In the realm of Godzilla rip-offs, South Korea's Yongary, Monster From the Deep(not to be confused with their Northern neighbours' Pulgasari) falls somewhere inbetween Daei studio's Gamera movies and Denmark's legendary attempt to get in on the giant monster fad, Reptilicus. In other words, while it was worse than the majority of Daei's flying turtle pictures, it certainly wasn't the out-and-out worst movie to appear in the wake of the King of the Monsters popularity with audiences worldwide.

The movie introduces us to a cast of characters taken right from the 60s and 70s Godzilla and Gamera movies, and actually finding out who the actors who played them were seems to border on impossible, maybe someone fluent in Korean needs to watch the original version which maybe has proper credits(and character names) and submit the info to the Internet Movie Database, because trying to decipher who plays who is sheer guesswork, so I'm not going to bother.

Anyway, we have the Astronaut, who never actually gets named in the US version of the film, his new wife Oh-Na, her sister Su-Na, her would be boyfriend and brilliant scientist Ilo and Su-Na's little brother Icho, who wears very small shorts for the entirity of the picture. This trio's father is also a key figure in the Korean government(or some important Korean power anyway), and he would love Su-Na to marry Ilo, although she seems less sold on the idea, due to his dedication to his work.

Anyway, on their wedding night, in a scene where the make-up crew ran riot and gave the actors pure white faces, Oh-Na and her husband's night of 'love' is interrupted when her father calls him and orders him to get to base to go on some form of recon mission. What a Wedding Present! anyway, on this recon mission, hubby spots something mysterious going down in the Middle East(which, upon reading up on the movie is meant to be Chinese Nuclear testing, but I never got that from the film alone), and an Earthquake rocks Korea shortly afterwards, knocking out the radio on the spaceship(!?). It isn't long before it's back on and hubby has landed safely, but it appears that the epicenter of the quake is moving, and moving towards Seoul. After much deliberation and bad dubbing, a giant reptile emerges from what would be the epicenter of the quake, and is dubbed Yongary by the mysterious Korean power Oh-Na's Father works for, based on an old Korean legend he was told as a boy. Yongary makes his intentions clear from the get-go and carries on towards Seoul, smashing everything in his path and displaying a powerful fire-breathing ability.

After the army are notified of this, a hilarious interchange of dialog takes place where Su-Na's father orders the Army General to "send a few tanks" in a really nonchalant fashion, and naturally nothing the army has can affect Yongary.
Anyway, Ilo declares that he wants to help, but first needs to see the monster, and he is followed by Icho and he in turn by Su-Na into the heart of the city where Yongary is smashing it up. Su-Na falls, and in helping her up Ilo is injured, but the pair cannot find Icho, who it turns out gets a good look at Yongary as he eats oil and fire from a refinery, before being hurt by one of the chemicals held nearby. After telling Ilo this, he develops some form of amonia based chemical which he drops on the monster from a helicopter, putting him in a coma of sorts.

For some completely unexplained reason, Ilo's lab have developed an 'Itching ray gun', which we are introduced to early on as Icho uses it on his sister. For reasons unknown to man or God, Icho steals it and fire it at the comatose monster, whom it not only awakens, but grants a new ability, the power to shoot lasers from it's horn. As well as this, it prompts the monster to start performing a really quite worrying dance to a bad 60s Korean rock tune (this actually has to be seen to be believed)

Anyway, it isn't long before he is back smashing cities and all the army's efforts are useless, so Ilo develops a super-strong version of his chemical, which they drop over Yongary, killing him in the local river. Everyone is happy apart from Icho, who feels sorry for the monster, but tells everyone that he wants Ilo and Su-Na to get married, which they seem to agree on basically on the grounds that Icho asked them.

Yes, Yongary, Monster from the Deep actually manages to take the Giant Monster, or Kaiju, genre, and actually take it to a whole new level of sillieness and absurdity that makes your average original series Gamera movie look on par with the original Godzilla. Nobody ever theorises the origin of the monster, and come to think of it, they don't even seem at all bothered by the fact one has appeared. I mean yeah, they are bothered there is one smashing up their country, but they seem to take to it the same attitude as you would expect to be afforded to a Tornado tearing up a country, they aren't happy about it, but there certainly doesn't seem to be any sense of "what the hell? a hundred foot tall fire-breathing, new species of dinosaur has emerged and is tearing up our country!" going on. Maybe this happens in Korea all the time.

