Varan the Unbelievable
Cast & Crew
Myron Healey
Tsuruko Kobayashi
Clifford Kawada
Derick Shimatsu
Kozo Nomura
Ayumi Sonoda
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
In a salt water lake located on a small Japanese island, Comdr. James Bradley conducts experiments to convert salt water to fresh. His Japanese wife, Anna, objects due to the legend that a grotesque prehistoric reptile inhabits the lake and will remain peaceful only if not disturbed. Bradley ignores the warning, and his tests arouse the monster. Total destruction follows, and all attempts to destroy the beast fail as it heads for a large city. Bradley then explodes his chemicals on the monster, and it retreats into the water, but no one knows if it will appear again.
Cast
Myron Healey
Tsuruko Kobayashi
Clifford Kawada
Derick Shimatsu
Kozo Nomura
Ayumi Sonoda
Koreya Senda
Akihiko Hirata
Hideo Imamura
George Sasaki
Hiroshi Hisamune
Yoneo Iguchi
Michael Sung
Roy Ogata
Crew
Howard Anderson
Vic Appel
Jerry A. Baerwitz
Jerry A. Baerwitz
Robert Cowan
Ralph Cushman
Sid Harris
Inoshiro Honda
Akira Ifukube
Hajime Koizumi
Hajime Koizumi
Leonard Kunody
T. Kuronuma
Jack Marquette
Robert O'dell
Jack Ruggiero
Shinichi Sekizawa
K. Shimizu
Eiji Tsuburaya
Peter Zinner
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
After the success of Gojira (1954) in the USA, ABC-TV commissioned this new monster movie from Toho Studios. The studio intially believed it would only be shown on American TV, and thus ordered the movie shot in black and white at a standard aspect ratio. Almost halfway through shooting, the studios changed their mind and decided the film would indeed be shown in Japanese theaters. This meant that the rest of the movie had to be shot in the anamorphic format of Tohoscope, while the footage that was already shot had its tops and bottoms cropped in order to resemble Tohoscope.
Notes
Released in Japan in 1958 as Daikaiju Baran; running time: 87 min. Reedited and supplemented with additional footage for U. S. distribution.
