Varan the Unbelievable

Starring:Myron Healey, Tsuruko Kobayashi, Clifford Kawada, Derick Shimatsu, KÃ´zÃ´ Nomura, Ayumi Sonoda, Fumito Matsuo, Hiroshi Hisasume, Yoneo Iguchi, Hideo Inamura, Roy K. Ogata, George Sasaki, Michael Sung, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Akio Kusama, Yoshifumi Tajima, Koreya Senda, Akihiko Hirata, Minosuke Yamada, Akira Sera
Director: IshirÃ´ Honda, Jerry A. Baerwitz
Studio: Tokyo Shock
Product Type: DVD

Description

First time UNCUT Wide Screen Presentation! From The Creators of the GODZILLA Series! In an effort to find an economic means of purifying salt water, a joint U.S.-Japanese military command is set up on an isolated Japanese island where an unusual salt-water lake is situated. However, their purifying experiments arouse the flying prehistoric monster "Varan" (Destroy All Monsters) from hibernation at the lake's bottom, and it proceeds to attack Japan. Extras Uncut and TV versions, New Eng. Dub and 5.1 mix, original Japanese language English Subtitles, Video lecture and Commentary by production Designer of "VARAN", Original Trailers and More!

Customer Reviews:

Varan is a creative monster. gmk should be gva........2006-11-26

i heard about varan the unbelievable and knew that it would be awesome. guess what, i was flipping right. baradagi is the coolest um...darn name ever. i even made a lego varan attacking the airport. Dont think i am some random seven year old who doesn't know what the heck he is talking about, because i'm not. The movie begins when three people go to iyawa village to investigate the death of two colleages. the villagers say that their god baradagi killed them. meanwhile a boy named gen ran after his dog chibee.
they convince the villagers to help them look for the boy. angry at the humans for "invading his privacy," he decimates iyawa village and returns to the lake. the jsdf lured him out with chemicals and tried to kill him-as usual. he tries to trap kenji and his girlfriend yuriko in a cave, but was lured away with flares. he eats the flares and crawls to the top of a cliff. he stretches out his arms and reveals two flying squirrel like flaps of skin. he then glides away. the navy and jsadf try to stop him. he manages to destroy all the planes and the uranami maru.my favorite military theme played during that scene. I was delighted. Uh-oh stock footage city here we come. Varan attacks a terror stricken tokyo. he only manages to destroy the coast and the airport whereas gojira turned tokyo into hell on earth. The stock footage was all from gojira 1954 actually. it even showed what was obviously gojira's tail. the destruction scenes were sort of boring but well done. they evetually killed varan by launching flares with bombs on them. he devoured them. one blew up in his mouth. he retreated into the sea, saving us from the disgust of seeing him explode. overall varan is a wonderful movie, but the stock footage can be tiring. varan could use a beam weapon. Then he would be a kaiju to reckon with.P.S Hi Khazy, it's me Joe rouleau. I'm on The internet. I know that was totally off topic. The sound is beautiful, the acting is grade A "for once, and the kaiju kicks um... tail. There should be more varan toys.

model making history.......2006-10-27

A lot of folks see cheese with these Toho FX/Japanese monster movies, but my favorite part is the commentary. I always leave with a new sense of appreciation for a film after listening to the commentary. And this commentary is done by the man who actually made Varan (among others), Keizo Murase[plus we get a mini-class in making Varan skin, kinda cool].

Varan the Forgettable.......2006-03-19

I'm a fan of the giant monster genre, and of the early Godzilla movies in particular, so I had some hope for this film, released by Toho in the late 1950s. But I ended up disappointed. The special effects are pretty decent, for the most part comparable to those in Godzilla (with the notable exception of a laughable scene in which Varan glides like a flying squirrel). But, as another reviewer has noted, the film is just plain boring. The main thing lacking: very little in the way of urban mass destruction. The whole story has a very "by the numbers" feel to it, with nothing special to distinguish it or its monster.

