Space Monster Wangmagwi
aka 우주괴인 왕마귀 aka Ujugoein Wangmagwi
1967
Written by Byeon Ha-yeong
Directed by Kwon Hyeok-jin
When you’ve lived in the global pop cinema trenches as long as I have, you’ve heard of hundreds of films that exist only as tattered movie posters, a few existing publicity stills, and if we are lucky, a brief clip that was used as footage in another movie. Every once in a while there is a flash of luck, someone finds a reel in an attic, a film archive realizes something is misnamed, or a film spontaneously appears online, no one knows why. Maybe the film was cursed to not exist unless it did brave deeds in a cinematic afterlife. Whatever the reason, lost films and the occasional miracles are a fact of life. And that’s what we are talking about today.
A long time ago, on the internet, there was a story about a film. A Korean giant monster movie that still existed, but for whatever reasons was hidden away in a film archive. All we knew of 1967’s Space Monster Wangmagwi (우주괴인 왕마귀) was a few still images and a story about the film being sued by the producers of Yongary. It wasn’t a secret that the film existed, but we didn’t know anything else about it. All we know was it just wasn’t allowed outside to play!
Until it was!
Yep, Space Monster Wangmagwi got a bluray release! Finally, this long imprisoned holy grail is there, for everyone to see! To see…that it isn’t very good! Ooh, sick burn on Wangmagwi there. Don’t worry, the film can take it. It’s definitely an odd flick that doesn’t conform to a lot of established structure for giant monster movies while still delivering a lot of giant monster tropes and action. It is one of those odd disappointments, where despite being disappointed, the movie sticks in your mind like some sort of feral child occasionally stabbing you with a tiny knife. Uh, spoilers!
Aliens from outer space arrive in our solar system and set a plan in motion to conquer the Earth! This will be accomplished by tossing a monster onto the planet, and Earth will cause the monster to grow to giant size, thus allowing him to smash everything and the aliens win. Look, it’s not a very good plan, but it’s the plan these guys have! The aliens wear suits that make them look like the alien invaders from Invasion of the Neptune Men, and the King Kong influences are so incredibly obvious they might as well have had Wangmagwi battle a tyrannosaur. Or battle Yongary. Hey, now that’s a sequel idea! Someone get Yongary on the phone! What? He ate the phone?
The aliens take advantage of a giant hurricane making landfall to disguise their attack. This does not work, they are detected immediately. No matter, the monster will smash everything, let’s stick with the plan, there was no budget for a Plan B!
Our human plot involves a couple about to get married, but the man is called away to help with the hurricane evacuations. His fiancé continues to plan for her wedding to take place despite a very large storm and later the very large rampaging monster. Sometimes you have to just give up the deposit and reschedule! Never fear, the monster Wangmagwi takes a liking to her and carries her around like a doll. At some point a homeless child also gets grabbed by the monster, the kid goes full goblin mode and sneaks into the monster’s cavernous ears and nose chambers and just starts stabbing with his pocket knife. These scenes were disgusting but also hilarious. You’ve probably never seen a classic man in suit monster movie where a child is running around inside the monster’s nose.
Space Monster Wangmagwi being a product of the early 1960s gives it the freedom to react to the changing landscape of the monster movies. The Gojira series’s dramatic wartime echoes had begun to cool as the movies began to explore more lighter sides. Wangmagwi decided that a lot of lighter asides was what was needed, and just crams them in at odd intervals between scenes of the monster smashing cities. Yep, random comic relief to break up the tension. Just imagine if every quip in a Marvel movie was instead a three minute sketch.
The special effects are perfectly fine, I wouldn’t call them bad for the era and there are a lot of miniatures that gets smashed up by the rampaging monster. That’s the stuff I love, tear up them models, Wangmagwi! The biggest problem is the monster itself, it’s just too obviously a guy in a suit with a mask that barely moves. It is on the level of the budget monsters you’d see on very young kit focused tokusatsu shows, where they were trying to stretch things until the end of the season. They at least tried to make part of the mouth wiggle around, which isn’t nothing, but just makes the rest of the lack of movement more obvious. Heck, there is a giant a tongue permanently stuck out. The rigid mask is an odd contrast to the running plot thread of characters climbing around and inside of the monster’s head. The perfect opportunity to incorporate facial movement as characters were literally stabbing the face. Or say the stabbings caused facial paralysis!
Speaking of paralysis, most of the characters are one-dimensional and don’t have anything interesting going on. They are just adequate to be positive role models about defending Korea while also being forgettable enough that it doesn’t matter. The main exception is the child, Squirrel (Jeon Sang-cheol), who is an orphan that lives on the edges of society, even breaking into the abandoned house of the heroine while the area is evacuated to gorge on some food. He’s so rough and tumble of a scamp, but also another representative of Korea overcoming struggle to try to rebuild itself after a devastating civil war, and portrayed in a way that just isn’t normally seen. While most of this film is destined to fade away in my mind, I’m always going to remember his character as something real and raw just shoved into the midst of this silly monster movie.
One of the big theories for why Space Monster Wangmagwi was disappeared for so long was that they were embarrassed by the movie. It wasn’t very good, it didn’t know what it wanted to be, and Yongary showed up the same year, in full color, and ate its lunch like Godzilla eats Tokyo. How can Wangmagwi compete with a movie where a giant monster bleeds to death from his butt? I’d hide my films, too. In fact, I am hiding them right now. If you solve a series of clues…
While I don’t think this is embarrassingly bad, it certainly never lived up to the legend, and not even the shadow of the legend. Not worth hiding away, but not worth celebrating. Wangmagwi instead was transformed from failure into a lost media holy grail, one destined to one day return and give us all hope that finding other lost kaiju films was not only possible, but would happen. Heck, we just might find us Gogola or Tokyo 1960! Okay, probably not. But we did get to see this movie, thanks to the power of someone giving them some money! We all learned something, like when sometimes you unlock Pandora’s Box, the box is just full of boring! And I’ll be there, bored as heck, baby!
