KIMZILLA

The certifiably insane "Great Leader" of North Korea, you know, the one who may or may not already possess thermonuclear weapons and is constantly threatening the United States as well as pretty much every other nation state on the planet that he's not pleased with on that particular day with nuclear annihilation, the guy we may one day very soon find ourselves at war with, is so certifiably insane that he once had a director from another country kidnapped and held prisoner in North Korea for years in order to make a make a Marxist propaganda film in the guise of a giant monster movie. Try wrapping your heads around this one, folks. Now that's insanity!

Being that I'm a lifelong fan of giant monster movies, I've actually known about and owned a copy of PULGASARI for several years now since it first became available on the "gray" market, but after watching "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" about two weeks ago week, during one of Lewis Black's "Back in Black" segments, he started ranting about lunatic North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il (For those of you that do not follow current events and have no idea who Kim Jong-il is, he was the bad guy in TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE) and he actually began showing clips from the monster movie the dictator produced some twenty odd years ago, I came to realize that most people had never heard of PULGASARI and that's a shame because the movie is quite noteworthy for reasons that extend far beyond the actual contents of film. Now while Lewis Black got off a few funny remarks about the idea of a power mad dictator being involved in the making of a cheesy rubbersuit monster movie ("Before you laugh, remember we're the ones that spent $12 million dollars watching House of Wax this past weekend!"), he didn't even begin to scratch the surface on this one. To say that the behind the scenes story is far more interesting than the movie itself is a gross understatement.

One man's captivity is another man's entertainment value.

Shin Sang-ok was one of South Korea's top filmmakers and his wife was one of the country's top actresses. Around 1978, for whatever reason, they fell out of favor with the South Korean government and were banned from making anymore movie. This forced them to seek work outside of South Korea, and it was during a business trip to Hong Kong that the strange events that would lead to PULGASARI began to unfold.

His wife went to a business meeting and never came back. This was quickly followed up with Shin himself being jumped by someone that put a sack over his head containing some sort of chemical that knocked him unconscious. When he awoke he discovered that he had been smuggled into North Korea and locked away in a prison camp with no explanation whatsoever as to what was going on or what had become of his wife. He remained in this camp for four years where he was forced to exist on a diet of rice, grass, and salt, and forced to undergo Marxist brainwashing.

In 1983, his imprisonment was ended with still no explanation. He was cleaned up and immediately taken to a meeting with Kim Jong-il, whose father was the current dictator of the country. Here Shin was reunited with his wife, but instead of getting any kind of real explanation for their years of unlawful incarceration, the future ruler of North Korea just went off on a tangent about how terrible North Korean filmmakers were. Kim even pointed out a book he had written on how films should be made - I believe the title was "Writing Screenplays That Won't Get You Executed" - and bemoaned how the directors in his country weren't following his instructions properly.

Hey, don't argue with Kim Jong-il when it comes to proper filmaking. As much as the man today constantly threatens to destroy civilization as we know it, at the same time he worships Hollywood filmmaking. His movie collection is said to be nothing short of enormous, his favorite films are said to be the RAMBO and FRIDAY THE 13TH flicks, and his favorite actors are Elizabeth Taylor and Sean Connery. This would mean he's probably the only person on Earth that loved RAMBO 3, FRIDAY THE 13TH PART V: A NEW BEGINNING, THE FLINTSTONES, and MEDICINE MAN. My God, he really is batshit crazy!

He also loves his pornography, has what is believed to be the biggest collection of Daffy Duck cartoons outside of the Warner Brothers vault, and adores Michael Jackson. The man has also written three operas, all of which were said to be brilliant by the brainwashed and the ones not wishing to be imprisoned or executed.

And if you think "Great Leader" Kim Jong-il doesn't sound out of his frickin' gourd yet then check out this news blurb that was reported all around the world back in 2003:

"North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il has ordered all triplets to be forcibly removed from their parents and dumped in orphanages. The government says the policy will help the poor. But Korean superstition says triplets, revered in Korea, may rise to positions of power. Kim is said to fear that a triplet might depose him, leading him to insist that they be raised somewhere where their development can be controlled."