Solid Japanese Monster Entertainment.......2005-12-30

Not the best of all but definitely a good one and worth seeing. I didn't notice a lack of dubbing because I never watch these dubbed--Americans tend to see these films as camp and dub away with that in mind. Most dubs of Japanese flicks of this type I've encountered have been awful, worst of all was a recent Godzilla release that was dubbed and chopped up horribly by an arrogant American who actually brags about his butchery and lousy jokes on one of the tracks.

In the Fifties films like "Day the Earth Stood Still" or "The Thing" were not made as budget no-brainers and we shouldn't assume that the Japanese were always simply screwing around either. "Godzilla" in its original form is a serious and at times horrifying film; many later efforts have spectacular art direction, imaginative design, fine acting (you'll see many serious Japanese actors in these movies), and fascinating plots... along with some nice humor to break things up. Tokyo Shock is doing a terrific job here with this series--I'm buying every one--and if they need a PR man they should get in touch because I will rave as eloquently as possible. So far the releases have been wonderful; I never dreamed I'd see a conscientiously cleaned-up offering of "Mysterians" or "Matango" or "Dogora" in my lifetime. This is significant film, a lot of effort went into much of it (more so than in any American B-movie fare that it tends to be unfairly lumped with) and should be seen and appreciated as something more than mere goofy Friday night beer and pizza entertainment.

One extra note: About the constant "guy-in-the-rubber-suit" quips and jibes. I've worked on some hefty creative production so I kind of know what I'm talking about here--stop and think, you want a big monster trashing the hell out of a city. If you stop-motion the monster you either have to optically print the destruction (which means a loss of sense of immediacy in the way the monster interacts with its environment) or stop-motion animate the destruction, which, as Ray Harryhausen has many times told us, is insanely difficult and never looks right. Think of the buildings being demolished in "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers"--a little stiff and wooden. Pre-CGI (and frankly that has its limitations--everything looks like a video game for one, and it lacks guts and resonance) the best way to have a monster wreck a city and give it some real visceral heft is...yes, a guy in a rubber suit smashing away at superb miniatures. This was never a cheesy low-budget decision (although it incidentally translated to lower budget films well), it was a calculated design and aesthetic choice and in the best of the films it is not only effective but quite riveting--even though it's not precisely "realistic" whatever the hell that means in a fantasy/sci-fi offering. So all I'm saying is next time you feel like getting snide or uppity about the rubber suit shtick, the explosions, or any other tough details in these wonderful films, sit down with a budget, timetable, and pack of grouchy production experts and please try to come up with a better way to do it! Also, take a hard look at that miniature Tokyo or Osaka or Hokado the monster is trashing and ask hard questions about time and money. Those toy cities were works of art.

While I'm grouchy one more thing--with few exceptions, like "Team America," you're not going to see much real "fantasy" stuff on the screen anymore. It's all Green Screen or location shooting nowadays. I don't think many people have completely thought through what this means. What's more exciting, a chase involving 50 horsemen that you know are real or one involving 5000 horsemen that you know must be a computer generated image...or a real spaceship (albeit in miniature) blowing up or a hundred CGI images of spaceships doing same. Deep down, your brain can tell the difference. All those fantastic people who knew how to design and build miniatures and crazy sets (like you see in 50s and 60s films) and make real explosions and do great stunts are disappearing--fast. It's all artificial, like artificial flavoring, and something something that gets to your gut is missing. I can't watch modern films because I know I'm pretty much watching cartoons.

More "Unbelievable" Than The Original US Cut.......2005-10-28

I'd seen the US cut of Varan several years ago, and it was terrible. Thankfully, Media Blasters brings us the original uncut version, over four decades later. Varan is back in all his glory, last seen in a brief clip in "Destroy All Monsters" in 1968. Extras include original Japanese trailers, a restored Japanese TV broadcast version, and a featurette on the creation of the Varan suit, all of which are worth a look. I might add, this DVD lacks an English dub, so those who watch dub-only versions may want to avoid this.

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