This essay is a modest re-working of one I penned ten years ago for a blogathon (remember those?!) co-hosted by this site. It feels a bit of a cheat to rob from myself (lest I appear too much the over-fed protector-god), but it falls well within the spirit of this tribute film festival, as the film has an extremely limited life in the open wild. It’s available on VHS and DVD across various sites, but it will never rise above bootleg quality, given its shrouded, near-dystopian history. And with its poor picture quality, de facto no matter where you find it, you might as well see it for free on Youtube.
I see that Allan has included in his list of the 5,000 Best Screen Works the original 1954 Godzilla, directed by Ishirō Honda, but I don’t know the extent to which he hung his hat on kaiju films in general. And I also can’t know if he ever deigned to look upon something so seemingly trivial at best, potentially disposable at worst as the movie I’m proffering today, on day 8, the second Sabbath of this year’s AFOFF. But as for me, I’m bound by a DNA-imprinted love for quaint and questionable fare to always say “yes, please” when offered a man stomping around in a rubber monster suit. It’s a weakness that’s never left me. You can still catch me watching Godzilla vs Megalon or Gorgo or The Land That Time Forgot, but you won’t see me laughing derisively – you’ll see me smiling warmly at the memory of childhood belief. In the case of 1985’s despot-bankrolled Pulgasari, I’m a sucker not only for the direct, electric connection to my pre-teen taste for the destruction of miniature sets, but for the way this particular specimen subverts the expectation of so-called cheese with ever-so-brief flashes of weighty political ornamentation, pop mythology of the North Korean kind, and moments of legitimate cinematic flare. It’s just the kind of thing that hits me right in the nexus of personal nostalgia and fascination with political history – it’s dyed-red communist propaganda in the guise of one of the most magnificent giant monster movies I’ve seen.
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