PULGASARI
I've wanted to see this one forever as I'm a big fan of the fabulous Kim Jong Il and this is essentially his ON DEADLY GROUND. Apparently, dear leader is a kaiju eiga fan so he made the director that he allegedly kidnapped make him a guy in a suit monster picture. That's the kind of no nonsense dictator we're missing in the world now. Instead we got shit for brains like Hugo Chavez and those various monkey fuckers in Africa, guys with no vision. Useless. But I digress. I liked PULGASARI. It's nothing new but certainly stands up as well as many giant monster movies like GAPPA. The story is set in feudal Korea with a typically evil warlord making everybody miserable. The warlord wants a blacksmith to make weapons but he refuses and is imprisoned. The blacksmith then crafts a tiny figurine out of rice to get his revenge on the warlord. The blacksmith dies but his daughter gets the figurine, which she accidentally bleeds on, causing it to become alive. The little rice figure is Pulgasari who starts to grow and eat metal. He looks like a chubby hornless Minotaur but as he gets bigger he grows horns and an attitude. There's some wacky comedy as the invulnerable Pulgasari, now about six feet plus, slaps around the warlord's men. Pulgasri marches off to war with the peasants, eventually eating enough metal to grow giant monster size. After escaping from being buried under tons of rocks, he escapes to destroy the warlord. The end, right? No, because we didn't get to the moral yet. Sadly, i'm not sure what it is but Pulgasari needs more metal to survive but it would cost the villagers their livelihood, so the girl who sorta controls him realizes she and Pulgasri need to go together. She tricks him into eating her, thus returning Pulgasari to his spirit form. Capitalism is bad. I think. It's really not as crazy as you would think and is a decent enough picture. If you like the Daimajin movies, well...it's not as good as those but similar. All things considered, it is unique.
