FilmMonster & Creature Sci-Fi Horror Classic Monsters

Varan the Unbelievable1962

Name: Varan the Unbelievable
Genre: Monster & Creature, Sci-Fi Horror, Classic Monsters
Released: 1962-12-07
Rating: 5.2

“From a world below, it came to terrorize - to destroy - to revenge!”

Directed by Jerry A. Baerwitz, Ishirō Honda

5.2

Crypt Score

Blended from 2 sources

IMDb 4.5TMDB 4.4

✍ Review

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Year

1962

Runtime

70 min

The premise

In an effort to find an economic means of purifying salt water, a joint U.S.-Japanese military command is set up on an isolated Japanese island where an unusual salt water lake is situated. However, their purifying experiments arouse the prehistoric monster Obaki from hibernation at the lake's bottom, and it proceeds to attack Japan. Although made by a U.S. independent film company, this film was based on a Japanese Toho monster film of 1958, "Daikaiju Varan", from which all of the monster effects scenes and a few incidental dramatic shots were edited into it.

Horror Vault's take

When a joint U.S.-Japanese military operation sets up camp on a remote island to test a radical saltwater purification process, they disturb something ancient and enormous lurking in the depths of a secluded lake. The prehistoric giant Varan — dormant for untold millennia — awakens in fury, and no coastal city is safe from its wrath. A hybrid production blending American dramatic footage with monster sequences lifted from Toho's 1958 original, this creature feature delivers old-school kaiju mayhem in a distinctly Cold War-era package.

Content: Monster Destruction Sequences, Mild Peril