While not the most well made monster movie, Yongary delivers good story, somewhat relatable characters and some amusing jokes and one-liners. I was actually really surprised at how much I liked it, going into it thinking it was going to be another terribly cheesy movie, and I would recommend at least trying this movie once.

While this is by far the most blatant Godzilla rip-off I have seen, it's far better than Godzilla could ever hope to be. The English dub is ridiculous. At one point a soldier actually repeats two lines. The green screen work is hit and miss, sometimes it seems like they might be trying to be bad for the comedic effect. There were a couple times I actually laughed out loud. As bad as this movie may be, I still liked it.

After The Best From 20,000 Fathoms, Toho was inspired to create a movie and monster that would become far more famous globally, 1954's Godzilla. After Godzilla's success at both the box office and in popularity, other companies the world over scrambled to create their own monster films to attract similar success. America launched countless efforts, from The Giant Mantis to It Came From Beneath the Sea (and many more). Britain had Gorgo in 1961. Within Japan there will films like Gamera. But Korea launched its own low budget attempt at Godzilla and the new-at-the-time Gamera series. Yongary (1967) was this movie.Yongary is proportionally based on Godzilla with a head that apes Baragon and Gamera to an extent. So the monster itself is nothing compelling, and the quality of the suit is poor, as you've probably well gathered by now. Giving him more convincing eyes would've gone a long way, because they don't move and they glow unrealistically. The pump shooting fire in his mouth was another goof. And with trying to appeal to children at the time -much as how Godzilla and Gamera were- we received a child for a lead. The plot is nothing fresh either, with a giant bipedal fire breathing monster rising from the Earth.The one surprising scene in the movie is at the end when the monster is dying a slow, painful death while jerking from pain and bleeding. It's the first time the film begins to draw in something from the audience. Unfortunately, it's FAR too little FAR too late. You can watch the entire movie for free on Google, which is probably the only way I'd watch it. Even though you can purchase it cheaply for $5-6, I'd pass. Even then it's too much for a movie you'll surely watch just once. It has nothing on even Toho's movies of the late 1960s, such as War of the Gargantuas or Destroy All Monsters. Buy one of these or something from Gamera's series if you want an Asian giant monster flick from this era.As a final word, a Korean company tried to resurrect the Yongary monster in a new film from 1999, titled Reptilian in the US. It's probably even worse for its time than the 1967 original. It makes the 1998 American Godzilla and 1999 Japanese Godzilla 2000 look like the best thing since sliced bread.

To understand this movie, you have to know something about Korean history. The Koreans are still smarting after thirty-five years of Japanese occupation (1910-1945), which ended with Japan's defeat in World War II. The Japanese treated the Koreans much the same way the Russians treated the Poles or the British treated the Irish. Even today Japanese movies and comic books are illegal in Korea. Thus, perhaps not surprisingly, most Korean movies are calculated imitations of popular Japanese genres--give the home folks their own version of Japanese movies so they won't long for forbidden fruit. "Yongary" may seem to us a poor "Godzilla" rip-off, but to Korean audiences that haven't seen a Japanese monster movie it's undoubtedly much more exciting. Judged strictly on its own merits, "Yongary" is about par for the Japanese kaiju movies of its era--neither better nor worse.