Varan the Unbelievable
AKA
Great Monster Varan
Varan
(1958)
(Page 2)
I think this film might have been forgotten had Varan not made an all too brief appearance in Destroy All Monsters, not really playing a role in the story but onscreen long enough to make someone do a double take. I'm sure I'm not the only kid who watched Destroy All Monsters only to see a hovering lizard at the end and say to myself "What the hell was that?"
Well, the answer to that question lies in this nearly non-existant little film from the 50s. That small little clip of Varan in Destroy All Monsters peaked my interest in this film, but for a while I avoided it because I heard it sucked.
When interest got the better of me, I finally popped this movie into my DVD player, and, to my surprise, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It doesn't change the face of monster movies or anything, but Varan the Unbelievable is a fun monster pick.
Probably the most interesting thing worth noting about this film is it's backstory, seeing how it was originally supposed to be a made for TV movie Toho was making for American audiences. For whatever reason, American funding was dropped and the movie was left unfinished. Rather than waste whatever they had, they decided to keep the footage they shot and built a new movie around it they could distribute to theaters. This explains a bit of the film style, like how the film was in black and white when Toho had mostly switched to color at the time and why many shots of the monster are so long and lacking different angles.
In addition to the lack of color and cinematography, the plot was paint by numbers and the actors looked like they were thinking of their paychecks the whole time. Because of this, Varan the Unbelievable gained a reputation of being boring. It's not an unwarrented reputation, but I've seen quite a few monster movies in my time, and I don't find Varan boring at all. Son of Dracula bored me. Giant Gila Monster bored me. Killer Shrews bored me. Varan may be generic and flat, but it's not boring.
The Varan suit looks a bit shabby, possibly because it was originally made on a smaller budget for television. The mouth is practically immobile and watching it crawl on hands and knees is a bit akward. That said, the choreography for the creature is pretty solid. The movements are about as animal-like as I've seen in any of Toho's films. While the long one note shots of him stomping on villages might be a bore to some, it really helped me admire what the suit actors were doing with him. And let's face it, Varan is a pretty cool kaiju. He's a threat on land, sea, and air (he only glides once, unfortunatly, but it's a neat idea)! It's too bad he was never truly used outside of this film, because the monster had potential. I guess he was just one big lizard stomping on things too many, though.
I need to put a good word for Akira Ifukube, too. Like several aspects of the film, it would be easy for him to just phone in a musical score as well, but instead he hits the ball out of the park. One surprise about it is that it featured prototype cues for Godzilla vs. Mothra and Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. Hearing those early tunes really got my geek on. I really admire this score a lot, and it just may be my all-time favorite score from the man.
On last thing I need to point out is that I viewe the Japanese version of this film, not the Crown International supposed "butchering," which I have yet to see (though if it's worse than what Gigantis, the Fire Monster is to Godzilla Raids Again, I'm sure I don't want to). I like the Japanese one well enough to give it a reccomendation though. Just go in expecting just another monster flick, and I doubt it'll disappoint.
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