Varan - Das Monster aus der Urzeit

I think this was Toho's fourth "giant monster on the loose" movie, and it's also probably the least known. The American "version", "Varan the Unbelievable", is a travesty and should be avoided at all costs.

The Japanese original has some really good things about it. It features one of Akira Ifukube's best monster-movie scores, in which he introduced some themes that would be re-used in practically every kaiju eiga that followed... There's also a wonderful "Lovecraft-gone-Japanese" feeling about the protagonists' arrival in the village: they interrupt a strange ceremony, and a sea of masked faces turns to watch them. This is followed by an eerie scene as they follow a mist-shrouded path to the forbidden lake.

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is a little uninspired. It doesn't have the emotional tension of "Godzilla" or "Rodan", although the monster costume and attack scenes are very, very good.

Don't confuse this original Japanese monster film with its cheap American version called "Varan, the Unbelievable." The American version was a hack job and a half.

Ironically, this original seems to have too much "American" in it as well. The film was commissioned by ABC-TV in 1958 and shot by Toho. Unfortunately, Toho had seen American TV and had noticed that Americans have a penchant for action -- lots of action (i.e., "War of the Worlds," "Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers," "Invaders from Mars"). Toho gave ABC what it thought they wanted. A monster movie with little plot and lots of action.

This concept turns "Baran" into a mediocre film. Even "Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" and "It Came From Beneath the Sea" had well-thought out plots and good acting.

The plot (or what is supposed to be the plot) deals with an isolated village in northern Japan. The villagers worship a god called "Baradagi." Two butterfly scientists come calling and get shunned by the high priest. They press on, find a rare butterfly and also find a huge shadow and a massive rock slide.

A reporter who is also the sister of one of the crushed scientists drags another butterfly scientist along, as well as a fat cameraman, to the village. They ignore the priest and rouse Varan, a dinosaur that trashes the village.

Unlike "Gojira" where the tension built slowly, here, there is no tension. The military responds (ineffectively) and then we see lots of attacks by the Navy, Air Force and Army. Finally, a simple solution is found to stop the monster that seems like it should have been easier (like when police launch a massive manhunt for a missing person and then find the person's car three blocks away about three weeks later, making you wonder why they didn't find it sooner).

Too many potential plot twists are left flapping in the breeze. The high priest (Akira Sira) and his villagers don't get enough screen time. The supposed romance between the butterfly scientist (Kozo Nomura) and the reporter (Ayumi Sunoda) was supposed to emulate Emiko Yemane and Ogata from "Gojira" but went nowhere as the two leads had no on-screen chemistry.

Nomura's character is so bland he actually drags down the film. His character isn't very likable either. When he gets to the village, the first thing he does is insult the priest and the village's religion. He breaks village law and rouses Baran. If he wasn't so bland, he might have redeemed himself, but fails miserably. Meanwhile, Sunoda devolves into one of Toho's most useless characters -- the reporter who never reports. Fumito Matsuo is along as the cameraman and provides yet another Toho cliché -- the comic-relief fat guy, though he does get in a classic comedic exchange with other reporters when they retreat from Baran's rampage ("You want the enemy to see your back?" "No, I'm just going to take a picture from a distance." "Good, I think I'll take one from a distance, too.")

There's a scene where everyone's retreating after the initial military attack fails. Yuriko wants to stay to report on the monster, but the scientist tells her it's no place for a reporter. Yeah, but it's obviously a place for a butterfly scientist? More credibility is killed moments later when the scientist has to rescue her from an incredibly slow-moving Varan in a scene with no suspense whatsoever.

The film's best actor is probably Akihiko Hirata as Dr. Fujimora, who supplies a weapon that might help stop Varan. Hirata was Dr. Serizawa in "Gojira" who supplied the weapon that stopped Godzilla. In "Varan," Hirata's character appears out of the blue.

Varan actually flies like a flying squirrel (it's somewhat comical because it looks like the guy in the rubber suit needed to do some stomach crunches), but is shown like that for one scene.

The special effects were okay, blending stock footage with miniatures. Unfortunately, footage was borrowed from "Gojira," thus repeating the same mistakes as that film. For instance, you can clearly see the wires holding up the jets. The scene where the monster's foot crashes through the roof of a warehouse is strangely missing the tail, just like in "Gojira." The worst thing about the special effects was a problem that was all too evident in most Japanese monster films. The miniatures fired at the monster in one take, instead of blending stock footage with close-ups of explosions on the monster. What you got were tanks, jets, ships and rocket launchers that couldn't hit the broad side of a building. About 90 percent of the shots missed. And I won't even get into that most annoying military feature -- the rocket launcher that never reloads.

