Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Get your Kaiju fix here!, March 15, 2005
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.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Yongary Comes In 3rd After Godzilla and Gamera!, December 7, 2005
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!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Godzilla Goes to Korea, February 12, 2007
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.
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