Yes, the man is so superstitious that he is so petrified by this whacked out belief he has that a triplet will one day remove him from power that he's begun behaving like King Herod. This is the man that wants he and his country to be taken seriously as a nuclear power but one has to wonder if he won't end up going to way of Howard Hughes before that ever comes to pass.

Now that you have a little insight into the mentality of the man in question, let's get back to the tale of the kidnapped director. The whole reason for the abduction, imprisonment, and subsequent attempts at brainwashing was because Kim wanted to base the entire North Korean filmmaking empire around Shin and his wife and it really was an offer they couldn't refuse. The plus side for them was that they were paid in the millions and allowed to live in the lap of luxury. On the negative side, they were forbidden to leave North Korea, had to be careful of everything they did or said, and were forced to bow to the whims of their deranged captor.

Shin and his wife made several films for the North Korean government over a two-year period, all of which had to meet the future dictator's standards and feature a healthy dose of pro-government politics. As it turns out, Kim Jong-il is a huge Godzilla fan and he wanted North Korea to have its very own giant monster in the form of a spiky, armor plated, horn headed, Godzilla-like monster named Pulgasari.

Even though it would be loaded with Marxist ideals, Kim envisioned selling his very own giant monster movie to the whole world and kids everywhere buying up toy Pulgasari's. I'm sure in his crazy little mind he was already planning sequels to his crazy little Marxist monster movie like PULGASARI VS. MAOTHRA and DESTROY ALL CAPITALISTS. If successful enough, Cambodia would surely have followed suit with their own giant monster knock-off, KHMERA.

How could anyone not trust an adorable face like that with weapons of mass destruction?

He went so far as to even bring in many of the Toho special effects people to work on the film, including Godzilla suit actor Kenpachiro Satsuma, who would end up inside the Pulgasari costume. The movie would even boast a cast of hundreds, maybe thousands, thanks to the soldiers in the North Korean army being used as extras. Word is that some of the other actors employed in the film were in very much the same situation as Shin and his wife. I've read that Kim tried to make it difficult for the Toho people to get out of the country, but never heard an actual confirmation of this.

PULGASARI was going to be the cinematic spectacle that put North Korean filmmaking on the international map. But there was one big problem, aside from the fact that the film would be a cheap and shoddy production. In 1985, before Kim Jong-il's monster epic would be completed, he allowed Shin and his wife to go on a business meeting to Vienna. They had managed to win the madman's favor enough that he was convinced they were 100% loyal to him. Still, that didn't stop him from sending them there under heavy guard. However, it wasn't business that Shin and the missus had in mind but escape. With the aid of a Japanese film critic and following a taxi chase, the couple made it to the American embassy, finally escaping their captivity. Needless to say, Kim Jong-il was not pleased.

A different director of the not being held hostage against his will variety, but of the forced to reread Kim's textbook on the craft of proper filmmaking, completed the movie. Kim remained displeased and, as the story goes, PULGASARI never saw the light of day anywhere for over decade. There is no official confirmation that it was ever even released in North Korea. The only reason anyone outside of North Korea even got to see PULGASARI is because of one Japanese film critic that championed the movie in 1995, who somehow managed to secure a release for the flick in a single Japanese movie theater where it did surprisingly modest business, most likely due to Godzilla and Gamera movies seeing a resurgence at the time and out of the sheer curiosity of seeing a North Korean monster movie.

After finding its way to video in Japan, the bootleggers swooped guaranteeing fansubbed copies in the West. In early 2001, American anime distribution company ADV Films released an official subtitled copy of PULGASARI on VHS in the United States. The print run was small and the movie is now very much out of print so good luck finding a copy. You'd probably have a better chance finding a bootlegged copy. The cover for the ADV release also boasted the phrase "BANNED FOR 10 YEARS" on the cover without bothering to explain why.

