beetle-259-554148 I first heard about Pulgasari when the late Emer Prevost covered it on Reaction & Review. He absolutely HATED the film and just tore it to shreds, saying that the miniatures would've looked like garbage by 1965 standards, the acting was nowhere to be found, among other things.When I watched Pulgasari, I was expecting the worst film ever, something that barely qualifies as a kaiju film. Emer's opinion made me think that the production value was going to be akin to a school play; obvious cardboard furniture, obvious cardboard miniatures, I was basically expecting a kaiju equivalent to Manos: The Hands of Fate. Thankfully, Pulgasari was not THAT bad. The acting is very poor but there are a handful of actors who are trying. The monster costume looks amazing, it's on par with the Heisei Godzilla suits! The animatronics are good, Pulgasari is actually able to show emotion!The miniatures are good, on par with the miniature effects of the '70s.Still I can only recommend this movie for die-hard kaiju fans, those who want to watch every kaiju film ever. Me personally, the chances of giving this movie a second watch is very unlikely.I had made a top 10 list of worst giant monster movies. Pulgasari was number 3, with Godzilla's Revenge at number 2 and finally Gamera: Super Monster at number 1. Having now seen Pulgasari, it's position on the list is still number 3.The fact that Gamera vs Barugon, at the time of me writing the review, has a lower rating than this when it's a far better movie, makes me trust IMDb a little bit less.

markrschulz Seldom have I watched a movie that fails so completely in all that it attempts to do. There could be a good reason for this, however; the director and two leads were abducted from South Korea by Kim and then forced to partake in this schlock whilst the Dear Executive Producer Kim Jong Il ran the show. This was ten years before he became the ruler of North Korea. I guess he runs his country on the same principles as he ran the production of this movie. (Un)fortunately the kidnapping victims escaped before the movie could be completed, which could explain much of the disjointed nature in the latter part of the film. Quite bizarrely, the director's 'punishment' was to have his name removed from the credits, until he SUED the film company to have it re-instated, although heaven only knows why.The movie opens in a nameless village somewhere in Chosun Dynasty era Korea. A peasant girl is fetching water from a well. She is a kind and selfless young woman, as indicated by her desire to see the old people fed first at dinner time. Her father is the town blacksmith and makes many tools for the farmers. All is not well in the idyllic village, however. An evil king sits on the throne and a great rebellion/war is brewing. He has his army appropriate all the metal in the kingdom in order to forge weapons. It emerges that the leader of the bandits/rebels lives in this particular village and has hidden a weapons cache near the blacksmith's forge. The first of many 'epic' battle scenes unfurls as Korean People's Army soldiers forced to act as extras fight it out dressed as wicked royal guards slavishly obeying the king and virtuous peasants defending their right to bear pots and pans. Yawn.The rebels are routed and arrested, and the blacksmith is then drafted to make weapons out of the confiscated metal, but allows the village people to take back their items when the army leaves. The army comes back and discovers the iron gone and this leads to his imprisonment and torture. As a form of protest, he decides not to eat and begins to starve. His daughter, Ami, tries to get him to eat rice balls by throwing them to him through the bars of the jail. He is a man of principle, however, and refuses to eat even this food prepared by his loving daughter. Instead, he makes a little figurine of the rice balls and clay and makes a dying wish to some unseen force to give it life and help the peasants. He then dies and the obligatory wailing so prolific in North Korean films starts. Once Ami, her brother, her mother, the village, the bandits, and their dogs have recovered from the loss, wiped their tears away and shouted 'aigoo' for the last time, the little sculpture finds its way to Ami. She pricks herself whilst sewing and some blood splashes onto it, bringing it to life. Pulgasari is born, and from this point on the movie never lets you forget that his name is PULGASARI! Every time PULGASARI gets screen time there is an annoying peasant/bandit/king/vizier/random extra shouting 'It's PULGASARI!', 'Hey, PULGASARI!', 'LOOK OUT IT'S…' or 'HERE COMES …' Only the heinous abomination that is 'The Outlaw of Gor' can rival the number of times the lead character's name is repeated as part of the movie dialog.So moving on, Pulgasari starts out small, he eats the needle Ami was using, then he eats the door hinges, then he eats the scrap metal in the forge. He grows bigger and bigger under Ami's control, since it's her blood that infused him with life. I immediately saw a problem with this monster; the peasants' woe is due mainly to the fact that the king wants all their metal for weapons, but their newfound hero eats the same metal. The rest of the film uses made for TV effects reminiscent of 'Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers' as Pulgasari stomps his way through Feudal Korea MiniTown, killing the king and liberating the peasants. Stuff happens along the way but the rubber suit is more convincing than the plot and character development. Predictably, the monster continues to eat metal, and becomes a burden to the peasants. Ami sacrifices herself by hiding in the village's bell before Pulgasari eats it. Pulgasari and Ami die. Roll credits on the ninety minutes of my life that cannot be taken back; a horrid mess of a movie that cannot be unseen.Reflecting on the didactic nature of the several North Korean films I have watched IE: Peasants Good/Powers that be Bad, I'd have to say that there you could interpret this as a young Kim Jong Il giving the middle finger to an establishment that had molded him from a young age to take over from his father, despite his wishes of film making glory. In 'The Flower Girl' we see how the peasants are oppressed and need the Korean Liberation Army to free them, it takes food, lives and money (metal) to support in order to drive out the Japanese Imperialists (the evil king taking the peasant's resources) but once in power, the KLA and the Communist Party continue to take all of these things from the peasants, eventually requiring the peasants to die in order to rid themselves of the scourge that they themselves have helped feed. The irony would be delicious, but I think that it's actually just a ham fisted attempt to knock capitalism; yet another aspect of this movie that fails with unintentional, yet hilarious results.

