Varan - Das Monster aus der Urzeit

One of the better of the early Toho monster epics, the film suffers from a lack of definition. We don't really know where this monster comes from, or why he's so pee-ed off he wants to stomp Tokyo. Also, he never even quite gets to Tokyo, which is major disappointment - what good is a Japanese monster movie where Tokyo doesn't get stomped.

I suspect that the secret to this problem lies in the original score for the film, by the great Akira Ifikube. Godzilla fans should recognize variations on three essential themes for other movies - for "Godzilla", "Rodan", and "Mothra". Yet they are not just borrowed sound-tracks from those films, but actual variations. Apparently Ifikube used composition for this film as a kind of notebook on themes that would later get improved on again and again. My sense is that this is true of the film as a whole, that director Honda and crew used this film as a test-case for work on later films - the kaiju film industry was about to go wide-screen and technicolor in a big way, but the exact formula for the genre had not yet come together. I think they were using this film to get it together.

In its favor, I remark the film is narratively tight, so that not much time is wasted on the back-stories. It is what it is, a straight-out rubber-monster stomp, and begs to be enjoyed for that, and nothing more.

By the way, the subtitled DVD release from Animego has a couple fascinating bonuses to it - an interview with one of the special fx crew, as well as a demonstration of the technique used to manufacture the monster's costume. The film itself is enjoyable, if no great shakes, but bits of film-history like this are priceless.

Before I get into the review proper and upset everyone who loves this film, it might help to say a word about the various versions. "Daikaijû Baran (1958)" is the original Japanese version. It has recently been released on DVD, by Tokyo Shock in May 2005, but under the title "Varan The Unbelievable (1962)", which has its own listing on IMDb.

This is bound to cause a lot of confusion, as "Varan the Unbelievable" was an American-produced adaptation, similar to the American adaptation of the original Godzilla (Gojira, 1954). Varan was originally to be a joint US/Japanese production, but that deal fell through. Toho, the Japanese production company also responsible for Godzilla and many other infamous monsters, went ahead and made Varan anyway. A few years later, the American version was produced, with a different title and with additional material directed by Jerry A. Baerwitz.

How do you know what version you watched? Well, the American version is 70 minutes long, has an American actor, Myron Healey, and a plot about trying to desalinize water. The Japanese film is about 90 minutes long, has no American actors, and Varan (or "Baran") makes his first (offscreen) appearance when a couple of scientists from Tokyo make a trip to a remote, mountainous village to research the sighting of a butterfly previously only known to exist in Siberia. The Japanese version also has a different musical score, but since music is a bit difficult to describe well in words (other than technically), that's not a great way for most folks to tell which version they've watched.

To make matters even more confusing, the Tokyo Shock DVD also has a truncated Japanese television version of Daikaijû Baran, clocking in at about 50 minutes, which dispenses with both the desalinization and the butterfly plots. Also, at least some people have reported seeing a color version of the film. I don't know which version that would be, but the Tokyo Shock DVD has the original, black & white widescreen Japanese version from 1958.

So, Daikaijû Baran is the film with the butterfly plot, and that's what I'm reviewing here. It's too bad that it doesn't have more of a butterfly plot, perhaps, or just more of a plot in general, because one of the major faults of Daikaijû Baran is shallowness and a general ineffectiveness of the little plot there is. After the initial scientists head off to the remote village, which happens to worship Varan as a God--the villagers call him "Baradagi"--they quickly get squashed. Once news of this gets back to Tokyo, the scientists send out another team to investigate, and they relatively quickly find the monster.

From there, the film "evolves", if you want--I would say devolves--into a stock Godzilla plot. Perhaps that's surprising given that Daikaijû Baran was made only a couple years after the first Godzilla, but it's a stock Godzilla plot nonetheless. That means that Baran/Varan lumbers around, basically killing time, while the humans try escalating-but-silly, military-based means of fighting him, which all have no effect, at least not until they have to because the film has to end.

For me, the opening, the stuff set in the village and everything up until shortly after we first see Varan all has great promise. I was engaged in the story, I was getting into director Ishirô Honda's atmosphere, and I was enjoying Akira Ifukube's score--the music that accompanies the titles is particularly sublime.

But then it seems like most of that interesting stuff is abandoned (even the fun fact that Varan flies is just dropped after one scene), and three-quarters of the film feels like aimless padding.

It's often funny aimless padding. Of course there is the usual guy-in-a-rubber-suit factor. My wife and I amused ourselves by playing a game seeing who could shout out the "mode" of each shot the fastest. The choices were "studio (standing in for exteriors)", "toys/models", "stock footage", and "real". "Real" meant that Toho actually ponied up for exterior, full-scale shots of exteriors. The challenge has to be who can call the "mode" the quickest, because there's no challenge in spotting the mode at a leisurely pace. Honda makes it very conspicuous when he's switching from "real" tanks to toys, for example, because the toys look like little plastic things with little, fake, immobile people in them. It's a great way to exercise your imagination--you have to work hard to pretend that this stuff could be real, rather than just cinematography of little toys being pulled along by wires. But it's also very funny.

I'm not sure why the military attacks on the monsters in some of these films are shown to be so incompetent. We see Varan lumbering towards models of the Tokyo Airport, then we see the model tanks and guns shooting at him, but the paths of the bullets, missiles and such almost form random patterns across the frame. If they were trying to aim, they wouldn't be able to hit the broad side of a barn if it were as big as China.

In a way, Honda and his screenwriters seem to be trying to state something metaphorical/subtextual about war, and specifically about World War II and Japan's experience in it. This is supported by the fact that most of Ifukube's score consists of military marches, and a lot of the film could be seen as (a satire of?) propaganda for the Japanese military. But aside from the metaphor of an approaching monster from the sea that's going to destroy Japan, and having to fight it from within, what Honda and his crew seem to be primarily saying is that the Japanese military is incompetent.

In any event, it doesn't make for a particularly good film, although it's worthwhile for die-hard Kaiju fans, those interested in the technical aspects (there's a great special effects documentary and commentary on the Tokyo Shock DVD), and those who want to laugh at the film.

After the success of the Americanized version of Godzilla (aka. Gojira), Toho decided to team up with ABC for what was supposed to be a joint Japanese/American kaiju eiga. Of course, that deal fell apart, but Toho went ahead and created this film. However, this didn't stop a company by the name of Crown International from taking this film and butchering it by cutting out much of the footage shot by Ishiro Honda and making hack Myron Healy in the lead as a Navy commander who tries to find a way to desalinate water and winds up waking up the monster. That version also does away with one of Akira Ifukube's finest scores. Thankfully, the original version of the film has been released on DVD and now Americans can finally see it the way it was intended to be shown.

As for the film itself, it is an okay kaiju eiga. The monster is not as well rounded as Godzilla, Rodan or Mothra. In fact, Varan (or Baran as it is known in Japan) almost seems as though it is a throwaway due to the fact that it probably was intended for a one time appearance (although it does make a brief cameo in Destroy All Monsters). Also, the cast, with the exception of Honda favorites Akihiko Hirata and Yoshio Tsuchiya, is mainly made up of mainly Toho's second line actors. The other thing that made me somewhat disappointed with the film was the fact that it used a lot of stock footage. In fact, if you look closely at some of the battle scenes, many of them were borrowed from Godzilla (aka. Gojira) However, this film is still a much better version than the hatchet job we were treated with for years.

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."

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.