Written by: Digger
Before I even get started, let me set a few things straight about this film. The movie Yonggary has kind of a twisted past. Although billed as a remake of the 1967 South Korean monster movie Yongary, the title and country of origin are really the only things the original film shares with its 1999 counterpart. In an attempt to help the movie appeal to a broader international market, the film was produced with an English-speaking American cast. The film was initially released in South Korea and internationally in 1999 but a second version of the film, with additional scenes and “improved” special effects, was released in 2001. This remastered version, retitled Reptilian or Reptile 2001 in the United States, is currently available on DVD, and is the version that I am reviewing.
Now, with all that out of the way, this movie opens with a team of archaeologists exploring a cave and some of the most horrific line deliveries in recorded history. Throughout this picture the acting ranges in quality from stiff and unnatural to hammy and laughable, but what we get inside the first five minutes of screen time is absolutely terrifying. Thankfully, the acting never gets any worse than this and most of these guys in the cave get torched after one of the diggers hits a glowing rock with a hatchet. A couple of years later, one of the surviving archaeologists from earlier, Dr. Campbell, (Richard B. Livingston) is heading an excavation to unearth a massive dinosaur skeleton. A photojournalist is dispatched to the sight who’s name escapes me because he serves no purpose to the plot other than to introduce the audience to other, more important characters. He meets Campbell’s sometimes British assistant Holly, (Donna Philipson) and Campbell’s old and seemingly insane associate Dr. Hughes. (Harrison Young) Hughes has come to warn everyone that the skeleton they are uncovering, which he calls Yonggary, will destroy mankind. He apparently learned this from some unexplained prophecy written in hieroglyphics in that cave from the opening scene. Of course no one buys this prophecy crap, not even I do and I watched the whole movie, and Dr. Hughes is escorted out of the camp. It turns out that there have been a lot of ominous and plot convenient fatal accidents happening around the dig site, but Dr. Campbell acts like a monomaniacal ass hole the entire time and tries to play them off as run-of-the-mill industrial accidents and threatens people to keep quiet about them.
At the same time the military, represented here by the very fictional United National Defense Agency, is having trouble with some missing satellites. Turns out there’s a big, badly rendered alien spaceship special effect orbiting the Earth, and the hand puppet aliens inside, that also speak English, are here to wipe out humanity and conquer the planet. For what reason, we don’t know, but they intend to do this thing by reanimating the giant fossilized skeleton. The evil insectoid aliens, because there are no good insectoid aliens, fire a massive energy beam down to Earth that resurrects Yonggary and puts muscle and skin back on him. In typical monster movie fashion, Yonggary, who is being controlled by the aliens via a diamond shaped device on his forehead, is set loose to destroy humanity. Let me just recap that. The aliens came to Earth two hundred million years ago, found a giant monster (apparently the only one of its kind) fitted it with a brain control device, then let it die and waited for hundreds of millions of year to come back to Earth, which they knew would eventually be controlled by the human race, and then bring a fossilized monster, which has just recently been conveniently unearthed, back to life to kill all humans. That is their master plan. Why not just return to Earth while humans are still living in caves and conquer the Earth then? How about invade Earth with more than one battleship and wipe out civilization yourselves? But it’s this flimsy premise that finally gets us to the giant monster wrecking stuff portion of the film. Anyway, after the fake army throws helicopters and jets at the monster to no avail, they turn to a newer, more high-tech option to take the monster down. That option is to send in guys wearing jet-packs and fly around Yonggary like tiny, foul mouthed gnats and shoot at him with assault rifles. The strike vehicles with missiles and large caliber guns didn’t work, so they send in smaller, less well armored troops with smaller guns to finish the job. How does this make any logical sense? Needless to say, there are a lot of holes in this plot. It’s just to bad that the giant monster they’re shooting at is so bland, unoriginal, and badly made. If I was director Shim Hyung-rae and I saw these lifeless, rubbery, completely unnatural looking creature effects during production, I would have scrapped those scenes and re-shot them with a man in a foam-rubber Yonggary costume. This computer generated abomination actually looks worse than the worst guy-in-a-rubber-suit effect.
On top of all the acting, writing, and special effects problems, this movie is so full of cliches and scenes that seem almost completely ripped off from other films that I had to watch it twice just to find them all. It follows all of the giant monster movie tropes that have been cultivated over three decades of kaiju cinema. Aliens start out in control the creature to use as a super weapon to crush humanity. The monster runs a muck in a major city. All of the major human characters are either scientists, in the military, or in the news media. And, after Yonggary is freed from his alien overlords, those aliens bring in another monster so the two beasts can slug it out in a major metropolitan area. However, the film seems to take more inspiration from certain Roland Emmerich movies than it does from classic monster films. The aliens bare a striking resemblance to the invaders from Independence Day, and there are several scenes involving fighter pilots firing missiles and spouting jargon that sounds like it was lifted right out of that film. The director also makes the mistake of trying to recreate several scenes from the 1998 American Godzilla, including Yonggary dueling with a squadron of helicopters and many instances of missiles failing to lock on to the creature and striking nearby buildings instead. I’m sure one could make a wonderful drinking game out of this movie. Every time the old crazy guy mentions something about the supposed prophecy that no body cares about, take a shot. Every time you see a bad composite image, take a shot. Every time Holly forgets to talk with her British accent, take a shot. Every time there’s a scene where the stupid aliens talk about something that we just saw happen on screen thirty seconds ago, take a shot. Come to think of it, where is my bourbon? I need to drink the pain away.
