Yongary: Monster of the Deep (1967)

‘It’s the monster from the deep!’

The success of Japan’s Toho Studios and their Kaiju films inspired several imitators, mostly from their own shores but also from further afield. This film marks Korea’s entry into the genre as a space mission awakes prehistoric dinosaur Yongary from beneath the waves. Predictably enough, he’s not chuffed.

This is a movie almost totally devoid of its own identity, even the monster is almost a carbon copy of the Big G. He does have a rhino horn on his head but presumably that was there for the purpose of avoiding copyright infringement as much as anything else. He shoots fire from his mouth (through an easily visible pipe) and stomps some poorly constructed models into dust. The scientists and the military men get round the big table to sort it all out, only it’s actually a very small, red table – damn government cutbacks.

This is not a model. Honest.

The lead human protagonists are a bunch of scientists working on the space project, who all appear to be all related to one another in some way. One of them has an annoying 8 year old nephew who steals equipment and uses it to play puerile and dangerous pranks. But it’s o.k. ’cause he’s just so cute, right? Wrong.

The kid gets everyone into trouble by stalking the monster and still doesn’t get sent to bed early with a warm backside. In one scene he plays his radio and shines his torch at Yongary, which makes the poor creature dance. Talk about cruelty to animals.

The combination of ‘cute’ kid (really?!) and monster was obviously working for Toho at the time as they embarked on the more ‘family friendly’ phase of their monster cycle but to lift it, lock, stock and barrel and transport it to Seoul is desperately unoriginal. This is just a hopelessly waterlogged experience all round, damp, soggy and vaguely unpleasant. Inexplicably, there was a ‘re-make’/’reimagining’ in 1999.

Buy ‘Yongary Monster From the Deep; here. You do get ‘Konga’ as well, which is a much better movie!