It's not everyday that you see a movie made by the leader of a communist nation, let alone a kaiju movie. Basically this movie here was produced by Kim Il Sung, the leader of North Korea (not at the time, but is now). The crew of the film include over 10,000 extras from the Korean People's Army, the same guy in the suit of a lot of Godzilla movies, and a director held against his will in house arrest. Probably due to the political nature of the whole thing (and maybe even the inner communist analogy), the film was supposedly banned from the rest of the world for some 13 years. It was made in 1985, shown like once in North Korea in 1990, and finally made a worldwide debut in Japan in 1998 (that's why the video version is in Japanese with subtitles).

In 14th century Korea, the local peasants are being oppressed by iron-robbing, up-riser-jailing, old-lady-beating government ran by a tyrant in a goofy flat-toped hat. A blacksmith guy is jailed without food for "loosing" farm tools before making them into weapons. He is finally snuck globs of rice to eat, but he instead sculpts a little action figure based on the legendary creature Pulgasari (meaning "Immortal"). Well after he starves to death, his daughter takes the rice-sculpture and accidentally bleeds on it. Obviously, it comes to life, and starts eating iron objects to become bigger. The little metal-muncher runs around all over the place gobbling up every hunk o' iron it can find including the swords of the army. Pulgasari then joins the local militia of peasants in an effort to overthrow the government. The spoils of warfare make him even larger, until he's at typical kaiju proportions. The military don't like getting stepped on, so they capture that one girl that "gave Pulgasari life", and thereby force Pulgasari to be trapped in a big cage (he don't want her killed after all). Setting the cage to burn the big lug to death turns out to be a bad idea, as the giant hunk of living metal just bursts right out red-hot. Later attempts on his life include primitive missiles, burying him in a big pit, and shooting him with the new-fangled invention known as cannons. Well none of those work and Pulgasari eventually squishes Mr. Tyrant. Although happy that Pulgasari gave them freedom, he's a very hungry fellow, and they eventually run out of iron to feed him. So, the previously mentioned female character sacrifices herself by getting herself eaten by him, and Pulgasari is turned into a real big pile of scrap metal.

Because this movie was made by a communist nation by one of the main politician guys, it obviously has a plot with a lot of symbology of various things. Even so, the plot is still pretty good, and works pretty well as an epic samurai-type flick. It gets pretty dramatic at times (sometimes over-dramatic), and has enough twists to keep you watching. However, the main part of the show is the visual effects. First off, there is literally thousands of extra's running around in massive battle scenes. It gives a real sense of medieval Korean warfare, mainly because it's a Korean military dressed up like a medieval time. There are many scenes involving a ton of people charging forward, seemingly get blown up (I hope not for real), and finally clashing together with some real cool sword-slashing sound effects. As a whole it gives a fairly believable view of medieval Korea. On the other side of the effects is the Pulgasari stuff. The suitamation is pretty good, with a highly-detailed rubber suit and well-made model buildings. Pulgasari's interactions with them humans are fairly good, with a big fake foot and what is said to be a drive-in movie screen, but occasionally it gets a little bad with big still pictures that people talk to. Somehow there are also missiles and cannons in this movie (I GUESS it's possible), and the explosive effects with those are pretty good too.

As a whole, this is actually a great movie. Sure, it's a communist propaganda movie that's a rip-off of Daimajin, but it's still a nice epic medieval Korea flick meets giant monster movie. Some say that the special effects are really bad, but it's actually on par with 70's kaiju movies (even though it was made in the 80's). I don't know why (or if) the thing was banned for so long, but that does not mean it's a horrible movie. It's actually surprisingly good.

Good, epic plot

Good special effects (70's par)

Good showing of medieval Korea

Lots of massive war battle sequences

Best monster made of squished-up rice I have ever seen!

Communist propaganda film

Occational lapses in good effects

The goofier your hat, the higher ranking you are.

I didn't know they had missiles and cannons in 14th century Korea!

Feed me! FEED ME!

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