Before I even get started, let me set a few things straight about this film. The movie Yonggary has kind of a twisted past. Although billed as a remake of the 1967 South Korean monster movie Yongary, the title and country of origin are really the only things the original film shares with its 1999 counterpart. In an attempt to help the movie appeal to a broader international market, the film was produced with an English-speaking American cast. The film was initially released in South Korea and internationally in 1999 but a second version of the film, with additional scenes and “improved” special effects, was released in 2001. This remastered version, retitled Reptilian or Reptile 2001 in the United States, is currently available on DVD, and is the version that I am reviewing.
Now, with all that out of the way, this movie opens with a team of archaeologists exploring a cave and some of the most horrific line deliveries in recorded history. Throughout this picture the acting ranges in quality from stiff and unnatural to hammy and laughable, but what we get inside the first five minutes of screen time is absolutely terrifying. Thankfully, the acting never gets any worse than this and most of these guys in the cave get torched after one of the diggers hits a glowing rock with a hatchet. A couple of years later, one of the surviving archaeologists from earlier, Dr. Campbell, (Richard B. Livingston) is heading an excavation to unearth a massive dinosaur skeleton. A photojournalist is dispatched to the sight who’s name escapes me because he serves no purpose to the plot other than to introduce the audience to other, more important characters. He meets Campbell’s sometimes British assistant Holly, (Donna Philipson) and Campbell’s old and seemingly insane associate Dr. Hughes. (Harrison Young) Hughes has come to warn everyone that the skeleton they are uncovering, which he calls Yonggary, will destroy mankind. He apparently learned this from some unexplained prophecy written in hieroglyphics in that cave from the opening scene. Of course no one buys this prophecy crap, not even I do and I watched the whole movie, and Dr. Hughes is escorted out of the camp. It turns out that there have been a lot of ominous and plot convenient fatal accidents happening around the dig site, but Dr. Campbell acts like a monomaniacal ass hole the entire time and tries to play them off as run-of-the-mill industrial accidents and threatens people to keep quiet about them.
At the same time the military, represented here by the very fictional United National Defense Agency, is having trouble with some missing satellites. Turns out there’s a big, badly rendered alien spaceship special effect orbiting the Earth, and the hand puppet aliens inside, that also speak English, are here to wipe out humanity and conquer the planet. For what reason, we don’t know, but they intend to do this thing by reanimating the giant fossilized skeleton. The evil insectoid aliens, because there are no good insectoid aliens, fire a massive energy beam down to Earth that resurrects Yonggary and puts muscle and skin back on him. In typical monster movie fashion, Yonggary, who is being controlled by the aliens via a diamond shaped device on his forehead, is set loose to destroy humanity. Let me just recap that. The aliens came to Earth two hundred million years ago, found a giant monster (apparently the only one of its kind) fitted it with a brain control device, then let it die and waited for hundreds of millions of year to come back to Earth, which they knew would eventually be controlled by the human race, and then bring a fossilized monster, which has just recently been conveniently unearthed, back to life to kill all humans. That is their master plan. Why not just return to Earth while humans are still living in caves and conquer the Earth then? How about invade Earth with more than one battleship and wipe out civilization yourselves? But it’s this flimsy premise that finally gets us to the giant monster wrecking stuff portion of the film. Anyway, after the fake army throws helicopters and jets at the monster to no avail, they turn to a newer, more high-tech option to take the monster down. That option is to send in guys wearing jet-packs and fly around Yonggary like tiny, foul mouthed gnats and shoot at him with assault rifles. The strike vehicles with missiles and large caliber guns didn’t work, so they send in smaller, less well armored troops with smaller guns to finish the job. How does this make any logical sense? Needless to say, there are a lot of holes in this plot. It’s just to bad that the giant monster they’re shooting at is so bland, unoriginal, and badly made. If I was director Shim Hyung-rae and I saw these lifeless, rubbery, completely unnatural looking creature effects during production, I would have scrapped those scenes and re-shot them with a man in a foam-rubber Yonggary costume. This computer generated abomination actually looks worse than the worst guy-in-a-rubber-suit effect.
On top of all the acting, writing, and special effects problems, this movie is so full of cliches and scenes that seem almost completely ripped off from other films that I had to watch it twice just to find them all. It follows all of the giant monster movie tropes that have been cultivated over three decades of kaiju cinema. Aliens start out in control the creature to use as a super weapon to crush humanity. The monster runs a muck in a major city. All of the major human characters are either scientists, in the military, or in the news media. And, after Yonggary is freed from his alien overlords, those aliens bring in another monster so the two beasts can slug it out in a major metropolitan area. However, the film seems to take more inspiration from certain Roland Emmerich movies than it does from classic monster films. The aliens bare a striking resemblance to the invaders from Independence Day, and there are several scenes involving fighter pilots firing missiles and spouting jargon that sounds like it was lifted right out of that film. The director also makes the mistake of trying to recreate several scenes from the 1998 American Godzilla, including Yonggary dueling with a squadron of helicopters and many instances of missiles failing to lock on to the creature and striking nearby buildings instead. I’m sure one could make a wonderful drinking game out of this movie. Every time the old crazy guy mentions something about the supposed prophecy that no body cares about, take a shot. Every time you see a bad composite image, take a shot. Every time Holly forgets to talk with her British accent, take a shot. Every time there’s a scene where the stupid aliens talk about something that we just saw happen on screen thirty seconds ago, take a shot. Come to think of it, where is my bourbon? I need to drink the pain away.
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