One thing before we get into the description of the film. Because of the genre and the look of the creature, a comparison to Godzilla is expected, but in reality, PULGASARI has more in common with Daei's DAIMAJIN films than Godzilla movies. For those unfamiliar, the Daimajin movies were almost like Kurosawa samurai movies only the good guys, usually a maiden, would begin praying to this gigantic stone statue of a mean-looking samurai type. Inevitably, the statue would come to life and help the downtrodden peasants defeat the evil, corrupt overlords before crumbling back into oblivion. PULGASARI follows a nearly identical storyline.

PULGASARI: GREAT LEADER OF THE MONSTERS

PULGASARI is set in 13th century Korea where a tyrannical governor has to contend with a band of peasant rebels opposed to his repressive regime. The rebels somehow keep managing to thwart the governor's soldiers using fighting tactics straight out of the Ewoks' playbook. You know, rolling boulders and logs at enemy troops. In order to better deal with those pesky rebels, the governor decrees that all iron is to be given to the army so they may fashion more weapons, going so far as to send his soldiers into the villages to confiscate all cooking and farming equipment made of iron. By confiscating all the iron, the already impoverished peasants will have no means by which to make tools necessary to farm or cook with. Needless to say, the peasants go out of their way to secretly support the rebels any way they can. An elderly blacksmith hides all of his ironworks and when confronted by the governor's men about the whereabouts of it all, he tells them Pulgasari ate it all. Since Pulgasari is an iron-eating monster of Korean folklore, naturally, they don't buy this story for a second and have him imprisoned where he is forced to starve to death for his insolence.

Much of the early goings on of the film revolves around the militaristic governor's ambition and the old blacksmith's apprentice, a young man wearing entirely too much eye shadow who is also the rebel leader and just happens to be engaged to Ami, the daughter of the imprisoned blacksmith. So first act of Pulgasari involves lots of dull political intrigue between the governor and his toadies, plenty of oppressed people voicing their opposition, and an ungodly amount of crying.

Ami and her brother manage to sneak some rice to their dying father but rather than eat it he smooshes the rice and fashions it into a tiny idol of the monster Pulgasari. Shortly afterwards, he says a prayer and dies. The miniature figurine is among their father's personal effects that they collect from the prison. They dismiss it as being nothing more than a memento he left behind until Ami accidentally pricks her finger while sewing, spilling a few droplets of blood on the figurine, causing it to spring to life. As the thing begins munching on her sewing needles, Ami and her brother begin reacting to the awakening of this mini monstrosity with the kind of glee usually reserved for Pokemon's Ash and Misty. They officially dub the creature Pika… Pulgasari.

You know how they say that iron is essential in a child's growth? Turns out that saying is especially true in the case of Pulgasari as every iron rich meal causes him to grow in size. In no time flat, Pulgasari grows from the size of a Smurf to something just big enough to star in a Charles Band production. The puppet-sized Pulgasari makes his presence known to the world when it crashes the execution of Ami's fiancé and begins munching on the executioner's sword in mid-swing. Chaos ensues, Ami, her brother, her fiancé, and Pulgasari head for the hills with the rebels, and the governor is in disbelief when told tales of the pygmy monster.

Sid & Marty Krofft were kidnapped by Kim Jong-il, imprisoned, and subjected to Marxist brainwashing in North Korea for years just so they could do this one special effects shot.

Ami soon comes to realize that she has some sort of supernatural link to the now human sized Pulgasari, essentially making her an adult female Korean version of Kenny from the Gamera films. The rebels also come to believe that Pulgasari will help them defeat the governor and his forces, which Pulgasari gladly does at Ami's bidding. In a scene of must be seen to be believed goofiness, the human sized Pulgasari is shown amongst the rebel army charging into battle looking like a college football mascot leading his team onto the football field before a big game. I'd have grabbed a still of this for you to see but it happens so quickly it kept coming out blurry. Trust me when I tell you it's an astounding three seconds of film.

