Set during the feudal Goryeo dynasty, a blacksmith’s daughter brings a metal-eating monster to life to defeat the corrupt monarchy.
BAR TRASH celebrates their 3rd year and 10th sensational season with WE ARE TRASH!, a fan-made mixtape of cult and chaotic cinema (May to Aug 2025).
Not every film gets made in freedom. In 1978, South Korean filmmaker Shin Sang-ok and his wife, actor Choi Eun-hee, were both kidnapped by North Korea on the orders of Kim Jong-Il, son of the then ruling dictator, Kim Il-Sung. The couple were held in captivity for 8 years and were coerced into making several films. PULGASARI was Shin’s last production before the couple fled to seek refuge in the United States in 1986 (back when the USA had a proud history of accepting asylum seekers and refugees into its film industry…).
PULGASARI is a remake of a now-lost 1962 South Korean kaiju film, BULGASARI, and features a giant mythical creature from Korean folklore. It might be one of the few communist kaiju eiga as the iron-eating monster fights to free impoverished villagers from corrupt tyranny.
“It’s a niche movie within a niche sub-genre, easily mocked because of the easily mockable man who demanded it be made, and easily relegated to the failure column for its surface ‘badness’ – or at the least, consigned to the ‘so bad it’s good’ column. But it’s more than that. The stirring mythology at the heart of it, married to the wobbly but earnest and sometimes near-operatic performances, and carried along by a nascent (but eventually recognizable) awareness of cinema and its place in it, makes it, for me, a nugget of irresistible gold.” (Robert Hornak, Zeke Film)
(automatically generated) Read LKL’s review of this event here.