Just perfect...

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This comment is on the original Japanese version of the film. A group of researchers investigate the disappearance of two colleagues in the mountains of northeastern Japan. They discover lethal and ill-tempered behemoth prehistoric lizard Varan, who awakens and makes an immediate beeline to Tokyo with the specific intent of trashing the town. Can the military stop Varan before it's too late? Director Ishiro Honda expertly creates an intriguingly eerie atmosphere in the opening third of the picture and does a bang-up job of maintaining a brisk, exciting and unrelenting forward-ho momentum in the thrilling second half. Moreover, Honda stages the expected mondo destructo stuff (Varan totals a village) and pitched confrontations with the army with rip-snorting flair and gusto to spare. The flying, reptilian, spike-backed Varan makes for a truly fearsome titanic beast. Kudos are also in order for the snazzy special effects, Hajime Koizumi's sharp widescreen black and white cinematography, the credible acting from a solid cast, the bleakly serious tone, and Akira Ifukube's lively, stirring, all-out orchestral score. A hugely enjoyable montermash.

As we all know, ABC-TV commissioned the Japanese original in 1958, but pulled out of the deal. Toho went ahead and made it anyway, although, since it was geared towards American audiences, it never caught on in the Land of the Rising Sun (in fact, the monster only shows up for Toho once more, for a few seconds in "Destroy All Monsters"). In 1961, smalltime producer Jerry A. Baerwitz ("Fright Night") bought the American rights and came up with a hatchet job that tried to emulate Raymond Burr's version of "Godzilla" but failed miserably.In the original, a butterfly scientist (Kozo Nomura) and a reporter (Ayumi Sonoda) break a village's religious taboo to save a kid and they accidentally rouse Baradagi, a species of dinosaur known as a Varanopod (or Varan, for short). The monster shrugs off a massive Army attack and flies out of northern Japan heading for Tokyo. Huge air and naval battles ensue.In this Americanized version, we get TV western heavy Myron Healey ("The Gene Autry Show," "The Roy Rogers Show," "Wagon Train," "Annie Oakley") as Cdr. James Bradley. Instead of northern Japan, he is near a lake supposedly on an island near Okinawa. He is conducting desalinization tests on the lake and he kills a lot of fish, which angers the local villagers. I'm not sure why Baerwitz made him such a callous character. America comes off pretty rude and vain in this film. Tsuruko Kobayashi plays his wife Anna and Clifford Kawada plays military liaison Capt. Kishi, in a role clearly meant to emulate Frank Iwanaga's sidekick role to Raymond Burr in "Godzilla." Nomura's Kenji and Sonoda's reporter are strangely referred to as scientists named Paul and Shidori Isoh, who are working with Bradley. Unlike "Godzilla," there are no stand-ins to try to make it seem like Bradley knows them intimately.The American version cuts the length from 90 minutes to 70. Many action scenes are cut, including the infamous Varan flying scene. The creature is called "Obaki," not "Baradagi." Instead of heading for Tokyo, Varan is said to be heading for Naha, Okinawa's largest city.The worst part was that Baerwitz went even cheaper in the editing department. Terry Morse was able to use sound stages and outdoor shots to make it seem like Burr was interacting with the "Gojira" cast. Here, Healey, Kobayashi and Kawada either stay in a flimsy tent or drive around in a jeep. In fact, the trio had to eat up 10 minutes pretending like their jeep wouldn't run and they're scrambling to fix it so they can tell the Japanese military how to kill Varan. The trio look up off-screen as if looking at Varan, but they're still in daylight while Varan is attacking at night. Much of the film was done in Bronson Canyon (yes, the same one seen in the likes of "Robot Monster," "Monster From Green Hell," "Night of the Blood Beast" and "It Conquered the World"). In fact, in one scene, the trio hides in a deep cave and tries to avoid the long raking claw of Varan. In long distance shots, though, they're actually in a shallow cave trying to avoid being hit by daylight.Healey barks commands to Capt. Kishi who relays them by radio to the same Japanese radioman throughout the entire film. He even suggests using the desalinization chemicals as a way of killing Varan, thus cutting out the actual ending of the Japanese original, which was spectacular. The new cut makes it seem like Healey, whose character started the whole thing, singlehandedly saves the day. Hooray for the U.S. Navy!It really will seem like two different films here. No interaction between casts. Completely different scenery. Two-dimensional characters. Myron Healey at least seems like he relishes the role, although he probably knew it wouldn't get him off TV and onto the big screen permanently. As Healey himself later lamented, his version of "Varan" makes you wish that ABC had stuck with the original production.Trivia: Healey did recurring roles with Raymond Burr on "Perry Mason" and "Ironsides." He lamented to Burr that Raymond got to spend two wonderful months in Japan making "Godzilla," while he was stuck in the broiling heat of Bronson Canyon. Burr's inserts were so convincing Healey thought Raymond had actually been in Japan.Also, most of Akira Ifukube's score is left out of the American version. Instead, Baerwitz casually borrowed the score from friend Bert I. Gordon's "Amazing Colossal Man." Finally, this travesty would not be the last hatchet job America would do on a Japanese monster movie. Check out John Carradine in "Half Human" and, later, "Godzilla 1985" with an embarrassed Raymond Burr. These wrecks are why Japan decided to go with atrocious dubbing effects.

Varan was one of the few Japanese monsters that didn't catch on in Japan after the success of Godzilla and Rodan I have seen the original version of the film and it is a very good example of the kaiju eiga genre. However, this version is a piece of garbage. The scenes where Myron Healy "interacts" with the populous of the island are awkward and you can tell immediately that the film was done by two different crews. Also, the print that is used by the American company is so dark you can barely make out the monster and they pretty much do away with one of the best scores ever composed by Akira Ifkube and replace it with some stock music that was originally used in "The Amazing Colossal Man". If Toho wants to sue the Americans for butchering one of their films, I will be glad to show up as a witness.

I thought this movie was going to feature the great Japanese monster Varan, as he flies and attacks a city, with a good and powerful plot. After sitting through this travesty, I learned that this is a highly edited American version of the Japanese classic. This version was butchered so badly that you hardly see any of the original Japanese cast and the soundtrack for Varan's roar sounded like somebody with a cold. The monster scenes were edited poorly and the story changes significantly from the original. From this database, I discovered that Akira Ifukube actually scored this movie. I only heard one small verse of Akira Ifukube's music in the movie. The rest of his music were replaced by stock music. The American version tag-line for this movie is "Move over Godzilla! Varan is coming!" From the way Varan was executed out in this movie version, Varan wouldn't stand a chance against Godzilla. In addition, the acting was pretty dull and boring, which created an overall dreary picture. Therefore, I recommend you let this video, if you have it, gather dust and try to find the original version, titled "Giant Monster Baran." I haven't seen it by the time of this review, but I heard it is much better than this butchered version; for starters, you can see more of the monster in that version. I can't wait to see the original.Grade D--