Talkback: Varan (1958)

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Re: Talkback Thread: Varan the Unbelievable (1958)

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Re: Talkback Thread: Varan the Unbelievable (1958)

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Lain Of The Wired wrote: Good to know the original Japanese version is a little better, really hoping it gets a Bluray release sometime soon, I'd love to pick this film up.
Given the DAM/Megalon drama from the Tokyo Shock label that I assume still has the rights to this, I'm not sure if they'll do much more for their Toho titles. Maybe I'm just thinking too negatively.
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Re: Talkback Thread: Varan the Unbelievable (1958)

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Tohosaurus wrote:
Lain Of The Wired wrote: Good to know the original Japanese version is a little better, really hoping it gets a Bluray release sometime soon, I'd love to pick this film up.
Given the DAM/Megalon drama from the Tokyo Shock label that I assume still has the rights to this, I'm not sure if they'll do much more for their Toho titles. Maybe I'm just thinking too negatively.
Drama? I'm not familiar with what you're talking about, care to elaborate?
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Re: Talkback Thread: Varan the Unbelievable (1958)

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Lain Of The Wired wrote: Drama? I'm not familiar with what you're talking about, care to elaborate?
The special features that Media Blasters used with their Destroy All Monsters release were apparently not completely approved by Toho, which is why DAM was briefly out of print again before a feature-less release (the current one available) version was released. Megalon then was delayed and released without any special features - except for a few that people bought that unintentionally had bonuses were are believed to have been what was trimmed. I'm not sure if Toho ever commented on that, and in fact we don't really know the status of Media Blasters and Toho's relationship as I don't think they've released anything of Toho's since (that I'm aware of, at least). The reason I made this original point of course is that Media Blasters did the release of Varan on DVD. These days it looks like it might be out of print, including the triple-feature version that was also released. I'm basing this off of searching for it on a few sites and it being unavailable. This is not the only Media Blasters Toho film that's not so easy to find right now, so I'm curious to maybe there just not being demand for it anymore, if their rights have lapsed and they did not renew them (or Toho wouldn't allow it?), or a combination like them still having the rights but no further interest in it. At least it had a few special features, but if it's available again for licensing or will be in the future then distributors like Shout! might have interest. It's probably not going to be most anyone's priority though, because Varan's movie is not as well known as some of the others from this era, so it might be a moot point.

There's probably all the discussion you'd want to read about it and more here: http://www.tohokingdom.com/forum/viewto ... f=6&t=8947
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Re: Talkback Thread: Varan the Unbelievable (1958)

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Weren't there audio problems with the Media Blasters release of Varan?

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Re: Talkback Thread: Varan the Unbelievable (1958)

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ThunderScore wrote:Weren't there audio problems with the Media Blasters release of Varan?
Were there? I don't remember anything. Then again, that was most of a decade ago.

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Re: Talkback Thread: Varan the Unbelievable (1958)

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ThunderScore wrote:Weren't there audio problems with the Media Blasters release of Varan?
No idea. I don't remember there being an issue with my DVD, but maybe I haven't paid attention?
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Re: Talkback Thread: Varan the Unbelievable (1958)

Post by Tapkaara »

I'll sort of echo what everyone else is saying. The American cut is awfully boring and not worth watching. The TV version has brevity going for it, at least. They get right to the point pretty quickly, which one actually ends up appreciating after watching the extended Japanese cut, which as so many have aptly pointed out, just has a lot of padding with characters that really don't jump off the screen and beg for the viewer's affection.

Varan is a cool looking monster, though, and some of the scenes with him are quite well executed.

Ifukube's score is really good. It's my opinion that his best kaiju/tokusatsu scores were from the 1950s, and his Varan music ranks right up there.
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Re: Talkback: Varan (1958)

Post by Tamura »

So I'm almost convinced the Toho-Pan-Scope process credited at the beginning of Varan was simply a variant of SuperScope, a 50's widescreen process that involved cropping Academy footage to 2.00:1 and then generating anamorphic prints compatible with CinemaScope projector lenses. In other words, we've probably had this movie's screening aspect ratio wrong this whole time and should probably revise going theories. You can read more about the SuperScope process and its history here:

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/wingss1.htm

What first got me thinking about this was the fact that vertical bands appear on either side of the frame in the US version during Japanese footage, as can be seen below. The right band is usually a bit fatter. That could mean the pan-and-scan operator for the US TV version just happened to never venture all the way to the left or that the left band wasn't as wide:

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They even appear in footage shot after the TV project was aborted, the footage most people assumed was shot in 'scope 2.35:1.

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The optical explosions and smoke the US editors added often extend over these bands, so it would appear that the bands were part of the Japanese source used. If not, it at least means the Japanese footage they worked with had a narrower aspect ratio than 2.35:1 and that they compensated for it by adding these pillars on either side.

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The Region 2 transfer Media Blasters used for the Japanese theatrical version isn't even in 2.35:1 - it's actually about 2.06:1 squashed to 2.16:1. When I found out they did this, I wasn't even surprised. Shame on you, Toho Video, and hire some quality inspectors already.

