VARAN THE UNBELIEVABLE (1958)
Director: Ischiro Honda
Genre: Daikaiju eiga
Note: This profile is based on the Japanese version of the movie.
THE MOVIE
During Godzilla’s first retirement after the poorly received sequel Godzilla Raids Again, Toho Studios tried their hand at a few other giant monster concepts. Varan the Unbelievable was released a couple of years after Rodan but did not seem to be given the attention or budget that was given to that movie or the later Mothra. For one thing, the movie is filmed in cheaper black and white. Rodan two years earlier was filmed in color. Although the main creature is nicely designed and interesting to look at, his suit seems to be cheaply made in comparison to Godzilla or Rodan. The movie is strangely listless and surprisingly dull for a movie of this genre and relies on long stretches of exposition and endless military stock footage and talking heads.
He's un-be-liev-able!
After an inexplicable intro about the wonders of the Space Age, we join a story about a pair of naturalists on an expedition in a remote part of Japan in search of an anomalous butterfly. They instead stumble upon a giant monster worshiped by the locals as Baradaji, a demon/god. A second expedition follows the first and Varan destroys the village. When the military is summoned they attack Varan who is able to glide away on the membranes that connect his forelegs to his hindlegs. Varan makes his way to Tokyo where he is tricked into swallowing several experimental bombs, which kill him as he heads to sea.
THE MONSTER/EFFECTS
Varan is somewhat of a black sheep among Toho’s monsters. His contemporaries, Rodan and Mothra, have gone on to be regulars in the Godzilla series and Mothra even starred in her own trilogy of movies in the 1990’s. Varan, however, made a cameo in Destroy All Monsters and appears in stock footage in 2004's Godzilla Final Wars. He has also appeared in a couple of NES and SNES video games. You get the feeling that he stays in his cave on Monster Island and drinks a lot. This is unfortunate because he is one of the cooler monsters in Toho’s universe (he is certainly cooler than Megalon or Titanosaurus). Varan looks a bit like Godzilla (he strongly resembles Godzilla from King Kong vs. Godzilla and therefore Millennium Godzilla) but with vertical spikes running from his head to his tail. He can walk on all fours or on his hind legs much like Anguirus. Much has been made of his ability to fly “like a flying squirrel.” It looks cheesy but most flying effects from Toho movies at this time looked cheesy. Perhaps Varan's most notable appearance since the 1960's has been in the Nintendo Wii fighting game Godzilla Unleashed, where he is a playable character.
MONSTERS FEATURED
Varan.
DVD AVAILABILITY
The U.S. version is fairly easy to find (it’s on Netflix,) however it is a good thirteen minutes shorter AND eliminates the flying sequences for some reason. The U.S. version also cuts out much of the original story and replaces it with American actors a la Godzilla King of the Monsters. While Varan is far from a great movie (or even a good movie for that matter,) I find something distasteful about monkeying around with a movie for the sake of making it more appealing for foreign markets.
If you want to get a copy of the Japanese version you can check eBay or go to ultramanstuff.com. I’ve ordered a couple of movies from them and they are okay. They take a long time to get you your movies but they do arrive and they have a great selection (looking for Godzilla '84 or Biollante? They got 'em). I’m assuming that the movies are bootlegs, but if the versions you want are not for sale here what are you gonna do?
MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE
Eh.
SEQUELS
None.
SEE ALSO
Rodan 1956 Mothra 1961 Gojira 1954
When's it going to be Varan's turn?
TRIVIA
There have actually been a couple of attempts to bring Varan back to the screen after Destroy All Monsters. He was originally to be featured in Godzilla vs. Gigan but was later cut from the movie. Most famously, Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah, Giant Monsters All Out Attack, was to originally have been Godzilla X Varan, Anguirus, Baragon, Giant Monsters All Out Attack but Toho was reeling from the box office failure of Godzilla vs. Megaguirus and insisted that director Shusuke Kaneko work A-list Mothra and King Ghidorah into the story, which is unfortunate because it would be nice to see a revamped version of Varan (there are photos online of the model of the redesigned Anguirus that was to have been featured in the movie and it is amazingly cool.)
TRAILER
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