The Guyver (1991)

THE GUYVER is a little-remembered anime-influenced science fiction flick about an ordinary guy who becomes possessed with the power to transform into a crime-fighting mutant cyborg hero. He soon finds himself assailed by a gang of bizarre lizard men and discovers that a sinister engineering organisation is set to bring chaos to the world; it's his job to stop those involved. This film is a classic example of what a movie with great effects and no script looks like. Screaming Mad George, who co-directs, contributes all manner of amazing prosthetics and weird-looking creations, even a little stop motion at times. The imagination is all up on the screen in a physical format. The rest is a mish mash of nonsense and tired genre tropes, with mad scientist running amok and street gangs trying to act tough. It's a bit like the SUPER MARIO BROS. movie. The humour is very poor and the pacing seems off, inducing boredom at times. One good aspect - aside from the effects - is the presence of familiar actors in supporting roles, including tough guy Mark Hamill and mad scientist Jeffrey Combs.

When it comes to cartoon movie adaptations, it has yet to be seen where one comes out playing well. Speed Racer (2008) is a perfect example of this. Live-action tends to suck the life out of cartoons. So after watching the Japanese cartoon of The Guyver, I wasn't quite sure how this movie adaptation would play out. But surprisingly, to me, I was somewhat entertained by the creature effects and actors that appeared in the film. However, this still does not make it a great movie.The film starts off with a scrolling of lines that explain that there is a group of people who can transform into creatures called Zoanoids. The Zoalord, the strongest Zoanoid who looks to control the world, leads these Zoanoids. But the only way he can do this is by obtaining the "guyver", a bio-armor that should make him invincible. That is, if not for an unwilling individual who runs into the bio-armor first, giving him power beyond his original abilities.The unwilling individual is named Sean Barker played by the forgotten actor, Jack Armstrong. Armstrong gives a convincing performance as his character, even if the majority of his lines are "Are you OK? or Let her go!". Baker also has a girlfriend, Mizky Segawa (Vivian Wu), who gets caught by the Zoalord and is the damsel in distress. However, her character does show some courage, a trait that does not come up often, usually most damsels scream constantly. Tagging along with them is CIA agent, Max Reed, played by the famous Mark Hamill. Hamill gives Reed some good lines, this made me chuckle here and there.Even more surprising is to find four other iconic actors in this film as well. Michael Berryman from Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes (1977) has a significant role as the Zoalord's henchman. Even more intriguing is that Jeffrey Combs and David Gale from Re-Animator (1985) both have roles in here too. Gale plays the Zoalord himself and Combs plays a lab rat named Dr. East. Jeez, how funny is that. Herbert WEST from Re- Animator (1985) is now Dr. EAST in The Guyver (1991), and, now Combs is working for Gale instead of fighting him, like in Re-Animator (1985). Also Willard E. Pugh, Mayor Kuzak from RoboCop 2 (1990), plays one of Reed's coworkers. Which also coincidental because when the "guyver" armor is first activated by Baker, someone says, "Alright you RoboCop thing!". Hahaha wow. Too many coincidences.Now for the bad things. First, I enjoy martial arts fight sequences but for a lot of the time, I felt like they dragged on forever. This is mostly because the fight scenes contained the same techniques. Also, I understand that it is 1991 but it seemed like many of the creature costumes ran from either clunky to unrealistically goofy. One monster had googly eyes. Really? How does that look terrifying? I'd laugh. Actually, a lot of the costumes looked like they were ideas to be used for the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (1993) TV show. But I do give credit to Linda L. Meltzer, head of costume design for making the "guyver" armor looking so awesome. The special effects with the bio- armor were cool but it also made me wonder why the same couldn't be done for when the villains transformed.Also, for the first half of the film, the transitioning between scenes was very obnoxious. But credit should be given to screenwriter Jon Purdy for at least making the story more creative. The story isn't the usual cliché hero movie. There are parts of the film where it'll have the audience guessing and I'll admit there were segments where I thought certain things wouldn't happen but they did. It keeps you on your toes so that's good. The musical score by Matthew Morse wasn't impressive though. I had a slight resemblance to the anime shows but it wasn't very prevalent in the film. Also the ending seemed quick which made me feel like it was done last minute just as a throw in. This movie had a lot of ups and downs but I support it because it did almost go somewhere.For the most part, the actors and the "guyver" armor itself is the thing to see in this film. The action is good for a while but gets tiresome overtime as well as the creature costumes.

