Alternate Titles: Giant Monster Varan
Year: 1958
Director: Ishiro Honda
Special Effects Director: Eiji Tsuburaya
In The Suit: Haruo Nakajima & Katsumi Tezuka

Poor Varan. "One of Toho Studios' least-famed creations" according to his Wikipedia page. It's important for you to realize that "unbelievable" must be pronounced in a disparaging tone, like, "Tsk. Oh, Varan. You're just un-believable."

To be fair, it's often said that a character's worth is measured by the strength of his opponents, and in Varan's case, his opponents are butterfly hunters. He kills the first two when they go to a remote village referred to as the "Tibet of Japan", in a valley in the mountains, but there's a whole contingent of them at the Biology Department, so it's just a matter of time before more are sent. I can't even joke that Varan should have turned out be a giant butterfly, since we're not too far off from meeting Mothra, and let's face it: she's way more impressive.

Another strike against Varan is that this movie was in black & white, a letdown after Rodan.

By the way, i really do mean butterfly hunters; when these guys find rare specimens, they immediate kill them and stuff them in their pockets.

Oh My God! What is he doing?! Stop that!

The sister, Yuriko Shinjo, of one of the dead butterfly hunters (Ichiro Shinjo played by Hisaya Ito) decides that she wants to investigate his death. She's actually very chipper about it (hey, her brother was a butterfly hunter; it's a dangerous profession and he knew what he was getting into) and mainly seems interested in getting the story (she's a reporter). So she joined the research party that was going out to investigate the mysterious deaths. Actually, the "research party" just turns out to be her and a cameraman, and the cameraman is a sad dumpy guy. When Butterfly Hunter #3 (aka Kenji Uozaki played by Kozo Nomura) says that he better come along so that he can protect the reporter, the cameraman speaks up and says, "Hey! I can protect her!", and then the Butterfly Hunter says, "You? No, you don't look like you can protect anyone.", and then the cameraman just stares sadly at the floor.

So the "research party", whose ranks have now swelled to three, arrive in the remote village and hear all about their god, Baradigi, who they think is responsible for the killings. Butterfly Hunter's response is, "No, it's definitely not a god. You guys are superstitious idiots, so do you mind if we look around?" There is no time for tact when you are a Butterfly Hunter. You'd think they'd at least worry that this "Baradigi" was some kind of wild animal, maybe a tiger or something. If it were the scientists from the Godzilla movies they'd have pulled out a roll of flashcards to run by the High Priest. But our research party here is a lot more cavalier.

Varan eventually gets woken up.

He was sleeping in a lake when a village boy's dog ran away. The oblivious research party rallies the whole village, against High Priest's orders, to go tearing through the woods to look for the lost dog and the boy (the ever-tactful research party opts to ignore the fact that the kid has a name and just tromps through the woods shouting "Hey, boy!"), and the reporter also winds up getting lost, so Varan goes on a rampage. Actually it's not quite clear why he's rampaging. He's clearly supposed to have been living near this village for a long long time, so what brings this on?

Look, some of us just wake up crabby, ok? We can't all hop out of bed bright-eyed and chipper. If you don't want your homes squashed, mebbe you could be a little more considerate when others are trying to sleep.

It's about as major a rampage as you can get in the Tibet of Japan, with him spitefully destroying the entire shabby village. Un-believable.

The spikes on Varan's back are shiny and they ripple when he moves. It's a cool effect (obviously not captured in the screen grab below).

When he stands upright, he looks kind of like a giant Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Looking at the monster, and clearly feeling no remorse, the Butterfly Hunter says, "It could be a Varan, but it's unbelievable that Varan can still be alive after millions of years". When they get back to civilization, we're told that there's "ample evidence to assume that Varan is a Varanopode".

You know what's unbelievable? How blasé Butterfly Hunter #3 and the "research party" are about the fact that they caused the destruction of a village and the death of the High Priest.

Suuuuure there is. We are sadly not given a lecture on Varanopodes; i would have loved to have learned more about these amphibious gliding spike-backed creatures from the Earth's distant past.

