Reviews
Revisiting ‘Pulgasari’ (1985), or “Remember That Time Kim Jong Il Made A Monster Movie?”
Did you know Kim Jong Il was a big fan of movies? It’s recorded that the second Supreme Leader of North Korea often said he wanted to be a film critic or a film producer as a young man. He even ended up writing the handbook that would shape North Korean movie making (titled On The Art of Cinema), and according to some sources he aided in the production of as many as 100 movies in his life. Among his best-known works are 1969’s Sea of Blood and 1972’s Flower Girl, both about the Korean independence movement of the 1930s and Korea’s conflicts with the Japanese occupation of the country. His best-known film Pulgasari, is a kaiju movie about a giant monster that eats metal.
A MYTH, A REMAKE, AND A DREAM OF MONSTERS
We are of course talking about 1985’s Pulgasari, a movie based on the Korean myth of the Bulgasari, or Bulgasal. It’s also loosely a remake of the 1962 movie Bulgasari, a lost South Korean film that, to my understanding, only a singular surviving copy of which is known to exist is in the custody of the Korean Film Archive. Despite its lackluster reception at the time, Bulgasari was the first piece of South Korean film to have proper special effects in it, making it an artistic watershed moment in Korean film history.
The Bulgasari myth that the film is based on goes as follows: an innocent blacksmith (or his daughter in some versions) is killed by an unjust regime, and an effigy of a monster is created and imbued with life by his wish, becoming the Bulgasari. The creature is then sent to destroy the oppressors by eating the metal from their weapons. The creature becomes gradually stronger and larger with each conflict, until it runs out of control. Seeking more metal to satisfy its hunger, it ironically conquers the people it was supposed to protect.
When a deep sense of love for filmmaking collided with an even deeper sense of nationalistic pride in the idea that North Korea could become a filmmaking powerhouse, Il’s efforts to make a film about this story turned towards the talents of South Korean filmmaker Shin Sang-ok, and his ex-wife Choi Eun-hee. Sang-ok was undoubtedly an odd choice for a medieval movie about a raging monster, since his experience and claim to fame was primarily in war dramas about the exploitation of women. A plan to get ahold of Sang-ok, combined with the revival of Godzilla in 1984 as the Heisei-era was set in motion, solidified Il’s plot.
As the story goes, a would-be dictator then kidnapped the South Korean national treasure’s ex-wife, using Eun-hee as bait to lure Sang-ok into his clutches. It was hard for outsiders to verify that the two hadn’t defected due to the country’s insularity, and that was the story that Il planned to keep running with. These weren’t the only crew brought on either, as Il managed to deceive a whole crew of former Toho employees to join in by faking a shooting schedule in China and bringing them to North Korea instead.
THE FLIGHT OF THE FILMMAKERS
And make Pulgasari they did, with Sang-ok residing in a labor camp for the majority of his time in the country. So, what did Kim Jong Il think of the end product of their captivity?
He loved it.
After all, it was very popular among the DPRK’s citizens and in the eyes of Il, a technical marvel. The only problem was North Korea’s film industry needed a serious infusion of cash flow after Sang-ok had made several other films at Il’s behest following Pulgasari. Il’s new plan to amend this was the opposite of his original: he would actually cut Sang-ok and Eun-hee loose and allow them to travel (under the watch of armed guard) to promote the film. He’d even send them to Vienna in hopes of securing foreign investors to fund another film, this time about Genghis Khan rather than a giant steel-munching monster.
Not looking a gift horse in the mouth, the couple fled at the first opening they got, and made it into the protective arms of the U.S. via the Venetian embassy; they even ended up remarrying after the fact. Kim Jong Il supposedly struck all record of Sang-ok’s work from the public eye as a response, expunging his name from the creation, and the rest is history.
PULGASARI AND THE SOUL OF THE MONSTER
There’s been, for good reason, a lot of reevaluations of Pulgasari and its artistic merits in recent years. Its creation was the perfect storm of cultural fears turned truth, fact stranger than fiction, and urban legend turned verifiably real event. It’s just too good of a story to ignore.
