The Guyver

Review by Heckler King

An unlikely hero bonds with a suit of futuristic armor, pitting him against the forces of evil mutants and directorial indecisiveness.

Sean Barker aka The Guyver (Jack Armstrong)
Tetsu Segawa (Greg Paik)
Mizuki Segawa (Vivian Wu)
Max Reed (Mark Hamill)
Fulton Balcus (David Gale)
Lisker (Michael Berryman)
Striker (Jimmy Walker)
Weber (Spice Williams)
Ramsey (Peter Spellos)
Dr. East (Jeffery Combs)

Year: 1991
Censorship Rating: PG

[UnSub: Before we even start, when you see that one of the directors is named Screaming Mad George on the movie's IMDb page you just know you are in for a treat!].

Los Angeles (which I didn’t learn until the second movie), middle of the night. An Asian man in a lab coat - Dr. Tetsu Segawa (Greg Paik) - stumbles through back alleys, carrying a silver briefcase. He pauses to inspect the contents; a strange round object with a glistening silver ball in the center. Obviously this is something he doesn’t want somebody else to find, and hides it in a red lunchbox in a junk pile. Suddenly his pursuers cry out from an overpass above him (they do this literally the second after he closes the box, making it strange that they clearly didn’t see him hiding the thing). They pile into a van to continue after him, so apparently they just got out and yelled to let him know they were still after him.

A group of punks quickly catch up to Tetsu and confiscate the briefcase, thinking it still contains what they’re after. The leader of the evildoers, Lisker (Michael Berryman) tells Tetsu it’s still not too late to come back, but Tetsu begins to mutate into a gillman-type monster, a Zoanoid. Appearing only slightly miffed, Lisker turns into a more powerful Zoanoid and pops Tetsu’s head like a zit. The evildoers leave in what they think to be victory while Tetsu’s body rots away behind them.

After the opening credits we rejoin our story at Wang’s Aikido, after creature effects guru Steve Wang, where our hero, Sean Barker (Jack Armstrong) is getting his butt kicked at martial arts practice. His sparring partner does that thing where he offers to help Sean up but then brings his hand back to touch his hair when Sean reaches out to take it. His day looks to brighten a little when his girlfriend, Mizuki Segawa (Vivian Wu) shows up. By the way, it’s pronounced “mizz-key.” He offers her a ride home, which she accepts. Sean’s sensei calls the class to order to demonstrate a new move, which she helpfully explains is an “aikido technique.” Really? In a school called “Wang’s Aikido”? What’ll they think of next? A guy with a bad mustache comes in and talks to Mizuki in the dojo’s office. It’s Max Reed (Mark Hamill! And I might be imagining things, but on the cover where it shows a half-man/half-Guyver image, it looks like his face on the human half rather than Sean‘s), a CIA agent who Tetsu, Mizuki’s father, had gotten in touch with about something called “the Guyver” which Tetsu’s company, the Chronos Corporation, had discovered. Max witnessed the fight between Tetsu and Lisker, but only found a skeleton lying on the ground by the time he got down there.

(Aside: It’s been said by many other reviewers of bad movies before, but it seems that the one thing all cheeseball filmmakers have in common is not understanding that the CIA has no authority on American soil, or maybe they all they think THAT’S JUST WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK! In any case, Max doesn’t appear to be investigating Chronos in his free time yet, so the people behind “The Guyver” can count themselves among this dubious elite).

Paying most of his attention to Mizuki’s obvious distress through the office window, Sean keeps getting punched in the face and dumped his on his butt. He gets into a shoving match with his partner for being a whiny punk who can’t keep his mind on business. The sensei warns him, “Sean, you have to learn to control your temper, or else nothing I teach you is ever gonna help you out there.” If he does grow up over the course of the movie, I sure didn’t see it. When Mizuki and Max leave the dojo together, a suspicious Sean gets on his motor scooter and follows.

Meanwhile, at the headquarters of the Chronos Corporation (helpfully established by caption), Lisker delivers the silver briefcase to his boss, Balcus (David Gale). Lisker claims sole responsibility for recovering the Guyver, but this only serves to make him the sole target of Balcus’ wrath when he opens the case to find, not the round object we saw before, but a burnt-out toaster. Balcus uses some kind of mind control power on Lisker to make the unfortunate flunky slap himself silly, and threatens to make Lisker “slap yourself into oblivion” if he doesn’t find the Guyver, which sounds like a very time-consuming punishment. Balcus adds, “It is the only one in existence!” apparently so fans know not to expect Guyvers 2 and 3 to show up.