dbborroughs My MIND! MY MIND!!!!!! I CAN'T STAND IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I'm sure years of therapy will erase the scars left by this movie, but I don't have that much time.Okay lets start with a plot run down and I'll bleed from there...I'll be brief-A blacksmith who won't make weapons to stop a rebellion is pitched into jail and starved to death. As a legacy to his children he leaves a small metal doll which comes alive when one of the blacksmith's daughters gets a drop of blood on it. The monster eats metal and begins to grow.The rebels battle the government with the monster. The monster grows bigger and bigger and even after the rebels win the monster still goes on eating and growing until some way has to be found to destroy the beast....Its a weird twist on the Daimajin films from Japan.The monster is one of the stiffest rubber suits I've ever seen outside of a bondage film and is screamingly funny to look at.You can see how the head piece sits on the body. The actor playing the monster at times looks like a boxer warming up for a fight weaving and rocking in a jerky style that brought giggles to this viewer.(Those of you into bondage may want to see about getting one for yourself since it severely limits movement and is probably torturous to wear) The "blue screen" work is laughable, simply because the film stocks don't match.The destruction scenes are surprisingly good and well done, in many ways better than most Godzilla films. The collapse of the buildings seems to be very realistic.The battle scenes while epic in scale are laughable simply because many of the weapons,say the boulders are, obviously cardboard or plaster. There are thousands of people on screen for some scenes and it looks good but they are often simply running to and fro.The film is supposedly a North Korean fable about the evils of capitalism and what ever else Kim Jong-il deemed it to be about.My question is who did they think this film is for? It looks like a TV series blown up to feature size. The level of the story seems to be that of a second or third grade mentality, especially in its humor but it has real animals being carved up, torture, nasty battlefield death and ideas that no child would grasp or care about. Its a childrens film made for adults.This is one of those its so bad its...something movies. Its a mind warp and complete mess. I like bits of it and other bits leave me with slack jawed disbelief. Frankly I was thinking that if it was suppose to be a tongue in cheek sort of thing then I could consider it a good joke film, but since the film is serious and meant to "mean" something then its a disaster.AND LEST YOU ASK IF I'M CERTAIN ITS SERIOUS---- The South Korean director was kidnapped by the North Koreans to make movies like this for them. Luckily he eventually escaped.Do I think you should see this movie?First how much do you love giant monsters?Second how drunk can you get and still see the screen clearly?I don't think you really need to see this unless you want to laugh your ass off with drunken buddies or if you really need to see every rubber suited giant monster movie ever made.Either way DO NOT WATCH THIS ALONE, you'll need someone to help you pick up your jaw off the floor.(And no its not one of the worst films I've ever seen, just one of the most inept)

giammarcoken Since I began living in South Korea several years ago, I have always been curious about what life and art would be like in the isolated North. The educational channel in South Korea (EBS) has a weekly show that gives us clips of North Korean newscasts, movies, music, dramas and animation.When South Korean president, Kim Dae-jung visited North Korea last year in the first step toward normalizing relations and possible (albeit future) unification, we learned that the North Korean supreme leader is something of a movie fanatic. He has been secretly receiving western movies and monitoring South Korean tv dramas. It is not surprising to learn that he apparently ordered Pulgasari be made. Like every other artform from the North it can only be broadcast or shown if it matches the philosophy of the state. Pulgasari is a metaphor. The evil king represents the feudal government of the Chosun Dynasty which ended at the beginning of the 1900's. The monster, Pulgasari represents capitalism. It arrives apparently to help the people, but soon grows out of control. The heroes in the movie are the peasantry, the common people who must fix everything that people with power have wrought.Nobody can claim that Pulgasari is state-of-the-art. Even by rubber monster standards, this movies special effects are poor. It does help to consider that the budget for this movie was probably around what we spend on lunch in a year. But for me, the true fascination of a movie like this is the chance to see how another culture, living under a completely different philosophy, sees the world.