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So what we have here is a movie created at a time when dozens of widescreen formats competed with each other worldwide, composed mostly (entirely?) of Academy footage cropped to a strange anamorphic process different enough from TohoScope to warrant its own name, released at least in America with these fat bars on the left and right, and released on DVD in Japan by its owner in a much narrower ratio than 2.35:1 (not even counting the added squash). I think all of these facts give me enough reason to suspect Varan was released in a SuperScope-like 2.00:1 all along.

The only piece that doesn't fit is the presence of those two vertical bands instead of one - in SuperScope prints only one, huge band appeared on the right, which meant exhibitors had to either leave the image off center or adjust the projection. So I guess maybe Toho-Pan-Scope was Toho's perfection of the SuperScope process.

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Re: Talkback: Varan (1958)

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I've always wondered if the 16mm TV prints of VARAN THE UNBELIEVABLE had some additional post production - When Varan is climbing up the hill, the 16mm prints have fire that frames the action - for TV. The edges of the frame not visible show where the effect begins.

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Re: Talkback: Varan (1958)

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Here's another thing: a few hairs appear along the left edge of the frame during the naval battle scene, which at first seems like nothing special, but the thing is they don't sit still. They bounce up and down the vertical axis depending on the shot. The first frame below - the turret - is the last frame of a shot from this scene, and the second frame is the first frame of the very next shot:

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The kicker here is that virtually none of this scene appears in the aborted TV version. If it's true that the footage added later for the Japanese theatrical version was done in 2.35:1, we shouldn't be seeing these hairs dance around as if a Toho-Pan-Scope operator were tilting a 1.37:1 frame up and down to capture the most important information to a new, 2.00:1 frame. So I think it's likely that the entire film was shot in 1.37:1 and converted to 2.00:1.

Also: very thin remnants of the aforementioned vertical bands appear at a few points in the Japanese theatrical version on the Media Blasters DVD once you zoom it in to remove the least amount of windowboxing necessary to keep the left and rightmost horizontal information intact, so that means the bands were most likely part of the Japanese theatrical version all along.

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In conclusion, after looking at all these clues throughout the Japanese theatrical and US versions, I think it is very likely that Varan was sent to Japanese theaters in a CinemaScope projector lens-compatible, 2.00:1 aspect ratio tucked inside a pillarboxed frame - not 2.35:1, as has been unquestioningly accepted - and that most or possibly all of the footage shot after the TV project fell through was done in 1.37:1 - not TohoScope, as has also been unquestioningly accepted.
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Re: Talkback: Varan (1958)

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Godzilla. Rodan. Mothra. Gorgo. Reptilicus, Varan. The 'BIG SIX' of classic giant movie monsters, and they are the standard by which all other 'army vs. modern city smashing giant monster movies' are judged. I'd love to see the Japanese version, too.

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Re: Talkback: Varan (1958)

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^I'd rank both King Kong and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms above a few of those, including Varan.

I find the Japanese version watchable, at times entertaining, but hardly something to passionately aspire to.
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Re: Talkback: Varan (1958)

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eabaker wrote:^I'd rank both King Kong and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms above a few of those, including Varan.

I find the Japanese version watchable, at times entertaining, but hardly something to passionately aspire to.
I think King Kong outranks all of those TBH…
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Re: Talkback: Varan (1958)

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Lain Of The Wired wrote:
eabaker wrote:^I'd rank both King Kong and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms above a few of those, including Varan.

I find the Japanese version watchable, at times entertaining, but hardly something to passionately aspire to.
I think King Kong outranks all of those TBH…
I don't know that I'd put it above Gojira, but I'd say both of them are pretty much masterpieces.
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Re: Talkback: Varan (1958)

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^What's so good about Beast other than the special effects? The movie seems empty to me. Kong, on the other hand, is still great and always will be. G54 outclasses them both.

Varan? That movie be some boring shit. Lol
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Re: Talkback: Varan (1958)

Post by edgaguirus »

The movie is mediocre, but the Varan suit and the music score were good.
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Re: Talkback: Varan (1958)

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tymon wrote:^What's so good about Beast other than the special effects? The movie seems empty to me. Kong, on the other hand, is still great and always will be. G54 outclasses them both.

Varan? That movie be some boring shit. Lol
I wasn't saying Beast was anything that special (beyond the effects), just that I'd put it above Varan, Gorgo and Reptilicus. I certainly wasn't suggesting that Beast, as a narrative, is anywhere near the levels of Kong, Godzilla, Rodan or Mothra.
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Re: Talkback: Varan (1958)

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^Sorry I misread, I thought you were saying Kong and Beast are masterpieces, but you actually said Kong and G54. And yeah, agreed on all counts.
JAGzilla wrote:And then there was The Giant Condor. He...seemed very dedicated to what he was doing?

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Re: Talkback: Varan (1958)

Post by eabaker »

tymon wrote:^Sorry I misread, I thought you were saying Kong and Beast are masterpieces, but you actually said Kong and G54. And yeah, agreed on all counts.
Oh, wow. Yeah, that'd be a very different statement...
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