The Defense Agency is brought in, and we're told that they consider this to be a very serious case. By the way, the actor that plays main Defense Agency guy (Yoshio Tsuchiya) was also one of the pilots in Godzilla Raids again, and if you wanted to you could pretend that it shows that Japan had developed a special Kaiju fighting division of the Defense Agency, but of course this movie wasn't yet meant to be in continuity with the Godzilla films (we'll talk more about continuity below).

If you're wondering why we stopped using character names and have instead been referring to people by their jobs, it's because they barely mention characters' names in the subtitles. This seeming trend will continue with the rest of these movies. So, between me yelling at the tv and character names only being mentioned once in a while, there's pretty much no way we're going to remember what those names are. But, i think "Butterfly Hunter #3" says it all.

Varan has at this point settled back down into his lake. And frankly, maybe that should have been the end of it? I mean, he's been living in the Tibet of Japan presumably for centuries, long enough that a religion has been developed around him. And in all that time he's never come out and attacked anywhere else in Japan, and even this recent attack was provoked and limited to this one tiny village. Maybe just leave it at that?

But when there's a big lizard in your backyard, we've got to blow up these things we don't understand. So the Defense Agency's Chemical Squads prepare to drop poison into his lake. Now, a boy and his dog woke Varan up the first time, but this time a huge contingent of trucks, tanks, and noisy noisy people show up and start positioning themselves all around the lake, and nary a sound from Varan. To make matters worse, the Chemical Squad's bombs take 20 minutes to dissolve under water. So you'd think you're running the risk of dropping those things waking him up and him coming out before the poison takes affect. But no, Varan is blissfully unaware of all of this. Un-believable.

The Chemical Squad do manage to kill all the fish in the lake. Assholes.

How does this help?? First you stupid Butterfly Hunters show up and piss Varan off and he stomps all over the village. And do you help them rebuild? No. Then you poison their only water source! What the hell is wrong with you people? You ruin everything.

Eventually Varan does surface, and the military unleash their arsenal of missiles at him. Missiles flying from all around, and every one of them flying way over his head or splashing harmlessly in the water in front him him. Finally, when they've used up all their ammo, the word to withdraw is given and everyone agrees; it's a panicked retreat. He's "indestructible"! Well, that hasn't actually been proven.

There is an endless amount of running back and forth in the forest, falling into ditches, etc., while Varan frolics harmlessly in the background, seemingly miles away from anyone else. Reporter Girl falls down; a tree falls on her leg for no apparent reason since, again, Varan is way in the distance. Queue more running around while Butterfly Hunter tries to figure out where she is.

This is a good time to pause and share Min's Survival Tip #34: If a tree falls on your leg and you can't pull it out, you should dig in the dirt underneath your pinned leg until you have enough space to move it. She shares that with me every time we watch this movie. But she's never shared that tip with Reporter Girl, who struggles hopelessly and panics while, again, Varan dances about in the distance.

You'll thank me when a tree falls on your leg.

Varan, by the way, has a roar that seems to have been lifted from Godzilla with little or no modification.

Eventually Butterfly Hunter makes it back to Reporter and lifts the tree off her leg without even a little straining just to make her feel better. "Good thing you're nowhere near the monster," he doesn't say to her but i wish he did.

He didn't even have to use a tree branch as a lever or anything. Come on. Butterfly Hunter has to practically carry Reporter Girl at this point because apparently laying on the ground doing nothing causes you to faint.

At this point there's a fire in the woods as well, after Varan kicks down an abandoned rocket battery, and Butterfly Hunter and Reporter Girl get pinned in a cave by Varan. The fire comes and goes randomly and doesn't seem to hinder anyone's movement, and soon a whole contingent of soldiers, villagers, and the Head Butterfly Hunter are watching Varan and trying to figure out how to help the two trapped in the cave. Head Butterfly Hunter observes that "animals are sensitive to light", and he directs the army to drop some flares over a nearby mountain. As usual, scientists are always right, and Varan is immediately attracted to the flares. He climbs the mountain, and i guess once he's up there he notices that there's a whole world outside his little valley, so he opens his arms, revealing that he's got glider wings, and he flies off.

"Animals are sensitive to light" is now Min's Survival Tip #35.

Nice work, idiots!

Varan is apparently jet powered because he makes airplane noises as he flies. Don't worry, though. Those glider wings are good for a one-time use only and Varan will spend the majority of this film in the water.

