Varan (1958)

Varan the Unbelievable, released in Japan as Giant Monster Varan (大怪獣バラン, Daikaijū Baran), is a 1958 Japanese science fiction kaiju film directed by Ishirō Honda. The film focuses on Varan, a prehistoric creature reawakened by scientific experiments performed on the lake where Varan resides. The film stars Kôzô Nomura, Ayumi Sonoda, Fumito Matsuo, and Haruo Nakajima as Varan. The film is produced by Toho and features special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. It is also Toho's last Kaiju film to be shot in black-and-white.

Initially, the film was to be produced for American television, but the American producers backed out at the last minute. With most of the film already completed, Toho's crew filmed additional scenes, and it was released in Japanese theaters, but not before adapting the remaining spherical footage from the original production to anamorphic widescreen using a one-shot, SuperScope-like process called TohoPanScope. A reconstruction of the TV version is included on both the Japanese and American DVDs.

In 1962, Crown International Pictures released Varan the Unbelievable, a heavily re-edited American adaptation of the original Japanese film, Varan. While Varan the Unbelievable used some of the original Japanese footage, it mainly consisted of new footage shot exclusively for the film's North American release, which heavily altered the premise of the original Japanese version and featured American actor Myron Healey and other Japanese-American actors replacing the original actors from the Japanese version with new principal roles, a technique previously done in Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, another film produced by Toho.

The 2005 subtitled DVD release of Daikaijū Baran, the original Japanese version, was titled Varan the Unbelievable on the front cover leading to confusion as to which version of the film (Japanese or American) was presented on the disc.

Synopsis

A rare species of butterfly native to Siberia is found in a mysterious valley in Japan, a pair of entomologists go to investigate. In response, an expedition is dispatched to their habitat, located along the Kitakami River, to discover why the insects might be living in Japan. Two members of the scientific community helm the expedition, but are mysteriously crushed by something that the police can only describe as "powerful." The nearby villagers of the Kitakami River insist that the deaths were a result of the wrath of their mountain god Baradagi-Sanjin.

Actors