Sometimes the story behind a film is far more interesting than the film itself.
That was definitely the case with the North Korean film, Pulgasari.
When his ex-wife, Choi Eun-hee, disappeared while on a trip to Hong Kong, South Korean director Shin Sang-ok was upset that he was being blamed for her disappearance and went in search of her. Unfortunately, he didn’t realize that she had been kidnapped by the North Korean secret police on the orders of a young, film obsessed North Korean official named Kim Jong Il (who just happened to be the leader’s son). Before Shin got very far with his search, the North Koreans kidnapped him as well, and forced him to direct films for the North Korean national film industry.
You can’t make up stories like this, folks.
Now Kim Jong Il loved Godzilla movies and he desperately wanted to create one of his own as a proof of the superiority of North Korean culture. To do this, he not only kidnapped Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee, but he hired a lot of Toho’s special effects people to work on the film, including one of the current Godzilla suit actors, telling them that the production was actually in China.
And, of course, he borrowed the basic plot from the first South Korean Kaiju film, Bulgasari (which is now lost), although the creature in both films was based on a legendary Korean monster.
Eventually, Shin Sang-ok and his wife managed to escape, only he was afraid that the South Korean Government wouldn’t believe the whole absurd tale of his eight year ordeal, and he ended up working in the American film industry under the alias of Simon Sheen.
Which is when something even more absurd happened.
You see, Shin was not happy with the way Pulgasari worked out, thanks, of course, to the loving attention of a certain North Korean despot, and wanted to make his own version of the film.
While he’d wanted to direct the film, in the end he wrote the script and produced it through his production company. In one of the many ironies of Galgameth’s strange history (and pre-history), the film was shot in Romania which had thrown off Communist rule not too long before and was now a favorite haven of low budget filmmakers.
Now I’ve got to point out that Galgameth is, pure a simple, a children’s film, although one which starts out as dark as one of the Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm.
A young prince, Davin, reluctantly takes part in his first joust, and manages to knock down his opponent after he accidentally fell off his horse.
The Knight proves to be his father. He has a mild injury of his arm but still celebrates his son’s bravery.
Unfortunately, his chief knight, El El, sees this as the opportunity of a lifetime and poisons him.
This means that Davin is now the King, but he is so distraught at his father’s death that he leaves everything in the hands of El El.
And when he finally does find out what El El has been doing in his name, Davin is locked up.
He then escapes with the help of the magical creature, Galgameth, a metal munching monstrosity that grows bigger the more metal he consumes…
Right around the same time that Galgameth came out, there were a number of attempts to make American Godzilla copies, including the TV movie Gargantua (1998), and Full Moon Features attempt to spin off a new label, Monster Island Entertainment, for Kaiju Eiga style films, which resulted in Zarkorr! The Invader (1996) and Kraa! The Sea Monster two years later. I suspect we can blame this on the hype for the upcoming American Godzilla film (which did get stuck in development Hell for several years). None of these films are exactly terrible — in fact, most of them are reasonably proficient efforts — but none of them seem to have generated much enthusiasm, either.
That definitely seems to be the case for Galgameth: it is one of those films that gets mentioned once in a while, or shows up in a search for giant monster movies. It is a very pleasant sort of film, with an appealing pair of leads, a great, scenery-chewing performance from Stephen Macht as El El, and fairly good giant monster effects. Galgameth goes through a number of different stages, from cute and child-like to an increasingly jagged and armored version — with a stunning transformation when El El’s men try to burn the creature to death in a church. I suspect that they had a far larger budget than the Full Moon films as these effects are surprisingly good, at least for a low-budget effort.
It’s a pretty good time-waster with a great period look. It’s a bit on the sentimental side perhaps, but fun in a brainless sort of way.
Which is more or less what one wants from a film like this. But it is perhaps too much of a children’s film to appeal to adults.
Oh, well. As I said before, sometimes the story of a film is far more interesting than the film itself.
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4 thoughts on “Galgameth [The Legend of Galgameth] (1996)”