An Anti-Varan Headquarters is quickly set up, complete with a little Varan action figure on a map.

Playing with toys makes me sleeepy.

The Kaiju fighting department is getting more sophisticated; in Godzilla Raids again they had a much less detailed model to represent Godzilla and they didn't have anything prepared for Anguirus so they had to use a little boat for him. At the Headquarters, a debate breaks out between Head Butterfly Hunter, whose position is that it's all hopeless and there's just no way to defeat Varan, and this familiar looking guy.

The handsome twin of Dr. Serizawa from the first Godzilla film is Dr. Fujimura this time, and unlike Head Buttefly Hunter he is much more upbeat. He is sure that they can find a way to beat Varan. He doesn't have a single idea, but he's just optimistic.

I think we weren't supposed to notice that all the missiles were missing Varan, because everybody gets into a weird debate about skin. I think the idea is that Varan's skin is so flexible that it actually repels missiles.

"Skin is always flexible and never stronger than steel." What the hell does that mean??? Why the hell are you all nodding at him like he said something reasonable?

Stop humoring him!

Meanwhile, we've lost the 100+ foot monster and so we're on the lookout for it. But Varan has found some fishermen first, and we get something surprisingly close to the Jaws music (nearly 20 years early) as he swims towards the boat with just a portion of his head sticking out of the water. The scene where he's attacking the fisherman is the only time that Varan is up and close with people. It's accomplished i think by having them in front of a movie screen, but it looks really good.

Varan, i was totally rooting for you, but now you've killed these poor fishermen and i can no longer defend you.

The military roll out the Navy to fire more missiles in Varan's general direction and they do manage to hit him, at least one time for sure. During this battle there's an inexplicable re-use of footage, with the same scene of a plane divebombing Varan played three times in a row, and then, after a few minutes, three more times. Varan eventually has enough of that and jumps up and swats the plane down.

Then he sinks under the water and hides near a rock. Varan is clueless. Why am i being attacked? What's going on? Poor guy.

Varan will wind up behind that same rock later, when he's hiding from boats launching depth-charges, even though at that point he's supposed to have progressed further towards shore.

Lots of reused footage. Without a doubt, scenes of people evacuating their homes is taken from the original Godzilla film, and a scene of tanks and artillery canons lining up is also from that. A lot of the planes scenes, buildings crashing, a scene with medical trucks and possibly the launching of depth charges look familiar as well.

With reused footage from other movies failing to stop him, all seems lost. But then someone snaps their fingers and remembers that Dr. Fujimura is the guy that invented a powerful new explosive.

No, no. I get that a lot. That's someone else. That guy has an eye-patch.

Wellllll, he says, that only works when the bomb is inside a rock. It isn't very powerful on the outside. Understand?

When that's followed by blank stares, including from me, he says he'll show us. And it turns out he's prepared a little film for us, to be shown on a screen hidden behind a blackboard.

I'm not sure the film really explains anything, and the military is definitely ready to use the new explosives after seeing the movie. Unfortunately, Dr. Fujimura hasn't brought any with him. Sure, he took the time to have a film all set up and ready to play, but no, he didn't bring any actual explosives.

But the boats continue to miss the nearly stationary Varan, and the tanks are firing from a shore many millions of miles away, so Dr. Fujimura's explosive is the only choice, and an order is put in to some of Fujimura's workers to bring some. We have to wait a while for that and we pass the time by watching more missiles sail harmlessly past Varan.

When the trucks arrive, first the military tries to get the delivery guys to drive them straight to Varan. The delivery guys decline the opportunity to become martyrs, but Butterfly Hunter gets the job done with at least one truck, and manages to get away, too. They blow up the truck despite Dr. Fujimura explanation that the explosives are only potent on the inside. And therefore Varan just starts tearing up Haneda airport.

At this point, i was just yelling "What the hell is he doing?" nonstop. Nobody asked Butterfly Hunter to drive that truck up to Varan. He just got in and drove off. I think he surprised them all, and they were just trying to make the best of it. Thanks for making things worse, again. Goddamned Butterfly Hunters.

The Head Butterfly Hunter claims to have seen Varan swallowing flares while on the mountain earlier in the film. Well, if that happened, it was off camera and it seems like a vital scene to leave out. But i think he's just taking advantage of the Kaiju Scientists Are Always Right clause and figuring out a way out of this movie.