The film’s themes and narrative are dynamic in this context, reignited under the shining lens of new knowledge about how the film was made and the impact it had on North Korean culture. Some find it to be an unbelievably well-made piece of counterculture, secretly weaponized against the man who wanted it made in the first place. Others find it an unwatchable and disturbing relic of film history. And some even treat it as a cult classic that lives up in quality to its reputation as a real-life production.
Ultimately, I was somewhat underwhelmed with what I found when it came to the meat of Pulgasari. It isn’t boring, certainly, so it hasn’t committed the worst sin a movie can. But as much as I can talk about liking the sentiment of the original myth, its perennial idea of the power of the collective and the dangers of centralizing a movement around one person, and the performances being surprisingly good, there’s just one big glaring problem with this monster movie: the monster is the least interesting part in the entire runtime.
In my recent conversations of kaiju films as of late, I’ve talked about the presence of a well-made monster suit; the way the mise en scene of tokusatsu can reach through the screen and immerse you, add a new layer of life to the film. But when the Pulgasari becomes the monster he’s supposed to be, he doesn’t have any of that. Design-wise, it’s a fine suit with its vaguely-reptilian-vaguely-mammalian style. But there’s a distinct lifelessness that you’ll have to reckon with when watching it; it’s stiff in motion, and plastic in the most unappealing of ways. Its scale against the buildings and people around it feels weak, which is hard to ignore in a movie where the creature’s gimmick is that it’s constantly growing.
There are just so few expressive moments outside the time in its miniaturized form where the titular creature gets to live. It stomps around and destroys, but the stage-play sort of presentation in how it’s framed feels more strange than enjoyable. The Pulgasari has an uncanny evocation of fear in its glassy and bestial eyes, but it’s a one-trick pony as far as practical monsters go. Vaguely unsettling, with little else to offer.
WHAT WENT WRONG WITH PULGASARI?
I don’t blame the craft of the Toho employees or the performance of Kenpachiro Satsuma, a Showa-era Godzilla actor who had been taken along with them to play the Pulgasari. I think what happened with Pulgasari is, ironically, the same thing that happens with many horror movies. Making a monster movie is always a gamble, and not every kaiju film will be a Godzilla vs Hedorah, or Kaneko’s Gamera. Even beyond the unimaginable pressure of being kidnapped and forced to make a film, you can have a perfect storm of talent, and still end up producing something less than the sum of its parts thanks to the unending storm of circumstances and technical issues that plague film crews.
As always, I encourage you to see Pulgasari for yourself, if not for the entertainment value you might find in it, then for the mythos that have been unveiled about its making. It’s a doozy unpacking the film knowing the truth of its birth, and more importantly not that hard to get ahold of: there are more than a few uploads online that make the film free to watch.
For the first time looking for media for an article, the rip I’ve found is on YouTube is surprisingly high quality in its remastered state.
We’re far from the time when Pulgasari was a rarity that was hard to view, so if you take anything from this, take that as a small victory and take advantage. Seize the day, and happy watching horror fans!
Those expecting Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein to be similar to the book, or to any other adaptation, are in for something else. A longtime enjoyer of the creature’s story, Del Toro instead draws from many places: the novel, James Whale’s culturally defining 1931 film, the Kenneth Branagh version, there are even hints from Terence Fisher’s Curse of Frankenstein, and if the set design and costuming are to be believed, there are trace elements of the National Theatre production too.
The formulation to breathe life into this amalgam is a sort of storm cloud of cultural memory and personal desire for Del Toro. This is about crafting his Frankenstein: the one he wanted to see since he was young, the vision he wanted to stitch together. What results is an experience that is more colorful and kinetic and well-loved by its creator than any Frankenstein we’ve had yet, but what it leaves behind is much of its gothic heart. Quiet darkness, looming dread, poetry, and romance are set aside as what has been sold as “the definitive retelling” goes off to the races. It’s a fast-paced ride through a world of mad science, and you’re on it.
