Yongary: Monster from the Deep (1967) – MST3K Review

Summary:

So this may sound a little familiar. A South Korean astronaut is orbiting the earth, when he detects a strange moving earthquake making its way toward the city of Soule. The military tries to keep a lid on this, but eventually the earthquake strikes and out of it erupts the giant monster Yongary! He’s reptilian, he breathes fire and he loves smashing buildings. 

As you may have guessed the military throws all kinds of things at it, but they don’t seem to have much effect. There is also a dance sequence including the monster, but the less said about that the better. One intrepid youngster Icho (Kwang Ho Lee) follows Yongary to an oil refinery and witnesses the beast drinking oil. Armed with this information and the help of a young scientist named Illo (Oh Yoeong-il) the two concoct a way to stop the creature by attacking its allergies… no I’m not making this up. But will the plan be enough to save South Korea, or will all of Asia fall to the mighty stomp of Yongary: Monster from the Deep?

Movie Review: 

Need a swath of destruction? Call Yongary!

At some point each nation on Earth must get to work making a giant rubber monster movie. I don’t know if this all part of Joseph Campbell’s mono-myth theory or if it is some kind of offering that humans must give to the gods of celluloid. Mystery Science Theater 3000 has managed to dig up quite a few of these in the past. Frankly, I accept it as proof that the gods of celluloid are scientific fact. No, you can’t fight me on this.

So here we have a South Korean offering of the giant reptile destroying everything it lays its tail on.Yongary was released in 1967, thirteen years after Godzilla invaded the Japan the first time. So the pattern and structure of these films was well entrenched. This provides some comfort for those coming to the film for the first time. You’re going to get what you expect from this film. But for those that were hoping for something a little different, well you’re going to be disappointed. 

Now Reptilicus stuck to the strict rules of Godzilla (kind of like Gorgo).Yongary actually feels like it has more in common with the Gamera films. Our central human protagonist in Yongary is a young boy, and acts in much the same way as Kenny did in the first Gamera film. 

Unleashing the power of Icho's itchy ray!

While he is often at the center of the danger, Icho ends up thinking that Yongary is just a hungry critter, not a rampaging monster. He actually witnesses the huge creature dancing with joy after it feeds. He does end up helping his elders stop the creature, but feels remorse when it finally shuffles off the mortal coil (in one of the more disturbing death scenes in these types of films for the era). I would say that Icho is slightly less annoying than Kenny, but he still has the whole “I’m a rowdy kid and all of you need to listen to me” attitude. Most of his antics in the first half of the film involving the itch ray make us want to give him a time out. He also has the habit of running toward the danger, instead of running away from it. But I suppose the story wouldn’t move forward if he did show some sense in that regard.

To be honest most the adult characters are useless in Yongary. You have the typical politician and military characters that aren’t very good at doing anything. Most of their ideas are pointless and only make the situation more dangerous. It takes the bratty kid and the distracted young scientist to really come up with a workable plan. Taking another page from the Gamera films, this master plan is just goofy. Not as goofy as a spinning blood fountain, but inspired by the itch ray, they essentially douse him with an ammonia compound that makes him itchy and sluggish and then bleed out of his rear until he dies. No, I’m not making it up. I wish I was.

Tom tries to make the scene more interesting.

Padding out all that material is lots of scenes of the military and politicians arguing. Tanks and jets flying at Yongary and attempting to stop him, but again like Gamera, all fire based attacks only give him greater strength. You have scenes of people evacuating cities and running in panic. There is a subplot with the newlywed astronaut and his wife. And yes, you get a heaping helping of property destruction at various scales, with the creature bouncing around and destroying models.

Visually the film feels more like a Gamera production as well. The creature suit for Yongary isn’t terribly interesting. It is a reptile with a horn on his snout and he can breathe fire from what looks like a jet engine that appears in his mouth. Yongary isn’t very scary, or cute, just kind of there. He feels like he could be a second tier monster in a Gamera film, and in fact reminded me of Barugon of Gamera vs Barugon fame, but without the cool rainbow beam attack. 

To be honest, the model work and monster costume just aren’t that impressive. The production team worked with Daiei Film’s special effects staff. If that name sounds familiar, that is because they worked on all the Gamera films. I always found Toho’s work on the Godzilla movies more impressive when it came to suits and model work. So this just feels second tier.

"Protective marshmallows have turned him into
a human s'more!"

Due to a strange twist of fate, the original Korean version of the film was lost. So the only way to watch Yongary: Monster from the Deep is to watch the American dubbed version. It was released by American International Pictures, a name familiar to Roger Corman fans. They were well known for picking up foreign films, slapping a quickie dub and unleashing them into theaters. That is what you get here, a ridiculous dub with some hilariously bad lines, dubious acting and a couple of “did I just hear that?” moments. Fans of horrible dubs will not be disappointed.

As a film Yongary just doesn’t measure up to his older cousins. The creature isn’t terribly interesting. All the plot points were done before and better in the Gamera and Godzilla films. It doesn’t bring anything new to the table, except for the setting occurring in South Korea. It is one of those movies that would come on during a monster mash on your local station, and you’d watch it because you were a kid and you loved monsters. But I think that even as a kid, I would be disappointed by this film and wait for Gamera vs Guiron or Godzilla vs. Megalon to come in instead. 

Jonah and the bots don’t have a choice and Kinga unleashes this film on them in the middle of the eleventh season. Were they up to it after surviving Reptilicus?

Episode Review:

"Yongary's got a jet engine growing out of his mouth?
That is bad ass! I want one!"

Lots of fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 are fans of the giant monster movies of the twentieth century. There were some very funny episodes, back in Season Three especially, that became fan favorites. So it wasn’t a huge surprise that some of these fans knew all about this relatively obscure film and were hoping against hope that Yongary would be featured on their favorite riffing show.

For me, the giant monster episodes are mixed. Some of them are top notch, like Godzilla vs. Megalon. But you also have a few like Gorgo that just don’t work for me. Jonah and the bots handled Reptilicus very well indeed, but that episode was saddled with a lot of additional weight, being the first episode not only of the season, but also the rebirth of the series. I was looking forward to seeing what they could do unfettered by all those other elements and going straight for the riffing.

The overall result is that the riffing for Yongary is pretty solid. The main issue here is a problem that nearly all the giant monster movies have, and it is a structure issue. The best riffing moments involve the giant monster. The giant monster doesn’t show up in the film for nearly thirty minutes. So you are left with much less riffable scenes involving boring human characters babbling about space travel and moving earthquakes. 

"CAPSULE!" "CAPSULE!" "CAPSULE!" "CAPSULE!"

The boys do their best during these opening scenes, and while the iching ray that Icho uses provides some fun riffing, the best bits are for the astronaut and his mini-adventure. You get to see the prep, the launch, the orbit and the landing of this mission and yeah it feels like padding. But riffs about the name of his ship, the strange “marshmallow” padding around his head make for some humorous moments. But the best bits are when mission control loses contact with the capsule. The lead controller keeps yelling “Capsule!” into his microphone, and this leads to Jonah and the bots to join in. Soon this spirals into a running gag whenever anyone says the word capsule, our riffers yell it back in response.

Everybody cut footloose.

Eventually Yongary shows up and the real riffing material kicks in. When our titular monster rises from the crack in the earth one of the onlookers yells, “Yongary is coming out!” to which Crow replies in a jolly voice, “Good for him.” Later when the reptile is under attack by jets and flailing around Jonah quips, “I keep waiting for Pee Wee Herman to ride by on his bike.” Later, Crow comments that “Yongary looks like the kind of monster you’d get at the 99 cent store.”

There is a funny sequence in the middle of the film where desperate citizens of the city are spending their last hours. The variety of behavior from feasting, to dancing to getting bathed in booze offer some prime riffing material, as well as inspring a host segment.

Tom joins in taunting Yongary along with the helicopter.

Soon Yongary is rinsing and repeating its plot points. Army attacks and fails. Junior scientist uses chemical and it kind of works. Then the monster awakens again, and the military attacks. You get the idea. During Yongary’s itching and scratching Jonah observes “That looks like me when I’m trying to put on my own sunscreen.” I got a kick out of Crow declaring, “This movie is more repetitive than a Ramones song.” During a final effort by the air force, one pilot hurtles right at Yongary’s head only to be roasted by the fire blast. Tom says incredulously, “You were flying right at his open mouth! What did you think was going to happen?”

It is all fun and games until someone gets smashed.

The host segments kick off with the invention exchange. Jonah creates the tiny desk, so you can flip it in your rage and not mess up your real desk, and clean up is a snap! The Mads offer delicious Hitler Coffee, which gives you a distinctive mustache after you drink it creates all kinds of horrific awkward moments. At the first break Jonah and the bots discuss what kind of music you should play when you lift off from the launch pad to start your space mission. The options range from the overly obvious to deeply ironic. When we come back, Tom and Crow show off their new nightclub called Yongary Nights, which features real monster stomping action. Later the boys chat about which monster would they befriend if they had a chance. Tom picks Medusa! After the movie ends and the boys are traumatized by seeing Yongary bleed out of his rear, they try to sing a song to alleviate the pain. Kinga and Max are pleased by their response and promise something even more diabolical for the next episode.

"I think I made a wrong turn at Albuquerque."

In the end, Jonah and the bots are able to survive Yongary: Monster from the Deep, mostly intact. I have to say, I was hoping it would be a classic, but the structure of the film keeps it from firing on all cylinders. If you are a fan of the giant monster flicks, then I think you’ll get a kick out of this one. But I feel that Reptilicus was a bit more unique in execution and made for the better episode overall. But this one is a solid fun.

I give it three CAPSULE! out of five.

This episode is available on Netflix.

Baptism.. you're doing it wrong.

Avalanche (1978) – MST3K Review

Summary:

David Shelby (Rock Hudson) has created the ultimate 1970s winter resort, and he is getting ready to show it off to the world. His ex-wife Caroline (Mia Farrow) arrives to congratulate him on his accomplishment, and he takes it as a sign that she wants to get back together with him. Talk about reading the room wrong. But David’s hot temper and impetuous ways still annoy Caroline. David’s attitude also get’s in the way when Nick Thorne (Robert Forster) shows up to tell him that all the land development has made conditions ripe for a massive avalanche that will destroy the resort!

But David tells Thorne to go suck some eggs and proceeds to party like it is 1978! Well sure enough, heavy snowfall meets out of control airplane and boom you have an avalanche. Who will survive? Who will meet a frozen fate? And who will end up hurtling to the bottom of a gorge and exploding on impact? No, I’m not making this up. Produced by Roger Corman… well that should tell you enough right there.

Movie Review:

The title character makes his big entrance.

Ah, that Roger Corman. He just doesn’t miss a trick does he? Disaster movies like The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno and Earthquake were all the rage 70s. So why not make your own, for a smaller budget of course. Get a couple big name stars to get butts in the seats and make a profit.

Well, the disaster movie craze hit its peak around 1975 or so. By 1978 we were really dredging the bottom of the barrel with this genre when movies like The Swarm bombed in the box office. Avalanche came out the same year, and even with the one-two punch of Rock Hudson and Mia Farrow as your main stars, I doubt this movie did very well at all. I don’t think anyone was clamoring for snow based disaster thrills in the post Star Wars world.

That said, just because the movie wasn’t a hit in its time doesn’t mean it’s a bad film, right?

Yeah, this is a bad film. Sorry folks.

"If it ever stops being the '70s, we'll all be in trouble."

What is sad is that you can see Avalanche following the disaster movie tropes with religious fervor. You have your two leads having relationship problems. You spend way too long developing them and a host of other minor characters. This way when the disaster hits, you’ll be involved in their fate and thrill to see if they live or die.

The main problem here is that none of the characters are engaging enough to care about. Sometimes it is the acting. Sometimes it is the writing. Sometimes it is a combination of the two. But I only liked one character in the entire film. The rest were just fodder for the snow and ice to take out.

Now we know what happened to Danny after
the end of Time Travelers!

What lucky character appealed to me? That would be Henry McDade, because I think the character got a raw deal. He spends the bulk of the movie following David’s mother (played with verve by Jeanette Nolan) and trying to keep her out of trouble and from drinking herself into a stupor. That is her main character trait, she drinks a lot and yells “Aloha!” Anyway, McDade is stuck with this woman because David is his boss and David says he has to. I just feel bad for the poor guy. But when the snow hits the fan, McDade actually stays with the old lady and does his best to save her. He shows more compassion than almost anyone else in the movie. And SPOILER ALERT – he survives. Good for him! Maybe I’m also partial to the character because he is played by Steve Franken. We just saw Franken in The Time Travelers as the lab fanboy Danny. Anyway, this simple character is the only one I cared about in Avalanche

This movie came out four months before Ice Castles.
That's Corman for ya!

The rest of them… jeez. There is a jaded skier who hits on underage girls. His “love interest”, I think, is a Dorothy Hamill look alike, who has an obvious skate double. She’s bland. There is another skater who is nervous and keeps botching her routines. Her coach gives her motivational speeches. The meaningful music tells me I’m supposed to care about them. Bland performances and little screen time makes sure I don’t. There is the Television Host who seems like a nice guy for the two minutes we see him. He ends up trapped with small boy on a ski lift. It almost works, but the peril gets neutralized because of obvious stunt doubles and silly camera work. You end up chuckling instead of gasping in horror.

He's even sincere about McDade's goofy hat.

Then there are our three lead characters in Avalanche. The best performance is given by Robert Forester, who is one of those actors who always delivers solid work in just about anything I’ve seen him in (including The Black Hole). The role of Nick Thorne is cliché-ridden and not terribly interesting, but Forester makes the most of it. He is sincere in his conviction that an avalanche in immanent. He is sincere in his attraction to Mia Farrow. He is sincere in his wiliness to help people when the avalanche hits. But he is such a one-note character, it is hard to care about him. Forester does the best he can with a poorly written role.

"You are never going to stop shouting, are you David?"

Mia Farrow on the other hand does not much of anything with a poorly written role. Much like Forster’s character, Caroline doesn’t really have an arc. She shows up at the resort annoyed with David, but she still loves him. It ends with her annoyed with David, but she still loves him. Along the way she says she’s interested in Thorne, but her acting doesn’t show it. She says she may be willing to give David another chance, but her performance says otherwise. Well, that’s not right, her performance is just kinda there. It is tempting to say that Farrow is just there for the paycheck. But I think the role was so boring that she decided not to give too much effort. She has no chemistry with anyone in the “love triangle” and while she has a couple of good moments yelling at David, she doesn’t do much of anything in the story either. She’s just there because we needed a woman in the “love triangle” that goes nowhere.

David in a rare moment of not shouting.

Rock Hudson takes the opposite approach. I get the feeling that Hudson read the script to Avalanche and liked that he wasn’t playing the nice guy for once. David is an egotistical jerk, who places his desires over everyone’s safety. He even endangers his own (drunken) mother. I can see Hudson liking that aspect of the role. I can also see him reading it and realizing how stupid the whole thing was. So instead of just playing low key, he goes big and broad. Hudson rants and raves. He snarls and barks. He is a complete asshole to just about everyone else in the film. He does it so well that you pretty much want him to suffer a humiliating death by snow boulder. I’ve never seen Hudson play this kind of role this broadly before. On the one hand it is fun to watch. But in the service to the film, it just doesn’t work. I think we are supposed to feel some kind of catharsis that he gets what he deserves at the end. He does seem a little subdued at the end, but the crushing reality that his actions have killed his mother, dozens of people and destroyed his dream for the resort just seem to be given a “oh well, that sucks” feel from the tone of the ending.

Much like this review, Avalanche spends way too much time going on and on about these flat characters before any hint of disaster appears. But when the avalanche arrives, about 55 minutes into the movie, it delivers some thrills, right? Well, kinda sorta. For the budget and knowing this is a Corman production it works out Ok. Lots of scenes feature super imposed ice/snow visuals over people flailing about. That provides some unintentional laughs. The disaster on the ice rink and the whole thing that happens in the kitchen are laugh out loud ridiculous looking.

Um, should we be watching this?

The most thrilling sequences of disaster are the ski lift rescue and unearthing David’s mother and McDade from the encased dining room. The ski lift has a pretty good build up to the final rescue. The whole thing gets more and more unstable as the news anchor and the kid hang on for dear life. There is electricity in play, and the fire department has trouble getting to them. It’s edited a bit clumsily, but it gets the job done. And since I actually liked McDade (and I admit the drunken mother was kind of likable too) I wanted to know what would happen to them.

Avalanche also tries to have a message about the media not caring about people, but doing anything for the story. The camera crew doesn’t try to help the news anchor and the child. They just stand there and film it, wanting to catch the moment they fall or get electrocuted. There is also a message about harming the environment, and letting greed and ego get in the way of compassion. It is all heavy handed, and doesn’t really go anywhere. I guess it is supposed to add some kind of depth to the film, but it just feels like padding to a movie that feels way too long already.

And then 1978 smacks you right upside the head!

For me that is the biggest crime Avalanche commits. The movie drags. Not just because of the slower 1970s pacing, but because it wastes over half of its running time on the flat uninteresting characters. They are written and executed so poorly it makes for an uninteresting film. You can’t wait for the snow to start falling. The movie picks up when the disaster finally hits, but so much of the entertainment comes from the hilariously bad special effects and over the top acting that you are laughing at the movie, not thrilling to it.

Yes, Avalanche is a disaster of a movie. But is it a disaster that Jonah and the Bots are ready to take on?

Episode Review:

Looks refreshing.

I don’t think Mystery Science Theater 3000 ever tackled a straight up disaster film before. The closest we got was the wonderfully hilarious San Francisco International, which was a 1970s television pilot filled to bursting with past their prime actors spouting out over-ripe dialogue and providing thrills on the tarmac. The movie was a perfect fit for riffing and it remains one of my favorite episodes of the entire series.

So Avalanche has a lot to live up to. Unfortunately, things just don’t work out so well this time around. That doesn’t mean that Jonah and the bots aren’t giving it their all, because they really are.

"Old man Peabody used to own all this..."

For those first 55 minutes or so, they riff away at the movie as best as they are able too. So much of the film deals with silly melodrama and talky scenes with Rock Hudson shouting at everyone that it was a bit of a struggle to keep things fresh. Jonah and the bots focus on the ripe dialogue and over baked performances.

And don’t worry they don’t go for any overly nasty pokes at Rock Hudson. There are a couple of subtle riffs playing off his lifestyle, but they focus more on his ranting and 70’s outfits. I will admit that MST3K has gone for the nasty jokes about celebrities in the past. Bela Lugosi’s drug problems played into quite a few riffs in Bride of the Monster and in the Rifftrax commentary for Plan 9 From Outer Space they went overboard (and Lugosi is hardly in the film). So it is nice to see Jonah and the crew not taking that tactic this time out. Keep it classy guys.

Jonah and the bots get their groove on too!

Since Avalanche falls smack dab in the midst of the disco era, and we have a party scene you get some of the best riffing during that sequence. As the scene starts Jonah say, “1978 you have so many crimes to answer for.” Tom adds, “We have an avalanche of polyester on the dance floor tonight.” As the Baked Alaska desserts are brought out the boys throw several funny quips at the oddity of the whole scene.

Crow says, “Not that I’m complaining, but by this time Gene Hackman was half way through the Poseidon.” And you are really starting to agree with him, when the avalanche hits. You get some unusual POV shots from the avalanche to which Crow comments “The Avalanche has a Go Pro on.” The disaster provides so much fodder for Jonah and the bots that they go into overdrive.

"You see when a man loves a tree very much..."

Seriously the quips come so fast and furious that you do end up missing quite a few of them. There is some great material in there from the kitchen cheerleader to the observation from Tom that “He fell in slow motion and they still couldn’t catch him?” It is a shame the riffing goes so quickly that it gets tangled up in itself. Luckily this is the last episode to really have this problem. From The Beast of Hollow Mountain forward, the riffing hits the perfect pace.

One more thing to look for at the end of Avalanche is a hilarious series of quips from Jonah and the bots as they pretend to write up reviews for David’s resort in Trip Advisor. These are all very funny, and the boys do a great job delivering them as the meaningful music plays in the finale.

If Neil Simon wrote the next Fast and Furious film.

The host segments are OK, with one stand out sequence. For the invention exchange the bots create a cool new Dustbuster that uses the human mouth as it’s suction device. Jonah gets a bunch of stuff caught in his “filter”. The Mads create a program that will create an instant font and look for your movie poster. All you have to do is say the title. The system is super sensitive, so it starts to pick up the Mad’s conversation with amusing results. At the first break the bots are convinced that the loud and pushy Rock Hudson is cool, so they try to emulate him. Jonah talks them down. Then it is time for our special guest as Neil Patrick Harris shows up as Kinga’s online boyfriend. The two sing a duet about how they are in love but don’t want to actually touch each other. Patton Oswald as Max steals the show as he pines for Kinga with his own little interlude.

I think I would pay to see Rabbitoxicity.

But my favorite of the host segments is inspired by a riff during the film. The boys come up with Syfy channel original movie title and realize that those ridiculous MegaShark versus Crocosquid movies need to stop. So they create a whole bevy of titles and trademark all of them so Syfy channel can’t make them. These are hilarious, and the amount of titles they come up with is impressive. Kinga and Max try their hand at a few too. When the movie ends Gypsy comes down to provide some songs and entertainment inspired by the boozy performance of David’s mom in the film. Her music touches everyone, even Kinga.

Like the previous episodes in Season 11, this one is entertaining, but it just doesn’t go much further than that. The movie’s first half is so dull, and the guys do the best job they can. The second half overwhelmed with the rapid-fire riffs that you get lost in all the jokes. With some pruning of the riffs in the second half this could have risen a full grade.

But as it stands I can only give it three kitchen cheerleaders out of five.

This episode is available on the Netflix Streaming.

"Dear Trip Advisor, I found a cheerleader in my salad and
the dressing was not on the side. 1 1/2 stars."