So they tie the explosives into little parachutes and deploy them with flares, and dumb old Varan starts snapping them out of the sky.

Oh, Varan. Un-believable.

Quality-wise, you can see why this isn't one of the better remembered Toho films. I believe it's the first to use reused footage (which will become a staple soon enough) and there are also some visible strings on the plane and of course a "menace" that barely gets out of the water and whose biggest asset is that he's fighting a military that is apparently blind. But i actually like the design of Varan, as hodge-podged as it is (glider wings and mostly aquatic?). And mostly i just kind of feel sorry for him, partially because in this film he seems more put-upon than scary and in part because he just never made it to the big leagues. Varan will appear again in Destroy All Monsters and footage from this movie is also used in Final Wars, so he is firmly part of our Godzilla universe. He was also considered for what became Godzilla vs. Gigan (you can see an outtake at the cool Rodan's Roost Kaiju Scrap-Yard) and also for Giant Monsters All Out Attack, and while he was ultimately dropped from that movie for the more popular Ghidorah, he is there in spirit, because Ghidorah's face was redesigned to give him a Varan-like appearance.

Like Rodan and the American release of Godzilla Raids Again, this movie starts off with an intro that warns about the progress of technology and the unintended consequences they might bring (which is inevitably giant monsters), but this one is especially half-hearted, basically, "We are about to go into space. There are mysteries in space, but there's mysteries right here on Earth, too. Let's look at one of those.".

The English version of this film goes further than anything we've seen so far in terms of alterations. It completely strips out all of the Japanese story and just about all of the scenes with Japanese people with exceptions for army personal firing missiles and the natives jumping around. There are long periods of untranslated Japanese dialogue as the military confer with headquarters, and there's also a bewilderingly long and untranslated intro, showing scenes of destruction from the move, before the title card is shown.

The "research party" from the Japanese version (barely shown) is repurposed; the intrepid female reporter is demoted to being the wife and partner to the Butterfly Hunter, who in this version, is also a reporter. They are said to be friends of the US protagonists, although they never converse or appear on screen together. The US characters are instead the Great White Father Commander James Bradley and his wife and secretary Anna.

I felt like Madelein Kahn while watching this version. I thought my head was going to explode.

And they aren't in a remote mountain village, they are on the Island of Kunashirashima to test Bradley's desalination chemical in the salty lake that the natives report contains Obaki, the prehistoric monster that will rise up if the lake is contaminated. The natives are scheduled to be removed from the island before the testing starts. There's an attack on Bradley (which he keeps secret from his wife), but he's not going to be scared away with their mumbo jumbo. Anna is concerned about the village people - do they really have to be taken away from their ancestral homes and their livelihoods? And Jim says yes. After all, what do a handful of primitive people mean in the face of his awesome desalination chemicals. Sure, we have machinery that can already handle desalination, but his process might make it a tiny more efficient, and isn't that good enough reason to ruin the lives of an entire village? That explanation and a kiss shuts up Anna for now.

AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!! This guy!

Bradley's Japanese army representative has ordered an overwhelming squad of soldiers, tanks, and artillery to remove the natives, and this has caused Bradley to be labelled a tyrant in Japan, reports that have brought his wife Anna to tears. The army representative, i guess not too far removed from the days of Imperial Japan, says that there should be laws against the news, but Bradley magnanimously allows that the media reports facts and it's the public that distorts things. And he does come up with a compromise: yes, he's still going to go forward with his desalinization test that will contaminate their lake and destroy their livelihood, but they won't be displaced from their village. Yes, he will allow them to stay to watch their lake destroyed, a more "proportional" decision.

He delivers this news to his wife by having her take dictation for his journal: "This action will no doubt met with the firm approval of the majority of public spirited Japanese citizens in Tokyo" as well as his little sweetie.

At this point, i was reduced to making strangled noises with occasional outburts of sound.

The US version is incredibly slow, with no hint of the monster until the second half. Even after they finally deploy the chemical bombs / desalination cylinders, we have to wait 24 hours for them to dissolve (instead of the 20 minutes in the original). This means repeated shots of the uneventful lake through binoculars, and eventually Bradley locates the dead fish and seems completely surprised by that result. He knows that some fish are saltwater fish and some are freshwater, right? So even if his compound was working perfectly and completely non-toxic, all the fish in the lake will die? He's not aware of this? Is this guy really a scientist?

