Come back, foolish airplane, I want to play!
The first half of Varan The Unbelievable (1958) is an oddity among old kaiju movies – there are actual characters with real chemistry that get to speak believable dialog, and I’ll tell you what – that was a real, if relative, pleasure. Added to that, the moviemakers had the smarts to make the first encounter with the eponymous monster quite sublime in the Burkean sense of the word, as I’ve mentioned in other reviews: one had the sense there was more to monster, that its horror went on and on, since all we could really see was its foot, and even that was enveloped in dust.
So what’s going on? US Navy Command Bradley is at a Japanese lake to test a desalination process based on adding chemicals to the water, along with his Japanese wife and some elements of the Japanese Self-Defense Force (SDF), which are illustrated with some nifty real-world footage. Unfortunately for Bradley, his experiments awaken Varan, a big ol’ lizard sleeping on the lake’s bottom, that eventually begins to trample the country-side, despite the efforts of the SDF. Not satisfied with tromping about the lake’s beaches, Varan heads back into the water for Oneida, a local city.
At this point, it’s become a standard city romp (technically only the airport is stomped, but the experienced reader will understand the point), complete with plastic model tanks and plot holes. For instance, why should the chemicals used by Bradley to inadvertently awaken Varan be used to try to kill him? It makes little sense, and the relentless good acting isn’t enough to overcome the disappointment of what this movie becomes.
Never mind me, just looking for that Chicken McFinger I dropped on the floor.
And it’s too bad, because Varan itself wasn’t too bad in the monster department (although my Arts Editor is not in complete agreement on that point). Some other average to good special effects, good dialog, and a halfway decent start to the movie makes the second half sting a bit more.
And, in that, this review may be unfair. After all, this is a 60 year old movie. Perhaps the destruction of the city’s airport by a monster was quite the novelty for the contemporary audience.
But this movie also lacks a good theme. We could theorize the theme is not to mess with Mother Nature, but awakening a big lizard isn’t really something I’d worry about when boldly experimenting. I’d worry more about my hair falling out.
In the end, it’s actually a bit fun, a bit disappointing, and you wonder what it could have been.