Victor Frankenstein’s Ambition and Tragedy
A tale as old as time, with some changes: the morbid talents and untamed hubris of Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) guide him to challenge death itself. Spurred by a wealthy investor named Henrich Harlander, and a desire for Harlander’s niece Elizabeth (Mia Goth), Victor uses dead flesh and voltaic vigor to bring a creature to life. His attempts to rear it, however, go horribly wrong, setting the two on a bloody collision course as the definitions of man and monster become blurred.
Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein is more Hellboy in its presentation than it is Crimson Peak; it’s honestly more similar to Coppola’s Dracula than either of them. The film is barely done with its opening when it starts with a loud sequence of the monster attacking Walton’s ship on the ice. Flinging crew members about and walking against volleys of gunfire, he is a monstrosity by no other name. The Creature (Jacob Elordi) cries out in guttural screams, part animal and part man, as it calls for its creator to be returned to him. While visually impressive (and it remains visually impressive throughout, believe me), this appropriately bombastic hook foreshadows a problem with tone and tempo.
A Monster That Moves Too Fast
The pace overall is far too fast for its first half, even with its heavy two-and-a-half-hour runtime. It’s also a far cry from the brooding nature the story usually takes. A scene where Victor demonstrates rudimentary reanimation to his peers and a council of judges is rapid, where it should be agonizingly slow. There’s horror and an instability in Victor to be emphasized in that moment, but the grotesque sight is an oddly triumphant one instead. Most do not revile his experiments; in fact he’s taken quite seriously.
Many scenes like this create a tonal problem that makes Victor’s tale lean more toward melodrama than toward philosophical or emotional aspects; he is blatantly wild and free, in a way that is respected rather than pitied. There are opportunities to stop, breathe in the Victorian roses and the smell of death, to get really dour, but it’s neglected until the film’s second half.
Isaac’s and Goth’s performances are overwrought at points, feeling more like pantomimes of Byronic characters. I’m not entirely convinced it has more to do with them than with the script they’re given. Like Victor working with the parts of inmates and dead soldiers, even the best of actors with the best of on-screen chemistry are forced to make do. The dialogue has incredibly high highs (especially in its final moments), but when it has lows, how low they are; a character outright stating that “Victor is the real monster” adage to his face was an ocean floor piece of writing if there ever was one.
Isaac, Goth, and Elordi Bring Life to the Dead
Jacob Elordi’s work here, however, is blameless. Though Elordi’s physical performance as the creature will surely win praise, his time speaking is the true highlight. It’s almost certainly a definitive portrayal of the character; his voice for Victor’s creation is haunted with scorn and solitude, the same way his flesh is haunted by the marks of his creator’s handiwork. It agonizes me to see so little of the books’ most iconic lines used wholesale here, because they would be absolutely perfect coming from Elordi. Still, he has incredible chemistry with both Isaac and Goth, and for as brief as their time together is, he radiates pure force.
Frankenstein Is a Masterclass in Mise-En-Scène
Despite its pacing and tone issues, one can’t help but appreciate the truly masterful craftsmanship Del Toro has managed to pack into the screen. Every millimeter of the sets is carved to specification, filled with personality through to the shadows. Every piece of brick, hint of frost, stain of blood, and curve of the vine is painstakingly and surgically placed to create one of the most wonderful and spellbinding sets you’ve seen—and then it keeps presenting you with new environments like that, over, and over.
At the very least, Del Toro’s Frankenstein is a masterpiece of mise-en-scène down to the minutest of details, and that makes it endlessly rewatchable for aesthetic purposes. This isn’t even getting into the effervescent lighting, or how returning collaborator Kate Hawley has outdone herself again with the costuming. Guillermo Del Toro tackling the king of gothic horror stories, a story written by the mother of all science fiction, inevitably set a high bar for him to clear. And while it’s not a pitch perfect rendering of Mary Shelley’s slow moving and Shakespearean epistolary, it is still one of the best-looking movies you will see all year.