At the scene of the crime, Sean peers through a chainlink fence as Mizuki tells Max “[my father] never harmed anyone in his whole life.” I think it’s supposed to look to Sean like she’s got a new boyfriend, although they never explore what he’s thinking. Max’s slimy boss (I never caught his name, so I couldn’t tell you who played him) asks, “Who the hell you bringin’ here this time?” and “So you’re still chasing ninja turtles?” It’s to establish that Max has a shaky reputation within the organization and nobody believes his story about monsters, I guess, but you’d think questioning the family of the deceased would be a normal part of conducting an investigation. His boss tells him that “this is no longer department business” (Chronos has “friends in high place,” Max vehemently explains for him). Max, somewhat counter intuitively, replies that he’s going to continue to look into it on his own time. Slimy Boss tells him to go right ahead, but the only thing he’ll offer is “enough rope to hang yourself.”

Above, Sean bumps the lunchbox with his foot, which sets the contents a-glowin’. Picking up the round object and seeing the insides writhe around, he, like any rational person, immediately turns it over to the authorities. I mean, sticks it in his backpack and leaves. Lisker, also on the scene, doesn’t see Sean but does see Mizuki leaving with Max. At Mizuki’s apartment, she asks Max what her father was mixed up with, but he tells her his information is sketchy at best--all he really has is a name, the Guyver, which is “some kind of space armor” and that “it’s the most dangerous technology since the atom bomb.” Someone knocks on the door and Max pulls his gun but it’s just Sean. He asks if she’s okay, but gets huffy when he sees Max there and leaves. Again, what’s going through his head when he sees this greasy guy with his girlfriend?

In the back alleys Lisker and his three goons are searching for the Guyver. The woman, Weber (Spice Williams) disses the black guy, Striker (Jimmy Walker. Yes, that Jimmy Walker), who replies with a stupid rap about being nice in the first of many out-of-place comedic bits. Lisker orders him back to work. Of course, we know the Guyver is long gone, and so the search proves fruitless.

Meanwhile, Sean’s motor scooter breaks down in a bad part of town (is that redundant in LA?). He gets accosted by some toughs, including his jerky sparring partner from before. Because he hasn’t learned to control his temper, or because he’s not very good at aikido after all, or because it’s in the script, he gets his butt kicked until the Guyver falls out of his backpack and he falls face-first onto it. This somehow activates the thing, making tentacles spew out and engulf him. Proving themselves worthy of Darwin Award nominations, the gang stands there and watches as the tentacles congeal into armor and a rejuvenated Sean stands up and bashes them all senseless (there’s a very, very un-funny and inappropriate bit where a punk pulls nun-chuks and then a switchblade, only to clumsily toss both of them aside while trying to look cool and threatening) until he sees his reflection in a hubcap, whereupon the armor detaches and disappears into two lumps on his neck.

At Chronos HQ, Balcus is predictably upset that “the most lethal weapon ever conceived” has slipped through their fingers. Scared for his life, Lisker suggests maybe Mizuki knows something, and Balcus orders her brought to him. Just to make Balcus’ day even worse, his toast comes out burnt (the time frame is a bit confusing. It was still night when the search for the Guyver ended, but in this scene Lisker says he saw Mizuki “last night.” If Balcus wants the Guyver so much, why did he wait until the next day to get a status report?).

Sean wakes up in his underwear, wondering if last night was all a dream.

At the Chronos Corporation (helpfully established by caption, again), Max and Slimy Boss are leaving the building, even though the investigation has supposedly been out of their hands since last night. Slimy Boss says “they aren’t a weapons manufacturer” (then what is Chronos’ public face?) and “nothing’s missing.” I would’ve thought a top-to-bottom search of a corporation HQ would take more than one night, supposing anyone was even there doing that yesterday. Slimy Boss seems sure nothing’s amiss, even though, “we got a corpse that look like it’s a month old, at least the pieces that are left.” He sees with finality he’s sure Chronos is not involved in whatever’s going on.

Yeah, what could be suspicious about a dead body that looks “a month old” when the guy only died the night before? As an aside, in the manga Zoanoids are rigged to completely dissolve upon death so as remove all evidence of monsters among us. This movie doesn’t seem to get that, with Tetsu’s corpse rotting quickly, but slowly enough that bones are still left for investigators to find. If you only found a murder victim’s skeleton, wouldn’t that make you even more suspicious?

What I think we’re meant to take away from this scene is that Slimy Boss is in on the take (this will be confirmed later) and that‘s why he‘s letting Chronos off so easy. It makes you wonder why he doesn’t have crusading agent Max silently disposed of or make an attempt to buy him off, or at the very least fire him. Max realizes Mizuki is Chronos’ next target and drives off, flippantly saying he’s going “to get enough rope to hang myself.” Slimy Boss orders his Slimy Aide to have Max watched, which makes him pull out a pen and ledger. Huh? Wouldn’t he get on his cell phone or CB and order an all-points bulletin if this is bad? I guess they’re in no particular hurry.

