Yongary

I first got this film on Super 8mm many years ago and liked it, so when I saw it on here I just had to have a copy! It's a fun little Sci Fi movie and one that you will not regret buying if you like this kind of movie! Oh, and a photo of the original Super 8 box is included in the gallery, cool!!!

South Korea did not make many giant monster movies and it is nice to see this, their earliest effort, available after many years of obscurity.
Although many people compare this to GODZILLA it borrows heavily from Daiei's GAMERA series. Like the famous flying turtle, Yongary is an elemental creature; he drinks oil and breathes fire. There is also a young boy who sees the monster as a confused creature removed from his own time and at odds against a world that does not understand him.
Of course it was the mass destruction scenes that everyone went to these movies for. The scale models destroyed by Yongary are impressive but we can see clearly that they are lacking interiors. Also, when Yongary uses his flame breath the nozzle inside his mouth is painfully obvious. He can also fire a laser beam from the horn on his snout but he only uses it once to cleave a military jeep in half. Thanks to some badly done matte work in one scene a group of panicked citzens running through the streets seem about 3 storeys tall themselves! While Yongary seems to shrink for one scene when a carload of soldiers drives right past him.
Notice how the Koreans have a sentimentality about their national landmarks. How many times have Japan's centuries old castles fallen to Godzilla and company? Yongary gets within striking distance of Seoul's 900 year old Pavillion of The Moon but suddenly changes his mind and goes in another direction!
Oh well, I like this movie. Any movie that offers an 8 year old boy doing the twist while a giant dinosaur dances in the background is just different enough to be fun, and that's okay with me!

It may not be as famous as Godzilla and Gamera, Yongary is pretty good. I enjoyed this movie, I am glad that this was released again on DVD, this movie is rare and hard to find. It was out of print for a long time. Good to see it brought back! Anyway, back to the movie, Yongary is the story of a monster being attacked for what it likes, oil. Yongary is eating up all of the oil, Korea has to find a way to stop it. The monster is pretty cool, it's main feature is the horn on it's face. Good movie that every kaiju fan should own.