He's completely not a scientist! I don't think he's done anything science-related in his life! Why the hell is he watching with binoculars? Why is this test not being conducted in a tank instead of in a lake used by people as their only source of water?

During our 24 hour wait, we get to see Bradley get increasingly frustrated as his compound is seemingly not working. All of his samples are coming back full of sediment and he soon gets ragingly angry. Then he composes himself and says, "I'm sorry Anna, i uh i guess I've been pushing this thing too hard... acting like a little boy and an irritable husband". Anna responds, "I'm happy with both."

Shouldn't there be sediment? Isn't that what desalination does? It takes the salt out of the water, which drops out as sediment and leaves freshwater behind? Where did you go to science school?

Our first glimpse of the monster is when he sneaks out of the lake, which is supposed to be heavily guarded to ensure that the natives don't try drinking from its now toxic water, and creeps up on an army private, who dies from fright.

Worst guards ever.

When the soldier's body is discovered the next morning, Bradley decides to send his wife back to the mainland.

Anna: You haven't told me why this sudden decision to send me back to Tokyo.

Jim: When I see you in Tokyo, I'll explain. Now, you be a good girl...

And this is when i lunged into the television and shoved my foot up this guy's ass. That's my super power.

But the creature begins to emerge before she can be packed up and sent away. We start with a series of tremors. Bradley says, "I have no way of knowing what effects it could have on any living creature other than fish." Again, are we sure this guy is a scientist? Was there literally no testing before he came to an occupied island to deploy his chemicals in the wild?

Have you ever seen someone suffer from a fit of apoplexy?

The monster emerges and the movie now begins to use the special effects version from the original, although not necessarily in the same order and interspersed with scenes of our new characters reacting and especially Bradley giving orders. The scene of this army guy is used over and over again, reacting to things that Bradley tells his second in command to relay to the troops.

The fire in the original movie must not have seemed dramatic enough, because in the American version additional fire is superimposed, to the point of absurdity, with flames running up the right edge of the screen and coming out sideways against all the laws of nature.

To reuse the cave scene, Bradley pushes his wife into a cave for safety (she must have had frictionless furniture sliders on her shoes the way she flies across the screen), and later he joins her there as the monster tries to reach in and grab them. Again the scene must not have seemed dramatic enough, so falling rocks are superimposed over it, all falling harmlessly off the edge of the screen, in a different reality than everything else.

When it's over, Anna says, "It's all my fault. all those people would be safe if i hadn't...". Now, she means if she hadn't raised a fuss and gotten Jim to agree to keep the natives on the island. And i guess in a weird tangential way, that's technically true. But Jim responds, "Anna, no one is to blame for this.". And that, that's just not true. It's Jim's fault. It's all Jim's fault.

Arrrgghhmmphhgah! I just...GAH! Everybody knows who to blame! It's YOU! YOU'RE TO BLAME!

The monster is lured away from the cave with the flares as in the original, but the scene of him flying is cut out. Then a condensed version of Varan's attack in the sea and Haneda airport is shown. To keep Bradley relevant to the plot at this point, it turns out that he's also already invented a bomb version of his saline chemical, so, after several thrilling scenes of him and his second in command repairing a radio, they contact the male reporter (aka Butterfly Hunter #3) and tell him to get the bombs.

One thing in this movie's favor: the end battle is a little more coherent and doesn't rely on newly remembered critical information. Remember that in the original, they first explode a truck full of the chemical near Varan, and it fails to do anything, and then someone remembers that Varan likes to eat flares so they deliver the chemicals that way, and then he still staggers around for a good number of minutes before the second bomb finally goes off. In this version, they use the flares to lure the monster away from the airport, and then deploy the truck, and that kills him nearly right away. It just flows better. And since we're using the anti-saline component that was already introduced in the earlier part of the film, it has a more consistent narrative than Dr. Fujimura suddenly revealing halfway through the movie that he's developed some unrelated explosive. So points for that, at least.

Another minor point in this version's favor is that the monster is given a different roar that is more distinct from Godzilla's.