The film is filled with hilarious, in an unintentional manner, chunks, like exactly what the hell Icho was thinking with the itching gun, how the hell an itching gun gave the monster a laser-horn and the aforementioned dance sequence. It should probably be mentioned that Icho isn't actually all that annoying for a kid in one of these movies, he is a God send compared to some of the brats from the Gamera films.
Other non-Icho related comedy comes from a sequence shortly after Yongary hits the city. While this brings up an actually quite good scene where a group of men gorge themselves in a bar, on the grounds that there is no point in running because the monster will just follow, a theme that Toho themselves used in Godzilla 1985, but any good this is done for this film gets blown out of the water by a sequence in a Korean disco that actually almost killed me. What these people are doing as a form of dancing, I originally misread as them taking some sort of epilectic fit caused by the really primitive strobe lights in the venue. Special note also has to go to the guy who pours a drink over his, completely nonplussed, friend's head. We shant even talk about the fact they drop a chemical never tested for human reaction, yet strong enough to kill a giant monster, into the local river. I bet their water was real healthy.

One thing that does cause me some confusion, is to where the Western title comes from. Monster from the Deep makes me think of the Sea, as in the movie called The Deep, or Deep Blue Sea, yet Yongary never even ventures close to the Sea, is he meant to be Monster from the Deep Depths of the Earth or something. Come to think of it, what the hell was he doing underground anyway?

Come to think of it, the full-length Korean version of the movie, titled Taekoesu Yonggary(which translates to Great Monster Yongary), runs 20 minutes longer than it's US counterpart, could this be a similar case to what happened with the original Godzilla picture? is Yongary, Monster from the Deep really a somber and moody, almost film-noir-esque entry into the genre? a serious picture that should be lauded instead of mocked? to be honest, I greatly doubt it. I'm sure the original Korean version is probably better than the US print in some ways(ie maybe it names it's characters and actually makes clear the monster's origin), but the fact is that the movie drags on for what feels like far too long as it is really makes me wonder what the hell they managed to find worthy of cutting out.

The sheer horror that is the dubbing really renders any attempt at criticising the acting void, as any even remote attempts at emotion from the actors are lost due to the completely not-bothered dubbing crew, who react to the monster as if its an everyday occurence, like it raining or something. The voices aren't that bad or ill-fitting(they even manage to find a decent child's voice), but the job done in reading the lines is pretty terrible.

Speaking of pretty terrible, we'll get to the special effects. Yongary himself looks better than most Gamera monsters, but to be honest that doesn't say much, and he looks more like a lame villain from an Ultraman rip-off rather than a genuine contender for the King of the Monsters. He is a bipedal dinosaur with spikes in his tail and a horn on his nose, as well as tusks(almost like the love-child of Gamera,Anguirus and Gorosaurus). At times the suit looks pretty decent, and at other absolutely shoddy and the stereotype bad rubber monster. The fact that in every scene involving the monster breathing fire the hose that shoots the fire is visible in his mouth doesn't do him any favours either.
Other special effects aren't exactly brilliant either. While the miniature planes and tanks all look good, and some of the buildings are well made, others look like they couldn't afford proper materials and used cardboard, and the less said about the suspiciously floaty bricks that come off of them the better.
Arguably the movie's classic moment however, has to be the scene where a jeep drives past Yongary's foot and he cuts it in half with his nose laser. Not only is the scene where the jeep drives past easily the worst matte shot in cinema history, and when the vehicle is halved, another wheel, allowing the front half of it to keep rolling is clearly visible. Eiji Tsuburaya it isn't.

Music isn't exactly up there with comparison with Godzilla's classic composer Akira Ifukube either. The music is comprised of the aforementioned odd rock-song, along with some generic music. Note I don't even say generic monster movie music, because most of this stuff could easily fit into a bad soundtrack for a movie of any genre. It's like they couldn't be bothered coming up with a good theme for the monster, so just threw in some random music they found recorded somewhere with no copyright.

At the end of the day, Yongary, Monster from the Deep is a pretty amusing, and also pretty bad movie, that only really fans of the genre will take any interest in. I will recommend it, mainly because it is rather entertaining in a cheesy way, but it's pretty lucky to find itself with 2-Stars, the score I'm bestowing upon it. It's a bad/good movie, but yet still only one that's qualities will find any resonance with those who love Godzilla and Gamera movies, anyone else can easily give this a skip.

Year: 1967
Titles:Yongary, Monster from the Deep
Taekoesu Yonggary

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children up Ages 8