Yongary, Monster from the Deep (1967) Review

CLAYTON'S CREEPY CINEMA!

WEEK 2: MUTANT MAYHEM

Yongary, Monster from the Deep (1967)

In the late sixties, giant monsters were all over the landscape of cinema. Godzilla was a raging success in Japan, Hollywood was including kaiju in films like The Lost World and Jason and the Argonauts, and so it’s not too much of a surprise that Korea tried their hand at producing a king-sized creature to terrorize their own country. I only know of three Korean giant monster movies, The Host, which I was not a big fan of, Reptilian, which I have not seen, and Yongary, Monster from the Deep. As it turns out, Yongary is a campy Korean classic and a fun but bizarre giant monster movie.

The film is slow to start, introducing human characters such as two newlyweds and a troublesome kid. A major earthquake happens just as the new husband goes up in a space craft, and the control tower loses contact with him. He is able to land the ship safely, but the joy is short lived. It turns out the abnormal earthquake is actually the monster of legend, Yongary! He isn’t a mutant per say, so you may be wondering why this movie is included in this week of Creepy Cinema. Well, he’s a giant monster like Gamera, so I wanted to follow my Gamera review up with a second giant monster movie, and though Yongary isn’t a mutant, he does cause mayhem. It is discovered Yongary consumes petroleum products when he raids an oil refinery. He freaks out due to a negative reaction to a chemical compound of ammonia. The humans lure him with oil and use ineffective missiles (I guess they hadn’t seen Godzilla before). In the end, a refined ammonia compound is dropped on him while he destroys a bridge and it effectively ends his reign of terror.

Yongary is easily comparable to other giant monster movies of the decade, including Godzilla and Gamera. Yongary himself is depicted just like those monsters were: by a man in a rubber suit stomping miniature structures and attacking toy air planes. The special effects are cheesy and outdated, but decent for their time. Yongary himself is a mixed bag. He’s not the worst looking 1960’s kaiju I’ve ever seen, but far from the best. He has fire breath (accomplished by a flame thrower placed inside his mouth) and a laser nose horn. It’s hilarious to see Yongary torching toy tanks with his flame thrower breath. They did a good enough job with Yongary that he doesn’t feel like a discount Godzilla, though he does sport similarities to other monsters of the time, and even has miniature Gamera tusks. The film has more than a few detractions. There’s a bizarre scene where Yongary dances for some reason—I guess they were trying to appeal to kids—but even weirder yet is when Yongary dies in the river and he bleeds from his rectum! The sound effects for the city destruction are underwhelming, and Yongary’s roar is recycled endlessly.

 

Yongary, Monster from the Deep is marginally better than The Host as far as I’m concerned. Both films were bizarre in their own ways, but Yongary offers more satisfying monster action. If you are a fan of early Godzilla films, you’ll probably find Yongary is decent, and should give it a try.