Aliens planning on conquering Earth send a monster down to the Korean peninsula to start the process. This Korean response to the lucrative Godzilla films being made across the Sea of Japan is a silly adventure designed for a juvenile audience, with a heroic youngster, slapstick (and occasionally scatological) humour, and lots of monster mayhem (all in all, not that unlike contemporaneous Japanese kaiju offerings, especially the Gamera franchise). The crude and simplistic space-monster costume is an underwhelming example of 'suit-mation' but some of the miniature sets are remarkably good and the alien spaceship is more imaginative than usual for the genre (the aliens themselves are laughable). There is little to the storyline: for the most part the monster wanders aimlessly through the streets of Seoul (I assume), knocking over buildings and stepping on cars (and people) while carrying a young women whose wedding its arrival interrupted. Defensive measures are taken (via lots of stock footage of Korean F-86 Sabre jets) but, needless to say, mankind's puny weapons have no effect. The film takes a delirious turn when an intrepid and resourceful young lad decides to take on the beast armed only with a knife. This leads to a 'Fantastic Voyage' type adventure as the kid sneaks into the monster's ear-canal, cuts his way through the tympanic membrane, and eventually makes his way to the creature's nose, managing not to fall to his death through the nostrils by grabbing on to what I can only assume are kaiju-sized nose-hairs. If you are in the right mood, some of this is entertainingly silly but most of the scenes go on too long (especially the 'comic' side-plot about two cowards betting who is braver), the antics of the boy-hero get tiresome after a while, and the premise that the abducted bride can be safely carried in one hand by the rampaging creature quickly become ludicrous (admittedly the implication that the towering horror is leering at the torn bodice of her wedding dress is an amusing touch). This was the second Korean attempt at a kaiju outing (the first being the lost 'Bulgasari' (1962)) and predates number three, the more typical and better known (but not much better) 'Yongary, Monster from the Deep', by a few months. Definitely a must-see for kaiju life-listers and some of the weirder parts lifts the opus a couple of inches from the bottom of the kaiju-barrel. Watched on Tubi with English sub-titles.