Pulgasari finally achieves Godzilla-sized proportions and leads the rebels into one victory after another. In between battles, Pulgasari helps out by gathering large quantities of wood for the rebels and enjoys lounging lazily next to a mountainside, almost looking almost like Al Bundy on his couch in the process.

Word of the chaos in this province caused by the rebels and their giant monster spreads to the dastardly king who orders his top General to the scene with his army to squash the rebellion. That proves much easier said than done as Pulgasari proves to be indestructible.

When the General finally figures out the link between Ami and the monster, he has Ami kidnapped and threatens to kill her unless Pulgasari agrees to step inside this gigantic iron cage they've seemingly constructed out of thin air. Pulgasari reluctantly does so and the cage is set ablaze. Problem is that Pulgasari is himself made of iron so instead of melting or burning to death he just glows red from being super heated. He busts out the cage and chases many of the king's soldiers into a nearby river that he decides to take a giant belly flop into. His highly elevated body heat from the attempted immolation causes the water to boil many of the enemy soldiers alive.

How do you say, "How about a little fire, Scarecrow" in Korean?

The General then employs the services of the country's most brilliant engineer who develops a cannon that proves useless because not only is it incapable of damaging Pulgasari's metal hide, the monster even manages to catch many of the cannonballs in his mouth and fire them right back. The attempts to defeat the giant monster even leads to the highly anachronistic use of missiles. Rockets are fashioned to a series of large, mounted spears and launched at Pulgasari. These scenes look like they came straight out of every Godzilla movie where the Japanese military tried in vain to stop an advancing Godzilla with a barrage of missiles. Just as with Godzilla, these primitive rockets have no effect, simply bouncing right off of him.

You know what they say, when all else fails try turning to witchcraft. That's exactly what the General does, and so we get a coven of Korean high priestess or whatever the hell they are dancing and singing in order to place a hex on Pulgasari. The plan being to put some sort of dark mojo on the monster so that it'll walking into the trap they've set - a giant pit they've dug in record in time. Believe it or not, this plan actually works. Pulgasari falls in and is covered under a ton of fallen rocks.

In the words of Condoleeza Rice, "When diplomacy fails, it's clobberin' time!"

The forces of evil do the dance of joy, but their celebration is short lived as Ami makes her way to the Pulgasari's unmarked grave, slices her arm, and drips some of her blood into a crevice. A little blood is all it takes as he promptly erupts from the ground more pissed off than ever. He stomps over to the king's royal palace and lays waste to the place in true Godzilla-like fashion. In the process, he finally bursts into the palace and confronts the king, where he informs the overlord that his style of government is unacceptable and that's why he finds himself left with no choice but to put his foot down - literally.

With the forces of oppression no more, the newly liberated peasants proceed to celebrate Ewok-style only to find out they have an unexpected problem - Pulgasari still requires iron to eat. They had been feeding him the weapons and armor they captured from the royal army but now that the war is over it looks like they're going to end up back exactly where they began, at the mercy an overwhelming force demanding their iron. In the end, Ami sounds a large iron bell knowing that Pulgasari will find the source of the sound and eat it. Knowing that severing her link with the monster is the only solution, she climbs inside the bell intent on sacrificing herself. Sure enough, Pulgasari proceeds to make a snack out of the bell unaware of the creamy Ami filling inside. It proves to be his last supper as - almost exactly as it was in the Daimajin films - the monster turns to lifeless stone and crumbles.

Hey, this bell has a chewy nouget center. It sort of tastes like... Uh oh!

Afterwards, we do see a pint sized Pulgasari crawl out the rubble so I guess one of the tenets of quality filmmaking that Kim Jong-il believed in was keeping things open for a possible sequel.

