EDITOR’S NOTE: Yongary was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, December 6, 1969 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, August 11, 1973 at 1:00 a.m.
Yongary is Godzilla’s South Korean cousin and was worked on by Masao Yagi, who built the Gamera suit. Beyond Masao Yagi, several other Japanese tokusatsu veterans were recruited to ensure the film matched the quality of Toho and Daiei releases. Special effects director Kenichi Takagi helped design the miniature sets of Seoul, which were built at a scale and budget rarely seen in Korean cinema at the time.
Unlike Godzilla, Yongary—his name combines two Korean words, “Yong” (dragon) and “gari” (Bulgasari)—was once a single-celled organism that grew large after a nuclear test in the Middle East. Now he eats oil and gasoline—well, he picked the right area to mutate—and is going full kaiju in Korea.
In the end, he dances despite humans trying to kill him. However, they use ammonia to kill him, and it’s a total Son of Kong moment. When this aired as part of the new Mystery Science Theater 3000, even the Deep 13 guys were upset by the finale. During the film’s climax, the suit actor (Cho Kyoung-min) was injured when the flame-thrower effect inside the suit ignited part of the interior fabric. Despite second-degree burns, Cho stayed in character to finish the scene, adding an unintended level of real physical agony to Yongary’s final moments.
Released in Germany as Godzilla’s Todespranke (Godzilla’s Hand of Death) and beamed directly into the brains of American monster kids by American International Television in 1969, this horned Godzilla Xerox does have some charms. Enough that Shim Hyung-rae, director of D-War (released in the U.S. as Dragon Wars: D-War), reimagined the film as Yonggary (titled Reptilian when it was released on VHS in America).
In fact, the original Korean-language version of the film was long considered almost completely lost. Poor archiving practices destroyed the original negative, and for decades only a heavily edited 48-minute cut survived in South Korea. The full-length version was preserved primarily through the English-dubbed 35mm prints.
You can watch this on Tubi.
