Thursday, April 24, 2014

VARAN THE UNBELIEVABLE 1958 (TOKYO SHOCK)

Underrated Japanese sci-fi film.

This review is for the Japanese version, not the US version with Myron Healey.

A small Japanese village in the mountains worship a strange God. When two explorers are killed the rumors spread and finally a huge monster called Varan appears and destroys the village and heads for civilization.

Varan is a pretty cool looking monster than can also fly due to membranes between his arms and legs. He heads for Tokyo and nothing can stop him. Many are killed during the fights and Varan makes his way to Tokyo and proceeds to destroy some of it before a professor comes up with a way that might just stop him.

As a monster Varan never went anywhere in the Japanese cinema market and that is a shame. I like this film a lot. Varan only appeared in one other film which was "Destroy All Monsters: in 1969, and then only very briefly as he is seen flying.

Tokyo Shock turned this out in a beautiful widescreen version with Japanese subtitles and it is one of my favorite discs. I highly recommend this.

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