Sean arrives Mizuki’s apartment and learns about her dad’s death. A Mrs. Jenson shows up as well. I have no idea who she is, what she’s doing there or what purpose she’s supposed to serve in the movie except maybe to show how Sean doesn’t relate well to a single human being on the face of the Earth except Mizuki, as he makes to leave upon Jenson’s entrance. He volunteers to pick up dinner so he won’t be around when the Chronos goons invade the apartment a second later.

When Sean comes back after several hours of picking up dinner (it was day when he left, and dark when he got back), two movers (Striker and a heavy guy with a Russian accent, Ramsey, Peter Spellos) are leaving the building with a thick rug (holding Mizuki) carried over their shoulders. Sean finds the apartment wrecked and Mrs. Jenson dead (wow, she played a vital role, didn’t she?). He comes back down to hear the two lowlifes talking quite loudly and publicly about the kidnapping, so I guess the Chronos in this universe is selective about the secrecy of its operations. Max shows up and Sean conks Ramsey and Striker with beer bottles allowing him to grab Mizuki, and our three heroes make a break for it. Lisker orders “no transformations!” as he and his motley crew pursue them. There’s an overly long comic sequence where Striker decides to disregard orders and changes to his Zoanoid form, only to land on the set of a monster movie. I bet you can take it from there.

Our heroes flee into an empty warehouse (not sure where Mizuki got that jacket), and our villains follow them in. Out of sight of the public, the rest of them change into Zoanoids and a game of cat and mouse ensues (Weber probably has the least scary monster form I’ve seen since I last tuned into Power Rangers. She looks like a walking shag rug). Striker raps some more, at one point holding a toilet seat in front of his face, Sean drops a crate on Striker, who saw it coming and was earlier fast enough to dodge bullets from Max, and two more Zoanoids show up so there can be more cannon fodder in a minute. Eventually they good guys are cornered and Lisker demands to know what Mizuki knows about the Guyver. Sean answers for her, “I AM THE GUYVER!” and in a series of clumsy insert shots his armor appears on him piece by piece until he stands proud as the… er, awesome figure of justice, the Guyver.

The expected battle royal begins, and the spike on the front of Guyver’s helmet stays glued to the top of his head the whole time. It was probably done to keep it from being broken off, but it looks incredibly wrong from a fan’s point of view. Weber and the two back-up Zoanoids get taken out, one by Striker when he throws a buzz saw blade at Guyver and gets one of his teammates instead. Lisker calls him an idiot, and Striker protests, “I’m just doin’ my job!” I think he means being the Odious Comic Relief. It looks like Guyver has this fight in the bag until he headbutts Lisker and acts dazed. Now knowing his Achilles Heel, Lisker concentrates his attacks on the silver disk in Guyver’s forehead (the Control Medallion). The area underneath Guyver’s breastplate starts to glow as he goes down, but Lisker rips out the Control Medallion and Guyver melts into a puddle of goo. Mizuki gets knocked out, and wakes in Chronos HQ (and for some reason, they changed her clothes before she came to. I don’t know why, but it’s a kind of nice, creepy touch).

Balcus welcomes her back to the waking world and takes her on a guided tour of the “growth corridor,” which is lined with Zoanoids in various stages of processing. He explains how long ago aliens landed on Earth and created the human race as “the ultimate organic weapon,” and improved on them by developing treatments which allowed them to transform into Zoanoids. In times past, legends sprang up around them about werewolves and vampires. But that’s peanuts compared to the Guyver, and he wants her to tell him how Sean activated the unit. Mizuki pleads ignorance and flees into the main lab, where a Dr. East (Jeffery Combs) tells Balcus that they think the Control Medal is growing… possibly into a new Guyver unit. Balcus remarks they may not need Mizuki after all. I thought he wanted her to tell him how it was activated. Even if they do get a new Guyver unit, what good would it do them without knowing that? He also shows her Max, who’s inside a tube. Just a thought, but remember how Balcus can mind control Zoanoids? Why not turn Mizuki into one? Then he could’ve mind controlled her into telling him what he wants to know instead of beating around the push trying to secure her cooperation.

Mizuki agrees to tell them what they want to know, but it’s just so she can grab the Control Medallion. She tries to throw it into some kind of high-tech garbage disposal, but ends up accidentally throwing it down the throat of a Zoanoid. Something slices it open from the inside, and out comes Guyver, fully rejuvenated! Lisker boasts that he’ll just kill Guyver again. “You can’t kill me. I’ve been rejected by death,” Guyver replies in what wasn’t quite the inspiring retort the filmmakers hoped for.