Everything I've ever read about Pulgasari claims that it features a lot of pro-Marxist propaganda - the tyrants representing capitalism and the peasants and Pulgasari representing socialism - but I can honestly say I just didn't see it. Maybe I'm just not politically astute enough to detect the subtle nuances but I never picked up any real propaganda. In fact, I can't help but think that Shin may have pulled a fast one on Kim Jong-il and actually made a monster movie that's underlying theme is very much against what him and his father stand for. Think about it. You have oppressive militaristic tyrants that leave their subjects starving and living in squalor while they live in luxury and hoard the country's resources to advance their personal war machine. Sounds an awful lot like the current state of North Korea too me. Then again, the people in North Korea, despite starving to death and living in abject poverty are said to worship Kim Jong-il as if he were some sort of living deity, a role he's more than willing to buy into, so in his mind as well as their's this movie somehow represented their plight against the West. Who really knows?

Now showing on screen #4 behind the peasant army: MARCH OF THE MARXIST MONSTER

Perhaps the most amazing thing about Pulgasari is that if you didn't know it was made in 1985 you swear it was a movie that had been made closer to 1965. The use of the monster suit and miniatures look exactly as they did in the daikaiju movies of that era, although the few scenes that employ the use of rear projection to show Pulgasari marching alongside the rebels is amongst the worst ever seen as it looks like live actors are being filmed in front of a drive-in movie screen showing Pulgasari in action. This would be the worst rear projection ever put on film but that honor still belongs to South Korea's answer to Godzilla, YONGARY, MONSTER FROM THE DEEP, where a couple scenes had fleeing civilians in the foreground appear to be almost half the size of the monster himself. Still, Pulgasari may very well have been some sort of technical advancement for North Korean cinema but for the rest of the world it looks like a dated imitation of genre whose highpoint was two decades earlier. For Kim Jong-il to think he could mass market a film this dated looking to the world in this age of digital effects overkill he really would have to be crazy.

In the end, PULGASARI is kind of a hard movie to rate because it isn't particularly good nor is it especially bad. It's pretty much a run-of-the-mill Japanese style monster movie, and as previously stated, the monster is more of a supporting character in its own film rather than the main focus. If there was less political intrigue, peasant uprising, long-winded speeches by dying old men, women that burst into tears at the drop of a hat, and more giant monster kicking the ass of imperial forces then this would have been a much better movie. It's still definitely worth seeking out although as more of a curiosity than anything else. The circumstances behind the film make it almost a must see for geo-political junkies as conclusive evidence of just how nuts the Great Leader of North Korea is and the giant monster aspect makes it worth a look for fans of the genre like myself.

In the ultimate bit of irony, PULGASARI actually spawned an imitator in the form a 1996 European-produced, American-made, shot-in-Romania, kiddy movie called THE ADVENTURES OF GALGAMETH. The film followed virtually the same plotline as PULGASARI only it was set in medieval Europe, the daughter was replaced with a young boy, and they all live happily ever after. The monster Galgameth starts out as a tiny statue that comes to life as a cute little dragon that is linked to a young boy. Sound familiar? Galgameth grows larger by eating metal until it become a monstrous beast that helps the kid overthrow an evil king and save the villagers from tyranny. Sound very familar? The plotlines are so identical that Shin Sang-ok is actually given story credit for the film, and he didn't even have to be kidnapped and brainwashed to get it.

GALGAMETH - yet another triumph of free-market capitalism! In your face, Kim Jong-il!

If nothing else, Kim Jong-il can at least brag that his movie is better than it's Westernized, kiddified, pro-democratic knock-off. To tell you why would require a whole other review I'm not interested in doing (but if you really want some idea then I suggest you read this review of the film) so I'll just sum it in much simpler terms. GALGAMETH was written by the guy that also wrote LEPRECHAUN 2, CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD, CANDYMAN: DAY OF THE DEAD, and episodes of Mutant X, and the film was directed by the man that also gave us 3 NINJAS: HIGH NOON AT MEGA MOUNTAIN. Do I need to say anymore? I'm thinking those two should be forced to read Kim Jong-il's manual on quality filmmaking. Hell, if writing CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD and directing 3 NINJAS: HIGH NOON AT MEGA MOUNTAIN aren't grounds for getting tossed into an internment camp then what is?

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE