Digging deep into the kaiju fishin’ hole of mid ’70s to late ’80s with this one, which i’m quite sure none of you has even heard of, Space Monster Wangmagwi.
And i can’t blame you because it was basically unheard of outside of South Korea until its 2022 international screening at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, and released on home video in 2023… for US home video, but it’s something.
Ailing from South Korea and actually being the earliest surviving South Korean giant monster movie (as the original 1962 Pulgasari is considered lost, just its script surviving as part of the Korean Film Archive), being made during the later child-friendly phase of Godzilla’s Showa era, actually the same year of the second Toho produced King Kong film, King Kong Escapes.
It’s also kinda surprisingly cheap, right away it gives off that aura as it’s a late ’60s films… in black and white and with production values that make me think Prince Of Space didn’t look that bad, though the laughable “tin can suits” the aliens (which show very human eyes through the eyehole-visor part of their suits) wear doesn’t help, as does the very cheap look of the ships dials and obvious old school phones and shower caps covered in kitchen tinfoil.
Still better than the “airplane cockpit cum shover privacy curtain” of Plan 9, but with that opening scene setting the bar for the special effects pretty low, i was expecting the scubagorilla from Robot Monster to be the kaiju the aliens would unleash…. you’d wish.
The titular Wangmagwi is a generic scaleless, featureless dingus version of the Creature From The Black Lagoon, basically, yet somehow monkey-ish, and with that silly combo of derpy mouth with tongue always out and pig-dog ears it’s almost asking to be laughed at.
For some reason it reminds me of Oolong from Dragon Ball (or conversely, Pigsy from Journey To The West).
You may have noticed i have not discussed the plot, and it’s not because the movie doesn’t have one, it does…. but most of the film is made up of honestly random comedic vignettes that happen during the monster rampage but are unrelated to the main plot, as in, aliens come around to see if Earth can be a fitting target for invasion-conquest, decide to send a monster in the Korean peninsula to attack South Korea, and because of Earth’s gravity being much lower than their planet (yeah, whatever, sure), the monster grows to giant size and wreaks havoc in Seoul.
The army fights back, specifically the Korean Air Force, but the monster shrugs it off, continues rampaging, they then lead it outside the city, and basically the aliens get annoyed/bored with the earthlings fighting back, decide Earth is just too much of a hassle to conquer (and they don’t wanna force the humans to use nuclear bombs as it will make the planet inhabitable for them as well), remote detonate an explosive they attached on the monster, and fuck off.
Can’t say i’ve seen many kaiju films where the alien invaders controlling the monsters act in cohoots with the producer and basically give up when there’s enough footage to call it a movie, because they gave up fast after admittedly having spent years and years searching for the perfect planet to make their new paradise, as the alien leader literally says early in the film.
Then again, i haven’t see any other kaiju film where the annoying kid character pisses on the monster ear, Space Monster Wangmagwi can have that dubious trophy, and yes, gotta have the kid character interacting with the monster, which is definitely not a friend of all children, not that it would have any reason to given how this kid is, but i digress.
Most of the movie it’s actually about the wedding subplot between a couple, with the guy being an Air Force pilot that is also called upon the very same day they planned their wedding, and it takes itself seriously… until the random vignettes come in, with two mumbling cowardly men betting on who can stay the longest before the monster arrives in the vicinity while also stopping each other from running away, a guy that due to the destruction of the building he is in manages to fall in its own, freshly produced shit, really basic and low brow stuff like this.
It’s just a bit weird to see the movie deciding to have amateur vaudeville style cabaret sketches during a kaiju rampage that it doesn’t stop for the sketches’ sake either, which wouldn’t be that weird or annoying… if these didn’t go on for what feels like forever, it’s almost unbelievable, and the only reason i can think of why is to pad out the film, since it’s all fluff unrelated (or ultimately irrilevant) to the main plot 99% of the times anyway.
I felt like i was MST3K’s Servo witnessing the finale of the Wild World Of Batwoman, they’re that bad.
I mentioned King Kong (the movie also does directly, twice), and it’s because of the alien monster randomly picking up the soon-to-be-bride and carrying her around, there’s no real reason why, aside from this being a monster movie very influenced by the foreign successes of King Kong and Godzilla, as there are some sensibilities that apparently wouldn’t have applied to/with Korean society at the time, like the couple deciding to take in the homeless boy as their child.
Which given how this kid behaves, talks and acts, i find it to be the more unbelievable thing of the film regardless.
The effects are done in the expected “asian monster movie” style and while sometimes you can tell this is cheap and it’s not exactly “finely crafted”…. i’ve seen plenty worse, i’m not giving them a backhanded compliment by saying they clearly tried, they did, and the result it’s a lot better than one could have reasonably expected given it’s only the second giant monster movied South Korea ever did, even if most of the dogfights are obviously using wartime stock footage of jetfighters.
Sadly there’s no happy ending for the viewer that has also to witness the kid character in action, a homeless boy nicknamed Squirrell that is supposed to be a lovable street tramp, but instead comes off as an insane annoying squirt that you’d wish would get flattened by the monster, but alas, nope.
Again, it’s an issue of tone as the movie otherwise takes itself more or less seriously, and there are some real world implication, in both how the monster comes to South Korea (implying so that is sent from North Korea) and how the monster sprays some liquid that burns even buildings in a jiff, reminding one of the napalm used by US forces during the Korean War.
To be quite honest, it’s not a bad effort in terms of effects, the plot is basic but suffices, the destruction is fine even if clearly not made by a team with decades of experience in this craft, but it’s like they didn’t know what the hell to stuff the movie with to keep the story going, despite the main wedding subplot being there and good enough to work on (even thought younger audiences wouldn’t have cared for it anyway) so they decided to inject lots of random silly and not really that funny random comedy filler, until the aliens (and the screenwriter) get bored and destroy the monster themselves, not that the military fighters are able to do anything to the monster or its oddly “indestructible until it is not” remote bomb strapped to its back.
And that makes it feel like a chore more than anything else, even putting aside the tonal shifts that suggest a movie made for a younger audience (especially with that silly monster design) but isn’t quite that either, it’s a subpar entry in the genre that feels very long even at just 82 minutes.
I’m still glad it was eventually released outside of South Korea, but it’s also a case where the historical significance of the film (like for the 1985’s Pulgasari “remake”) is far more interesting than the film itself, so in the end i recommend Space Monster Wangmagwi only to the hardcore kaiju buffs.
You can find it uploaded fully on Youtube at the moment, so there’s that.
Wise Cafe (International) 