Also, Varan is never fleshed out, like Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra were. Here, it might be an angry God or a revived dinosaur, but it's never explained. It just attacks and heads for Tokyo. Also, it never gets to Tokyo, just Haneda Airport. Unlike other Toho films, it doesn't take a potshot at Japan or America (like in "Mothra" where the American gas stations get trashed or Rodan, where an American-style car dealership is smashed by Japanese-made cars and buses). It's just a straight-forward monster movie -- monster shows up out of the blue, resists military efforts to kill it, rampages across countryside and is finally taken out. Very by-the-numbers.

Only Akira Ifukube's excellent movie score saves this film.

So, add this to your collection if you're a B-movie fan or like Japanese monsters. Just don't compare it to "Gojira" or even "Godzilla, King of the Monsters" for that matter.

not as powerful as the original Godzilla, but still a fun movie to watch. Don't waste your time with the Americanized release starring Myron Healy. Get the Japanese version, it's a whole lot better. Varan is called by his real name, he has a more terrifying roar, and the plot is better and so on.

And what's more, the music score really helps the film out. Without such a great score, I would probably rate this movie a 6 or 7 out of 10. But Akira Ifukube's score is so powerful and entertaining, it helped boost the movie's level up.

Once again, don't bother with the Americanized version, check out this one.

Scientists discover a species of butterfly that is believed to be native only to Siberia. They travel to a region known as "The Tibet of Japan", where a much bigger menace awaits: the towering lizard "Varan", some sort of throwback. Varan, of course, turns out to be a huge threat, but Japanese military forces are hard pressed to find a plan of attack that actually works.

Ultimately, "Varan the Unbelievable" is too much of an unimaginative "Gojira" clone to be all that successful. The action is decent, and the special effects are decent (some of the time, anyway). The atmosphere and widescreen photography are certainly reasonably impressive. But the characters lack any sort of truly interesting features; they're not fleshed out much at all. The steadfast actors do what they can with the material: Kozo Nomura as jut jawed, heroic Kenji, Ayumi Sonoda as his love interest Yuriko, a headstrong reporter, and Koreya Senda as the knowledgeable Dr. Sugimoto. The music by Akira Ifukube is rousing enough to be entertaining.

But Varan itself, while an engaging monster to watch for 87 minutes, lacks the appeal of the most striking creatures in Japanese genre cinema.

Not one of director Ishiro Hondas' best efforts, but lightly entertaining.

Six out of 10.

Toho's 1958 "Varan the Unbelievable" (Daikaiju Baran or Giant Monster Varan) remained unseen in the US until the 2000s, only known by its Crown International release of 1962. Baradagi was its name among the superstitious locals in Iwaya Village in the mountainous region of Siberia where a rare species of butterfly has been discovered, two investigators perishing in an avalanche. Three more follow up to find some answers and are told by the high priest that their god does not like intruders, but a runaway dog ensures its emergence from a large lake to run amok for a brief period. A military bombardment causes Varan to spread out its webbed claws and arms to glide like a flying squirrel toward the ocean (never shown in the Crown edit), where it simply swims through a continued barrage that has little effect on it. Only after Varan comes ashore to indulge its fascination for parachuting light bombs do authorities arrive at a solution, a special mixture of explosive gunpowder that should detonate once the monster swallows it, similar to the sorry fate of "Yongary Monster from the Deep" (not to be viewed when suffering indigestion!). Intended as a television coproduction between Toho and Hollywood's AB-PT (American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres), the latter went belly up right after their initial double bill release, Bert I. Gordon's "Beginning of the End" and John Carradine's "The Unearthly," leaving undaunted director Ishiro Honda to forge ahead with his usual crew, though on a noticeably lower budget in black and white with the most basic outline ever conceived for a kaiju film, Akihiko Hirata and Yoshio Tsuchiya the only familiar faces and little comic relief. The original version did receive theatrical distribution in Japan, and once Varan rises from his watery slumber there's plenty of monster footage to maintain interest (his first appearance at the 12 minute mark, much sooner than in Crown's retread), so even if it's a relatively minor cousin to Godzilla, and only a glider compared to Rodan's wingspan, it still proves how much better Toho was over their Hollywood counterparts (Varan would not be forgotten, as noted by its brief presence ten years later in "Destroy All Monsters"). What the 1958 original is now best known for is a stirring score by Akira Ifukube that could have been lost in time were it not revived to excellent effect in future Godzilla entries. It boggles the mind when Crown International jettisoned so much usable footage to offer up a tiny portion of what should have been more of a banquet, beefing up the starring role for little known Myron Healey at the expense of virtually everything else for its eventual stateside release in 1962, a successful pairing with "First Spaceship on Venus."