hospitable if you ask me.

Were the special effects cheesy, yeah kind of. Especially his fire-breathing where the metal nozzle is clearly visible in his mouth. The laser beam emanating from his rhino horn was pretty cool, he should have used that more often. And his "roar", well if he went up against Godzilla with THAT roar Big "G" would laugh himself to death. Imagine a lion's roar with a donkey braying superimposed on it and you hit it right on the head. But for a 60's monster movie the effects were certainly at least average.

The cast was pretty well developed. Who knew Korea had a space program capable of putting a man in orbit on a moment's notice?? And the protagonist Il-lo's girlfriend Soon-a and here sister Yu-ri were incredibly cute. And the little kid Icho filled the bill nicely as the one who "befriends" Yongary, even if it was a bit late and then only to admonish them not to kill him quite so dead. To no avail I might add, the ending left very little room for a sequel. There was even an actor who was a dead ringer for Kim Jong-Il, which was strangely prophetic given that he was still decades away from taking power in the north at the time this flick was shot. And the cars, I would kill for a Corvair like the one driven by the heroic astronaut/monster fighter Kwang-nam, not to mention all the other cool American iron from the 50's and 60's. If they still built 'em like that the Not-So-Big-Anymore Three would not be in Washington rattling the tin cup, but that has little to do with the film.


I wish the DVD had also had the Korean soundtrack, although that would have involved doing more than just slapping the dubbed english version on a disc. I give it four stars, it probably only deserves three because of the weakly dubbed voices in a British accent and no Korean soundtrack, but four it is.

There really isn't much to say about the film. If you don't know it already and like it you probably won't buy it anyway, because it's just an obscure Korean monster flick. But if you want it, here's my advice: Try to get one of the old Orion tapes and just forget about this DVD. Though my DVD-player says it's encoded at sufficently high bit rates, the image sometimes looks as blocky and noisy as a VCD. I thought I could upgrade from VHS to DVD, but surely not with Alpha's horrible release.

Oh this is such a bad movie, Yongary looked like they used a second rate Godzilla suit. The effects are bad, you can even see the pipe where the fire comes out in the close up shots. The ending is just plain sick.

Having seen most every entry in the Godzilla and Gamera film series, including many other Kaiju movies, I have to say that this was the most mind-bendingly stupidest one there is.

The plot is generic, in which a giant monster is awoken by nuclear testing and then seeks revenge on humanity. The characters are almost all badly acted cliches, from the uptight military general to the 10-year old kid in short shorts who is smarter than every adult in the film (which isn't saying much) and is given access to what you would think are restricted military areas. The main monster, Yongary, is pretty bland. The suit is of poor quality, and its movements are very unnatural. Its rampage through Seoul and the use of its breath weapon all are pretty bland, despite the fact that many cardstock minatures are collapsing into clouds of dirt around it. The monster, I assume, is supposed to display a message about nuclear testing, but the message was lost on me as I laughed at the big green monstrosity and the little insipid Kenny-clone trying to protect it. The only unique thing about this movie is that it has one of the most creative endings in a kaiju movie: Yongary, who is choking on poisonous gas, falls into a river and then experiances a intense bout of RECTAL BLEEDING. I am not kidding. Red liquid is seen pouring out of the suit near its crotch. That sight alone is almost worth seeing this movie. Almost.
By the way, about the DVD, it sucks. The sound and picture quality just plain suck.