THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: VARAN THE UNBELIEVABLE (1962) * ½

Myron Healy stars as an American military man stationed on a Japanese island.  His assignment is to pump a bunch of chemicals into the sea to help the locals refine their drinking water.  Of course, in doing so, Healy’s experiments wind up awakening a giant prehistoric monster. 

So, what’s so unbelievable about Varan?  Plenty!  Let’s start with the incredibly shoddy way the whole thing was put together.  Like the original Godzilla, Varan the Unbelievable is a Toho monster movie directed by Ishiro Honda that was taken by an American studio (in this case, Crown International) who added Americanized scenes of American actors and integrated them with the original plot.  What is shocking about Varan the Unbelievable is how little of the original is left.  Most of the focus is on Healy’s various problems than anything.

What’s more, the footage doesn’t even match!  The lighting, camerawork, and locations are so different that it quickly becomes painfully obvious it was the work of two entirely different crews (from two entirely different nations, no less).  Yes, this process is nothing new, but wait till you see just how carelessly it was cobbled together.  A child could easily tell it’s two different movies stitched together in slapdash fashion.  (Sometimes the original footage appears and disappears so rapidly it almost seems subliminal.)

What else is unbelievable?  How about the fact that they don’t even call him Varan!  They call him “Obake”!  I guess Obake the Unbelievable just didn’t have the same ring to it.

Want to know something else that’s unbelievable?  The print.  It’s one of the worse pan-and-scan crop jobs I’ve ever seen.  Actually, it isn’t even fair to call it “pan-and-scan” because it doesn’t even pan and scan.  Instead, it hops back and forth; sometimes several times within the same shot.  It’s jarring to say the least. 

Another thing unbelievable about Varan is that it takes a half hour before he even shows up.  Till then it’s a LOT of stuff of Myron Healy hanging out on an island.  We’re talking Dullsville here. 

On the plus side, Varan himself is really cool.  He’s the only thing in the movie worth a damn.  He kind of looks like Godzilla, but with a spikier back.  Most of the time, he stomps on two legs, but sometimes he crawls around on all fours like a dog.  Too bad he spends much of his time on an island, so there’s no real buildings for him to smash.  Instead, he causes rockslides and steps on Jeeps.  (You have to wait until the last fifteen minutes to finally see him work over Japan.) 

Apparently, in the original Japanese version Varan flew.  Us stupid Americans unwisely cut it out.  I mean, let’s face it.  Even if the flying effects were bad, at least it would’ve been something different to separate him from the rest of the pack.  At least the ending is interesting because the Japanese are unable to kill the monster, just wound it enough so it goes back into the sea.  I kind of liked that.  Kaiju détente.  However, it would take Varan six years to show up on screens again when he cameoed in Destroy All Monsters.