Movie Impressions: Daikaiju Varan (1958)

I watched the fourth movie on my Kaiju watchlist over the weekend, one I hadn't seen before.




I have enjoyed Kaiju movies since before I knew the term Kaiju. I grew up watching Gamera movies rented from the local video store, and at some point branched out into Godzilla movies. Something about two people in giant rubber monster suits fighting each other while trashing really detailed model cities is appealing somehow.

It had been awhile since I watched any outside of the MST3K treatments of the Gamera series though, until last summer when I visited my parents in Ohio and we watched "Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack" (gotta love those titles!) which was one I hadn't seen before. I did some online research because I was curious (especially about Baragon, the poor fourth monster who didn't rate his name in the movie title) and it turns out this is from the Millennium period of Godzilla films. Millennium films ignore both the original Showa era films and the later Heisei reboots of the Godzilla franchise, and work a new story series from the original 1954 Godzilla movie while still using a lot of the original Kaiju. I already knew about Mother and King Ghidorah (although it was interesting to see King Ghidorah as a hero monster in opposition to Godzilla's villain for a change) but who was Baragon? This led to a deep dive into all the various monsters that ever showed up in a Godzilla film, and my decision to try to watch every film to feature any monster to show up in a Godzilla film ever. Well, with some exceptions, I'm skipping "Son of Godzilla" because even though I love cheesy campy movies, that was too much even for me when I was a kid. Also the villain is the giant spider Kumonga, and my sister-in-law has severe arachnophobia, and I enjoy sharing the ridiculous joy that is Kaiju films. Kumonga appears in a few other films like Destroy All Monsters and Godzilla: Final Wars, so we'll see how things are when we get to those...

One of the kaiju I learned about is Varan. Varan has a bit part in Destroy All Monsters, basically just a cameo appearance where he watches the other monsters fighting. However, Varan also has his own film from 1958! It was released in the US in 1962 as Varan the Unbelievable, but that version was significantly reworked (as they tended to be) to include an entire plot with the US navy and American actors. I chose to watch the original version, because based on reviews that was the better version. I prefer originals like that a lot of the time anyway.

It's a pretty simple movie, filmed in black and white. It begins with a scientist talking about finding a species of butterfly in Japan that is otherwise only seen in Siberia. A pair of researchers heads off to the "Tibet of Japan" to look for more. The driving scenes here are great, it's obviously one of those shots where the car is stationary and the background is moving, but the actor with the wheel is making extremely exaggerated turning motions even though they're going straight. They say it's a rough road, but from the motions they should be driving over boulders. I love it.

The researchers soon find an unwelcoming village, where they are warned to go home, but they press on. They find the butterfly they are looking for, but something rises out of the nearby lake and crushes them in a rockslide. Cut to Tokyo, where the scientist is talking about the loss of the two researchers, and sending two more to find out what happened. One of the original researcher's sister shows up, and is so broken up about the loss of her brother... no she isn't. She's a reporter and super excited about the story of the millennium! The fact that her brother died barely seems to register. This is the kind of acting I can get behind in movies I watch over and over.

The trio of two researchers and the reporter Yuriko return to the mountain, where they are warned away by a boy in a mask. The boy doesn't do a great job of warning them away though, and they go to the village where the village priest is leading everybody in a prayer begging forgiveness from Baradagi-Sanjin for the previous researchers intruding upon his privacy. The researchers, especially lead actor Kenji, disparage this superstitious belief. An earthquake (possibly Varan turning over?) dislodges some rocks, and the boy's dog runs off. The boy chases the dog into the forbidden area, and the priest forbids anyone from chasing after him. Our Tokyo-trio are not discouraged however, and rush to find the boy. They get separated in thick fog. Yuriko finds the boy while Kenji and his comedic relief partner return to the village and rile the people into following them to help find Yuriko in the fog. Of course the fog parts and Varan rises from the lake, wreaking havoc on the village (and killing the poor priest as he begs forgiveness, poor guy) before returning to the lake. Kenji and his friends return to Tokyo, where the original scientist declares they cannot allow such a giant monster to reach Tokyo, so the military immediately goes up to the mountain and attacks the sleeping Varan. This was an interesting change from most other Kaiju films, where the humans sort of provoke the monster into attacking Tokyo... of course their bullets do nothing, and Varan shows off his super ability by spreading membranes between his limbs and flying off. Apparently Varan has a fan nickname of "Flying Squirrel Lizard" from this, and he does look more like a flying squirrel than one of the flying Draco lizards that are an inspiration to my D&D character Seesil. Aproustian's favorite part of this scene is that although Varan looks like a gliding monster, he clearly is utilizing powered flight in the scene up to and including the sound of jet engines as he flies off. He doesn't fly again in the film, spending a lot of time underwater like Godzilla does.

What follows is a standard monster wrecks Tokyo as the military tries increasingly desperate attempts to stop it, and I am entirely here for it. My favorite parts were when Varan was underwater defeating the navy sonar by hiding by a rock, and the shot shows a boat sailing past at the top of the screen while Varan's head turned to watch it from below (Varan is so cute!) and when the scientists realize that he was eating their flares (like a giant cat! Or probably a lizard, I'm not as personally familiar with lizard behavior...) because they were shiny and tiny. Oh, also the scene where the military planners were moving their model figures around their table and they had a plastic dinosaur to represent Varan's position. This movie also stands out to me because the military and scientists also take a moment to think "Our bullets don't work! Why is that? Is it the toughness of the skin? The flexibility of it?" Most monster movies just accept "bullets don't work, but we'll keep shooting anyway". I appreciated this introspection.

The conclusion is to use a special explosive that is very powerful when inserted into a rock and used to blow it up that way, but has no blast power without that external pressure, so they trick Varan into eating it by attaching it to a flare. Poor Varan, although not as gruesome a death as Yonggary gets in the Korean kaiju film riffed in MST3K's 11th season. Special note, the scientist who invented the explosive is played by the same actor who played the scientist who developed the means of killing Godzilla in the original 1954 film (I'm 80% sure of this...)

Overall, a delightful film. Not as serious as the original Godzilla, moving towards the camp of the later Showa era, sort of an in-between ground. Varan's design is great, the spikes down his back, his face is adorable, I hope he gets a revival in future Godzilla films. We also decided the black and white filming works best for that era's miniatures destruction, because in color it becomes a bit more obvious when the effects are real and when they are models. If you can get your hands on this one, and you enjoy kaiju films, I recommend giving it a watch.