Yongary, Monster from the Deep

Yongary, Monster from the Deep (1967)

대괴수 용가리

A Monster from another age ... with terrifying destructive powers ...

Earthquakes in central Korea turn out to be the work of Yongary, a prehistoric gasoline-eating reptile that soon goes on a rampage through Seoul.

Date of release
1967-08-13
TMDB
4.8 / 10 (92)
Runtime
1h 19m
Genres
Horror, Science Fiction
Director
Kim Kee-duk

Casting

Interesting facts

Yongary, Monster from the Deep is a 1967 kaiju film directed by Kim Ki-duk, with special effects by Kenichi Nakagawa. The film was a joint production between South Korean studio Keukdong Entertainment Company and Japanese studio Toei Company. The film stars Oh Yeong-il, Kwang Ho Lee, Nam Jeong-im, with Cho Kyoung-min as Yongary. In the film, a giant reptilian monster lays waste to Seoul after being awakened by an earthquake triggered by a nuclear bomb test.

Production

The screenwriter originally intended for Yongary to be a single-celled organism from space that mutated into a giant monster after exposure from radiation. Film critic and scholar Kim Song-ho revealed that in the original Korean script the name of the country conducting nuclear tests (the Middle East in the English version) was originally called "Orebia", with the location of the test being the "Goma Desert".

Principal photography began on April 3, 1967, while the special effects photography commenced on April 6 with Cho Kyoung-min performing in the Yongary suit, who was paid ₩100,000 ($400 in USD). The special effects took three months to shoot and were filmed in two studios in Seoul.

Keukdong (Far East) Entertainment Company employed staff from Equis Productions and Toei's special effects staff to helm the film's effects. Masao Yagi, who built the Gamera suit for Daiei, supervised the construction of the Yongary suit. The character was designed in Korea, while the suit was built in Japan based on the Korean team's design.

Lee Byoung-woo, the film's associate producer, acted as an intermediate between the South Korean filmmakers and the Japanese staff and helped train the South Korean staff in the special effects techniques used by the Japanese crew. Byoung-woo arranged for the Japanese crew to come work on the effects and is credited as the film's special effects cinematographer in the film's original Korean credits.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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