From childhood memory I recalled this movie being great fun and really cool.So the lesson I learnt from rewatching this film recently is that some kid memories should stay as memories. this really isn't very good at all.This is a shame as the cast features some genre greats such as Mark Hamill, Michale Berrman and Jeffrey Combs. The film doesn't seem to know if it wants to be a shlocky horror movie, comic book film or children's adventure. One minute it feels like Shaq's Steel film or Starkid the next it feels like Toxic Crusader. The tone is everywhere and for that reason left this old kid disappointed..

...And that was because I was 12 and hadn't read the original Yoshiki Takaya Manga "Bio-booster Armor Guyver" back then. 1992's "The Guyver" was the first American adaptation of Takaya's original Japanese work, which had already been made into a 12-episode OVA on its native soil.The original 12-episode OVA condensed much of Takaya's material, thus eliminating a lot of the deeper sci-fi themes and moments for the characters to develop beyond simple comic book caricatures. The 1992 "Guyver" film boasts some incredible creature effects, cool-looking monsters and a formidable cast of "B"-movie talent, but it didn't do much to really further Takaya's reputation in the United States, since like the first OVA, a lot of themes in the movie were shed and replaced by typical sci-fi monster movie elements and the camp humor present in most American "B"-pictures.Perhaps the blame falls on the co-directing team of Screaming Mad George and Steve Wang and screenwriter Jon Purdy. They bring much of the camp of American "B"-movies to an amazing piece of Japanese art that was better known for its deep characters, chilling near-apocalyptic themes and brilliant sci-fi narrative, not for any stupid camp humor. Of course this undermines the seriousness of and shows an utter lack of respect for Takaya's original material, even though I'm not a stickler for accuracy when it comes to adaptations but these sorts of changes really bugged me.The first live-action film features some of the same basic elements of the story, including characters and history, but that's about it. In Los Angeles, a lab scientist is tracked down and killed by the Chronos Corporation's legion of Zoanoids, human mutants that have the ability to transform into monster foot-soldiers at will. The scientist had stolen the "guyver" unit, an alien suit of armor, from Chronos's lab, and had planned on delivering it to CIA agent Max Reed (Mark Hamill).Balcus (the late David Gale) is the head of Chronos, and has instructed his Zoanoid henchmen (including original "The Hills Have Eyes" Michael Berryman as Zoanoid chief henchman Lisker and Jimmy Walker as Zoanoid foot-soldier Striker, the latter of whom provides much of the comic relief) to go out and search for the missing Guyver unit by first starting with the scientist's daughter Mizki (Vivian Wu). But it has already fallen into the hands of college student Sean Barker (Jack Armstrong), who accidentally activates the unit after being attacked by gang members and is transformed into an exponentially enhanced mechanized warrior with an awesome array of powers and weapons. Now he must use the Guyver's abilities to fend off Chronos and its legion of evil Zoanoids.While "The Guvyer" does boast some incredible special effects, you can also see some of the attempts at mimicking the mood of then-recent comic book adaptations like "Batman" (1989) or "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (1990), much rather than its own source material. But the camp humor destroys much of what could have been really good about the movie. The acting is pretty poor, the dialogue hokey and "B"-name heavyweights such as Mark Hamill and Jimmy Walker don't really seem to have a lot to do, although there is one oddly-placed comic scene where Striker crashes in on the set of a monster movie and is confronted by scream queen Linnea Quigley (they don't call her a scream queen for nothing, you know).Better to save the best for this film's 1994 sequel "Guyver: Dark Hero" and the 2005 26-episode OVA series, both of which are not only better, but are more serious, more violent, and more faithful to the Manga.4/10