But my god, what a message this movie has. The whole time, while i was watching this smug, superior Commander Bradley ignore the plight of the natives and ignore warnings about the monster and talking down to his wife and showing a fundamental lack of scientific knowledge and generally just treating everyone awfully, i was kind of holding back on my judgement of the film, assuming that it would end with him being humbled. The Japanese versions of these films we've seen so far show a distrust of science and a warning about its ignorant misuse, and that's exactly what Bradley was doing. So when Bradley causes a monster to rise up and go on a deadly rampage, surely the message is that this guy fucked up and is now getting his comeuppance. But no, he gets to continue to be the smug hero throughout the movie, the one who ultimately saves the day (remotely, by ordering other people to put their lives in danger). And when it's over, he says that if the monster isn't really dead or another shows up, "we'll always have that chemical". Which is the polar opposite of the message of the Japanese films. In fact, the movie ends with him deciding to take his wife to Southern California joking that they've got a new lake where they can do this all over again.

It was probably inevitable that a movie totally re-written for a US audience in the 1950s but which still had to feature a lot of Japanese extras due to the re-used footage was going to feature a white male as the great savior that bosses around all the non-white characters (although they managed to avoid that for the US version of Godzilla). But it's still pretty offensive on that front, and it's even more offensive in its treatment of the female characters (compare to the original, which at least gave the female reporter her own agency and made her braver than her male cameraman). And perhaps most of all, the movie is an offense to science. And when i'm saying that in a Kaiju movie, you know it's bad.

There are just no words to describe the many offenses the American version of this movie committed. I'm still choking on my outrage.

You'll note for the description of the American version i've referred to titular character as "the monster" for the most part. That's because in this version, despite the title of the film being "Varan the Unbelievable", the creature is referred to as Obaki the entire time.

Godzilla Drinking Game
	Someone thinks it's a good idea to drag a giant monster across the ocean on a raft (giant eggs count).
	Attacking planes fly directly at a monster, with no possibility of avoiding a crash even if the monster didn't swat them down.	Those planes (or that same plane, repeatedly) were flying awfully low and getting swatted was inevitable, but to be fair, Varan did jump out of the water to swat it and if he hadn't done that the plane wouldn't have crashed, so i can't count this in good conscience. No way. Varan was totally just standing there and they were flying like 5 ft above the waterline, so no, it counts. There was no reason for them to be flying that low and he might have raised up a bit, but even if he hadn't, they would have flown into his head instead of his chest. Ok, Min says it counts, so it counts.
	People refuse to believe in the existence of a giant monster even though they've already acknowledged that Godzilla exists.	This hadn't been merged with Godzilla continuity yet so this isn't applicable, but the amount of ridicule heaped upon the villagers and their god Baradigi is nearly worthy regardless. Especially when you consider that as soon as Butterfly Hunter #3 sees Varan for the first time, he's completely not surprised at the existence of a giant monster. He very much takes it in stride and identifies him right away.
	A submarine explodes.
	Teens have a dance party on a boat. Two drinks/head smacks if they get attacked by a monster during the party.
	The government is completely ineffective when faced with a corporation doing something illegal.
	A humongous lumbering monster manages to sneak up on someone. Two drinks/head smacks if it's the army and they're supposedly using radar.
	A scientist suddenly figures everything out with little-to-no information and explains it all to everyone.	"It could be a Varan". "ample evidence to assume that Varan is a Varanopode". "Animals are sensitive to light". "Hey, i saw Varan eating the flares on the mountain top and just didn't tell anyone about it until now!"
	A monster suddenly grows in size just because.
	People expose themselves to major amounts of radiation with no concern.
	Everyone suddenly knows a monster's name. Two drinks/head smacks if everyone else nods appreciatively and repeats it.	"It could be a Varan", again.
	Army missiles can't seem to hit a 150+ foot monster and instead explode harmlessly around it.	Holy crap, yes! This is the whole movie.
	A woman falls down for no reason.	If a tree falls in the forest and lands on a woman, does anyone know why?
	Bad dinosaur science. You have to give a little leeway for the time period, but pretending a children's picture book is a scientific journal is always worth two drinks/smacks.	"Varanopode", that well known species of amphibious dinosaurs that also glided and had spikes all over its back.

Monsters Appearing: Varan