Perhaps for us, it’s at the cost of adapting the straightforward, dark story we know into something more operatic. It sings the tale like a soprano rather than reciting it like humble prose, and it doesn’t always sing well. But for Del Toro, the epic scale and voice of this adaptation is the wage expected for making the movie he’s always dreamed of. Even with its problems, it’s well worth it to see a visionary director at work on a story they love.
In my home, films like Night of the Demon and Abominable are played on repeat; Stan Gordon is king. One of my favorite stories surrounding Bigfoot and Ufology is the Bigfoot/UFO double flap of 1973, which Stan Gordon has an incredible in-depth book on. The Patterson–Gimlin film couldn’t hold a flame to Stan Gordon’s dive into one of my home state’s most chronicled supernatural time periods. But as much as I love the Bigfoot topic, I’m not ashamed to say I don’t know half of the stories surrounding that big hairy beast. And one topic that I’m not ashamed to say I haven’t heard of is The Siege of Ape Canyon.
The Harrowing Events of Ape Canyon
Washington State, 1924. A group of miners (originally consisting of Marion Smith, Leroy P. Smith, Fred Beck, John Peterson, August Johannson, and Mac Rhodes) was on a quest to claim a potential gold mine. Literally. The miners would eventually set up camp on the east slope of Mount Saint Helens. Little did they know their temporary shelter would be the start of a multi-day barrage of attacks from what they and researchers believed to be Bigfoot. What transpired in those days would turn out to be one of the most highly criticized pieces of American lore, nearly lost to time and history…nearly.
I need to set the record straight on a few things before we get started. One, I don’t typically like watching documentaries. Two, I believe in Bigfoot. Three, this documentary made me cry.
Image courtesy of Justin Cook Public Relations.
Reviving a Forgotten Bigfoot Legend in The Siege of Ape Canyon
Documentarian Eli Watson sets out to tell one of the most prolific Bigfoot stories of all time (for those who are deep in Bigfoot mythology). It’s noted fairly early in the film that this story is told often and is well known in the Washington area. So then, how do people outside of the incident location know so little about it? I’ve read at least 15 books on and about Bigfoot, and I’ve never once heard this story. This isn’t a Stan-Gordon-reported story about someone sitting on the john and seeing a pair of red eyes outside of their bathroom window. The story around Ape Canyon has a deeper spiritual meaning that goes beyond a few sightings here and there.
Watson’s documentary, though, isn’t just about Bigfoot or unearthing the story of Ape Canyon. Ape Canyon nearly became nothing more than a tall tale that elders would share around a campfire to keep the younglings out of the woods at 2 AM. If it weren’t for Mark Myrsell, that’s exactly what would have happened. The Siege of Ape Canyon spends half its time unpacking the story of Fred Beck and his prospecting crew, and the other half tells a truly inspiring tale of unbridled passion, friendship, and love.
Mark Myrsell’s Relentless Pursuit: Friendship, Truth, and Tears
Mark Myrsell’s undying passion for everything outdoors inevitably led to bringing one of Bigfoot’s craziest stories to light. His devotion to the truth vindicated many people who were (probably) labeled kooks and crazies. Throughout Myrsell’s endless search for the truth, he made lifelong friends along the way. What brought me to tears throughout The Siege of Ape Canyon is Watson’s insistence on showing the human side of Myrsell and his friends. They’re not in this to make millions or bag a Bigfoot corpse; they just want to know the truth. And that’s what they find.
The Siege of Ape Canyon is a documentary that will open your eyes to a wildly mystical story you may not have heard of. And it does it pretty damn well. Whereas many documentaries feel the need to talk down to the viewer just to educate them, Watson’s documentary takes you along for the ride. It doesn’t ask you to believe or not believe in Bigfoot. It allows you to make your own decisions and provides the evidence it needs to. If you’ve ever had a passing interest in the topic of Bigfoot, or if you think you’re the next Stan Gordon, I highly recommend watching The Siege of Ape Canyon.
The Siege of Ape Canyon stomps its way onto digital platforms on November 11. Give yourself a little post-Halloween treat and check it out!
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