**           I Don't Believe It, I Just Don't Believe It!

Toho was on a roll with their "guy-in-a-rubber-suit" monster movies, and so they decided to make even more. An American movie company requested a movie for TV, and that was this one (explains why it's in black and white). But, in 1961 they changed the whole story around, and slapped one together for theaters. The result was a severely messed up movie.

In order to test out a special chemical to get rid of salt in salt water, a small Japanese village next to a salt-water lake is taken over. The chemical is put in the water, and guess what? It wakes up a monster of course! Varan (as he is called in the title, really Baran in Japanese form, they don't even say his name in the American one), runs and swims around all over the place, and gets blasted by the military. Eventually, they decide to hit if with a concentrated form of the chemical, possible killing it (but probably not, he appeared again in "Destroy All Monsters").

Usually there isn't much of a difference between the American and Japanese forms of a Toho movie, but sometimes there is a big difference. This one is probably has the most changes done to it by an American company than any other movie! The whole thing was ripped apart! They cut out the entire Japanese backplot, and added a dumb, boring, dull, and occasionally over-dramatic backplot involving some screwy salt-water changer thing. Not only that, but the whole thing was ripped apart so much that the scenes don't even flow together. It goes back and forth between Japanese and American scenes, and it's easy to tell which ones are which because of differences in clarity and the fact that they didn't even bother to dub the Japanese language! The plot is bad enough, but if it doesn't even fit together, it's even worse! And to add injury to insult, they even cut out the scene where Varan flies!

Then again, the original movie isn't all that great either. I never saw it, but what I can figure from this version is that there wasn't much to work with. The special effects are pretty good, but compared to "Rodan", which was made earlier, it isn't all that great. Plus, most of the "special effects" comprises of old military stock footage. Plus, most of the explosions happen on some sort of glass in front of the screen, which looks dumb and causes the shots to always come short. The monster itself is a rather cool-looking lizard with spikes, but he doesn't act right. He just waltzes around and gets shot at. He rarely destroys things, and has a hunger for flares. The entire end sequence comprises of Varan getting shot repeatedly. Fun and rather good, but it gets boring if it's used too much. Varan got shot so many times that it started to look like he was dying anyways. Not only that, but his roar doesn't sound right either. He sounds like some sort of a vacuum cleaner or something!

As a whole, not too great of a movie. If you're looking to get all the Godzilla and Godzilla-like movies, then you have to get this one to. But get the Japanese version; I heard that it was a lot better. Otherwise, don't even bother. If you think that you can actually see Varan do a lot more than he did in "Destroy All Monsters", well think again. He does about as much as he did in the cameo appearance! This movie is so bad that it's Unbelievable!

Plot isn't all that bad.

Ok special effects.

A few good scenes.

Varan is kinda cool.

I've seen worse (Godzilla's Revenge).

Scenes don't fit together.

American version ripped it apart!

Dumb, dull, boring plot.

What, we don't get to see Varan fly?

Over-dramatic ("Nothing but mud!" * crash *)

Varan's roar sounds like a vacuum cleaner!

It's UNBELIEVABLE!!!

Credits