http://youtu.be/ASxYJ0O2rGY

Things start off with a newly wedded couple being driven off from a rocket launching facility, it’s explained a little later. The respective family and friends wave goodbye. A couple of them try to insinuate that perhaps thew younger sister of the bride a scientist friend should get married. But he leaves saying he important work to get back too. Shy guy. Meanwhile the newlyweds are hit by a strange light and start itching uncontrollably. The scientist comes up and quickly figures the cause and calls out her younger brother who has a, I guess you would consider it an itching ray, that he “borrowed” from the scientist’s lab. Taking the boy with him to the lab he tells the young boy that he was wrong in playing that trick on his sister and brother-in-law since that beam could have potentially harmed them. He seems to understand as they return to the lab and replace the device then the scientist let’s him play with some toy robots. There’s a message for you steal a experimental device and get rewarded. Any on their wedding night the lovely bride finds that her new husband asleep in a chair looking at the night sky, telling him that he can sleep afterword. Somebody can’t wait apparently. While her husbands is about to show her how ready he is he get’s a call from launch control. He’s needed to do some orbital recon, he an astronaut apparently, over the middle east since they think a nuclear device just detonated. The Bride, who happens to be the daughter of the head of launch control, naturally protests but he placates her by promising to give him a two week vacation after this two day mission. Wait, wait, wait… he can spare him for two weeks but he’s the only person who can do a simple surveillance mission on his wedding night? That was a hall of fame level block there my friends.

He launches into space and gets into position. A sudden earthquake, surprising the young boy since he only thought earthquakes happened in Japan, causes some strong interference and they lose contact with the space pod or a bit. Once they regain communications they have them land. But the epicenter of the earthquake is moving toward the heart of Korea, making them change the landing area. After a perfect landing on ground, with a space pod with no landing gear what so ever, the father heads off to figure out what is going on with this moving earth movement. At a special meeting they try to decide what to do. One doesn’t really believe this is really moving. The military guy, there’s one in every movie folks, feels they need to do something to stop it. Which begs the question, how do you stop an earthquake much less a moving one? Meanwhile some of the press are nearby when the ground opens revealing a creature. One takes some pictures before jumping into a waiting jeep and they drive off. Somehow they get knocked off the road, I think by the soldier driving too fast. The film not really too clear on that point, it’s possible the monster could have knocked them off too. Either way the jeep basically a fireball as it tumbles down the hill. Back at the conference the head of the launch faculty and the general both talk about a tale from their youth about a mythical creature called Yongary that could make earthquakes. Right then the reporter, who miraculously survived, he’s battered and bloody but he survived, stumbles in with another soldier saying they need top see his film before passing out, or dying it’s never really made clear.

They look at slides of his photograph and see the creature, in the turns the general pretty much proclaims it Yongary on the spot. Now we have a reason why the earthquake is moving, and it still moving toward the center of South Korea. Ordering the citizens to stay in their homes the military is mobilized to stop the creature before it hits the city. On a mountain ridge starts shaking and the monster emerges. A Tank battalion confronts the monster and are quickly wiped out, taking one out with it’s ire breath.. A mass evacuation is put in place with everyone trying to get out of town. Everyone except the scientist who wants to see the creature up close in order to figure out how to defeat it, naturally the kids decides to to help him, with the scientist love interest giving chase to get her younger brother back. A couple of scenes I have to make mention of: A christian priest is trying to get the fleeing crowd to repent and be save, a bunch of business guys won’t leave the restaurant just because a monster’s coming and the young adults decide to get drunk and part in a club. Yongary hits the main part of the city and the destructive fun begins. The trio make their way through the crowd and get into position and witness the monster. Then they regain their smarts and runs like everybody else. The scientist get’s hurt helping his not girlfriend, but they realize they lost track of the kid.

The general wants to send missile into the city to try and destroy the monster, but the others are afraid of the damaged it might caused to their historic landmarks. the general argues that this is not the time to thjink about the past but of the future. God help you when the guy who wants to blow things up is the one in the room making sense. The kid somehow made his way to the sewers, popping up just as Yongary destroys another building. Lowering the manhole cover he runs through the sewers trying to find away out. The general finally gets the rest of them to agree to fire on the creature while it was in the city. A helicopter flies over head getting his attention, nearly getting fried by it’s fire breath. The kid somehow makes his way to an oil refinery and the creature is there too drinking up the oil. Realizing what is happening he turns off the main pipeline, hey the annoying kid in these movies did something useful for a change. Well he did until the Yongary knocks the tank over causing the other to explode. But one building blows up as he walks by and the cloud he walks through starts to affect him by causing him to scratch his skin.

The kid makes it back to the scientist lab and tell the scientist what he saw. He and his not girlfriend head to the conference and tries to get them not to fire the missiles seeing how flame like materials makes him stronger. Then general thinks this is just a child’s fantasy and wants him to leave. But he does convince them to draw him away from the plant, but to another refinery that’s farther away. Back at the lab the scientist uses what the kid has told to figure out that building contained ammonia and a certain perticapate from it will finish it off. The astronaut and his wife from earlier come into the labs wanting to help and the scientist asks for a helicopter. The military tries to draw it near by opening(as in catching it on fire) then a helicopter, finally it takes the kid (who is keeping an eye on this punk exactly?) stealing the itching ray again and that draws him toward the other refinery and it starts eating the flames (much like a particular flying turtle). The missiles hit but they seem to do nothing, then the astronaut and the scientist, with their respective love interests for some reason, fly over head and drop the ammonia participate on top of the creature. Apparently making it rain in the process, but it works. The general naturally thinks the missiles did the trick but the scientist thinks he needs to refine the particpate a little more since he doesn’t think Yongary is actually dead yet

While the scientist thinks he’s close, the boy sneaks out of his sleeping sisters arms and takes the ray…again. He makes his way to the creature and hits it with the ray. Disappointed it not immediately working Yongary’s horn starts to glow and pulsate as it wakes up. Then it’s stars doing to Watusi… or the batusi… something. Some guards gets the kid and gets him away from there. The military launches more misses and they have no effect, outside of making him mad. Never interrupt a monster while he’s dancing. Although he shoots a laser out of his horn… wait what? The monster attacks near a bridge and the military has no effects, taking out jets this time. The scientist, astronaut, their respective love interests and the kid fly over again and drop the new formula on top of the creature. It writhes and thrashes around before falling into the river. There’s a close up on it’s tail and legs were the water starts turning brown. Yes folks, the movie just showed the monster crapping the river to indicate that yes it’s dead. The kid stops the ammonia feed asking if they really have to kill Yongary, since he saw him dancing and didn’t really consider him a bad monster. Kinda late there junior. Later there’s a officail function and a bunch to reporters want to ask the head of the launch center about his victory, he gives credit to the scientist who gives credit to the kids. They ask him want he really wants out of lie.And he wants to be a scientist but he also has two wishes. One that Yongary was still alive and two that his other sister and that the scientist finally get married. Well they decide to make his second wish come true and we end the movie on a happy note.

Alright a South Korean monster movie. Let’s get started with our title creature Yongary. It’s an bipedal lizard creature with rows fins going down it’s back. And he breaths fire, actual fire, in fact I’m positive there’s a head puppet because you can see the nozzle the flame is coming out of.  But to keep it out of total law suit territory it’s tail has some spikes and it has a horn on it’s nose that emits a laser like beam. The creature is, just a guesstimate based on the models of the city, is roughly over eight stories tall. Like most other giant monster Yongary is pretty much impervious to standard military weapons. Although it does seem to have a deathly allergic reaction ammonia. Death by scratching, nasty way to go. And I have to point out again that he apparently likes to get down and boogie on occasion.

The model work is alright, looks believable enough for for what it is. The model ground breaks away nicely when Yongary is coming out of the ground so it’s good that work like it was supposed to. I already mentioned the fire effect so I’ll go with the other effects. There was a few of composite shots to give a sense of scale with the model shots and the live action. Some worked fairly well, some were rather obvious. Like this scene with a jeep and Yongary’s legs are a whole lot greener then they are in the rest of the film, and the jeep that goes by looks like it almost goes up to his knees. Which wouldn’t be too bad but they showed him stepping on a tank earlier in the film and the foot and tank are roughly the same size.

The human character are there. It looks like the astronaut guy might be the main focus but it switches over to the scientist and his girlfriend and you don’t see the astronaut and his wife again until the third act. Some of the character spots were a little strange. like the tank commander who orders a retreat after only a couple of shot. I’m mean it’s great somebody figured out the weapons would be useless after only a couple of shots but a tank hadn’t even been destroyed yet. And this scene were a police officer is reporting that a mountain is shaking and is about to erupt then seemed shock Yongary popped out, when they just announced he was traveling underground not that long ago. And the scenes were the poeple were not caring, particularly the priest was a little starngheAnd I wasn’t sure why the head of the rocket center would be the one on charge of the monster conference, but hey what can you do. Then there’s the monster dancing and the… releasing of the bowels. Which I will admit was a first in my monster movie watching experience.

Now this film was the only one made at the time. Granted Yongary died at the end, so did Godzilla in first feature and they found a way around that. But the film was remade/re-imagined in 1999, I’m sure to capitalize on the press the American Godzilla movie that was made the year beore. In South Korea it was called Yongary once again, but over here it was released under the title Reptillian. I’m sure I’ll get to that one eventually. But or this one I’ll give it 3 bout of 5 stars.