Guyver smashes Max free and there’s another big fight as Mizuki and Max are komically chased around the lab by a couple monsters too weeny to fight Guyver. Through it all the Zoanoids completely avoid trying to hit the Control Medallion, despite it being the Guyver's greatest weakness. Hmmm, this happens often enough, it should probably have a name. How about the Climactic Achilles Heel Amnesia Phenomenon, or CAHAP for short. [UnSub: CAHAP has been added to this site's glossary]. Eventually all the Zoanoids except Striker get killed, but victory is to be bittersweet, because just as Mizuki says she knows the way out (how? She came to inside the building), Max starts to convulse and turns into some kind of crab/grasshopper Zoanoid and expires. This is in keeping with the technology from the manga, where a Zoanoid who doesn’t complete their processing dies a short time later, but they don’t explain it, so you’d have to be a Guyver fan, or reading a review by one, to know that.

Balcus confronts our heroes and invites Guyver to take his best shot and gets kicked through a door. This proves to be a bad idea, since now that he’s off-screen he can change into a Zoalord, a massive four-horned creature alternately realized by a giant animatronic head and a puppet in a miniature set. Guyver seems to have met his match and Balcus mops the lab with him, but the area under Guyver’s breastplate starts to glow again, and this time it opens up, releasing a massive energy blast that blows Balcus to pieces (this is called the Mega Smasher, in case you care).

With all ten of Chronos’ workers killed, the world is safe once again. The Guyver armor unzips, and Mizuki finds Sean a lab coat so he doesn’t have to walk outside in his bare butt (although he somehow still has his shoes and socks). As they walk off arm in arm toward a brighter, happier future that included an improved sequel, we see Slimy CIA Boss talking to Striker, the former saying he’s got a deal for him, the latter replying, “Dine-o-myte!” to give me one last thing to stick in my craw before we go.

I really wanted to like this movie, having been a fan of Guyver since about as far back as it was feasible to be one in the US. But if there’s one thing that has to be said about The Guyver, it’s that the filmmakers seemed to have no idea who they were making it for. It has scenes of monsters getting mutilated going hand-in-hand with humor that would be right at home in a "Home Alone" movie or "Huckleberry Hound" short.

Most of the people who have seen it probably did so because of liking the anime and manga it was based on, and thus were expecting something closer in tone to that. In the manga and OAV series, Chronos was a horrifyingly large and powerful organization that not only had access to super-advanced technology, but also had infiltrators in every major branch of media, law enforcement and government around the world. They didn’t mess around. If what I‘ve read is true, shortly after they cancelled the manga in the US Chronos actually succeeded in taking over the world, forcing Guyver and his allies to launch an underground war on them. It was a story of a handful of people battling an enemy they really had no chance against on their own, and it felt like it.

And then we have "The Guyver", as interpreted for the American market. I’m glad there were still enough projects to keep Mark Hamill off the streets until Batman the Animated Series would give him a respectable role once again, but hoo-ee what a train wreck we have here. What were they trying to do with all this off-the-wall humor? Make it more family friendly? Then why keep all the gore? Maybe they thought the movie would be too depressing or scary without it, but as I said above, that’s the idea with a series like Guyver.

The cast is a mixed bag. Michael Berryman, as usual, is in fine form as a menacing presence, and David Gale does a pretty good job as our head villain, projecting this creepy veneer that makes you edgy watching him. The heroes don’t come off quite as well, unfortunately; Mark has so little to do you begin to wonder why they keep giving him screen time and aren‘t given much cause to care when he drops dead, and Vivian Wu, although she tries, delivers what have to be the most stilted line readings I’ve ever heard, and yes, I’m counting Bibleman. Jack Armstrong is probably the movie’s biggest liability short of being unsure what kind of movie it wants to be. He’s too petulant and inscrutable to be the hero of an action movie. The guy has zero screen presence, I’m sorry. He can do nothing to make an awesome figure like the Guyver, well, awesome.

If nothing else, Screaming Mad George earned his dime with some decent Zoanoid costumes, and some studio exec either thought the movie did well enough or had enough potential to put money into a sequel that tried to stay true to the source material. Let it not be said that Hollywood never learns from its mistakes.

The movie takes the Guyver storyline and strips it down to its bare minimum to get a beginning, middle and end that will fit into an hour-and-a-half movie, with of course liberal doses of humor that have no place in anything Guyver. Some of the characters appeared in the comics (Balcus and Lisker) but were radically changed for one reason or another; Lisker was Guyver 2, not a Zoanoid, for example. I think it might have made the movie more tolerable to have a climax between two Guyvers, but that will have to wait.

The whole movie is a collection of well-intentioned but poorly-executed ideas. They probably had no idea at all how contrary the movie they were making was.

The rapping Zoanoid! The insultingly predictable monster movie scene! The bad guys talking about a kidnap job in public! Guess what Sean is thinking! Mrs. Jenson, we hardly knew ye! You’d never think a movie this corny would go to sequel.

Date of review: 07 March 2006