ebiros2 No offense to the South Koreans, but I'm surprised to see how similar the town and people looks compared to the kaijyu moves from the similar era Japan. I've heard that this move is not well known in its home country, and the version I saw was an English dubbed version made by MGM.An astronaut is asked to investigate a bomb experiment. When the bomb goes off, it starts a chain of earthquakes. The earth quake strangely is heading towards middle of Korea. A martial law s declared, and soon after the monster Yonggari appears from the ground.The look and feel of this movie is very similar to the Gamera series movies from the mid '60s. The man protagonist's driving a Chevy Corvair just like the original Ultraman series defense force guys were driving. Then comes the obligatory scientist's lab scene, and another obligatory meeting of the minds of the government officials. The Yonggari's special effects scenes were shot by Daiei's crew that were flown over from Japan, so I can understand the similarities, but even the scenes involving humans were very much like (almost identical) it's Japanese cousins. I'd like to compare this movies to other Korean movies from the same era to see if the similarities, were a coincidence.The movie is on par with the likes of Gamera vs. Barugon. Even the roar of Yonggari is borrowed from Barugon, but suitmation part isn't as good as the Japanese counterpart.There might be no market for this type of movie in Korea, but it would have been interesting if they developed this idea further as it was done n Japan. An okay film that's as entertaining as the kaijyu movies made by Daiei of '60s Japan.

FilmExpertWannabe After The Best From 20,000 Fathoms, Toho was inspired to create a movie and monster that would become far more famous globally, 1954's Godzilla. After Godzilla's success at both the box office and in popularity, other companies the world over scrambled to create their own monster films to attract similar success. America launched countless efforts, from The Giant Mantis to It Came From Beneath the Sea (and many more). Britain had Gorgo in 1961. Within Japan there will films like Gamera. But Korea launched its own low budget attempt at Godzilla and the new-at-the-time Gamera series. Yongary (1967) was this movie.Yongary is proportionally based on Godzilla with a head that apes Baragon and Gamera to an extent. So the monster itself is nothing compelling, and the quality of the suit is poor, as you've probably well gathered by now. Giving him more convincing eyes would've gone a long way, because they don't move and they glow unrealistically. The pump shooting fire in his mouth was another goof. And with trying to appeal to children at the time -much as how Godzilla and Gamera were- we received a child for a lead. The plot is nothing fresh either, with a giant bipedal fire breathing monster rising from the Earth.The one surprising scene in the movie is at the end when the monster is dying a slow, painful death while jerking from pain and bleeding. It's the first time the film begins to draw in something from the audience. Unfortunately, it's FAR too little FAR too late. You can watch the entire movie for free on Google, which is probably the only way I'd watch it. Even though you can purchase it cheaply for $5-6, I'd pass. Even then it's too much for a movie you'll surely watch just once. It has nothing on even Toho's movies of the late 1960s, such as War of the Gargantuas or Destroy All Monsters. Buy one of these or something from Gamera's series if you want an Asian giant monster flick from this era.As a final word, a Korean company tried to resurrect the Yongary monster in a new film from 1999, titled Reptilian in the US. It's probably even worse for its time than the 1967 original. It makes the 1998 American Godzilla and 1999 Japanese Godzilla 2000 look like the best thing since sliced bread.

Emideon Yonggary (1967) is much like Gamera, a cash crop film, aping off the success of other pilfered monsters, better ones. The film opens with what I thought was a rather nice shot of space with rolling credits, followed by a fine cast of mediocre actors and a young boy in shorts, the evil omen for any giant monster movie fan of terrible things to come. The story and plot run through very worn out terrain, mysterious happenings somewhere, a loving couple, monster attack, and discovery of weapon to kill the monster. The film was geared to children, as most kaiju films of this time (late 60s), one would expect this in itself would diagnose Yonggary as terminally unwatchable, but the kid aspect is what to me kept it entertaining, Yonggary dancing, drinking, etc. were all bizarre enouph to keep a smile, bad editing also played it part. As for the action sequences, Yonggary's arrival and first rampage was well done, not very convincing mind you, but thats never really the point in these films, to look interesting and incite nostalgic inner child hollaring.Yonggary is by far one of the most forgettable Kaiju monsters to grace East Asian screens, his physical appearance is right down the middle neutral to anything that may catch attention; his skin color bland, his design simple and uninspired and his range of emotion nonexistent. However , despite all of this, I had fun watching it, unlike Gappa, pretension toward seriousness is out the window, thus making the inevitable moral lesson and speech at the end all the more bearable.One of the better, lesser kaiju films. 6/10

TheUnknown837-1 "Yongary: Monster from the Deep" is another entry on a nearly endless list of low-budget giant monster films that owe their inspiration and creation to the two most popular movie monsters of Asia: Godzilla and Gamera. The monster, Yongary, has characteristics similar to both of these monster icons. The thing is that Yongary makes his film debut in a film that is very cheap, dull, and oftentimes unintentionally funny. And the moments that were intentionally funny, are mostly just painful to look at.Yongary, as you can imagine, was represented by a man in a rubber suit. The suit, I'm afraid to say, is a very poor effort. It isn't bulky like Godzilla, but in fact very slender, like the T-rex costumes of some particular low-budget American dinosaurs movies. When viewed from the side, Yongary doesn't look half-bad. But since we most commonly see him from the front, he mostly looks pretty bad. Too skinny, too humanlike, too unrealistic. There are many other revealing aspects to the poor special effects. Yongary, like Gamera, can breathe and literally inhale fire. Whenever he does either one of these, you can see the nozzle in the back of his mouth and his tongue just seems to disappear. And what's also funny? Yongary is prone to feeling itchy, and also likes to dance. Yes, dance.The human characters are dull and uninteresting, mostly annoying, as you would expect. Dubbing, for once, wasn't half-bad. Like Gamera, Yongary has a child character who idolizes him. But I think this character just smiled too much. Even when he talks about how Yongary wasn't a bad monster, he just smiles. If Yongary is facing danger, instead of being angry, the kid still smiles. There is also a sense of stupidity with these characters. Such as, what's the point to sending a man in a rocket into space to observe a nuclear explosion? One can easily see and observe from a safe distance on Earth. And also, there's a moment where the characters argue about missiles to attack Yongary with, and say the missiles could be too dangerous to the city to use. But, when they are used, the missiles don't seem to cause much for an explosion. Missiles fired by jets later on, which are much smaller and less destructive, seem to cause greater damage.Bottom line, "Yongary: Monster of the Deep" is a movie that is worth looking at. But do not expect much from it. It is better than other low-budget Godzilla-rip offs such as "The X from Outer Space", but is still not all that impressive of a film.