Here’s one that’s been living in my head rent-free for thirty years. I read about it in Fangoria when I was a kid, got stoked to see it in theaters, and didn’t hear another word about it until it quietly showed up at the video store one day. I’ve since learned the film had a limited theatrical release in the U.S., but New Line Cinema knew it wasn’t going to be the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which released one year prior. It showed up on the home market where it became a moderate cult classic.
A scientist-turned-whistleblower at the evil Chronos corporation makes off with an alien artifact and hides it in a pile of junk before being attacked by his boss’s goons. The scientist transforms into a humanoid fish monster to defend himself. The leader of the corporate thugs (Michael Berryman of The Hills Have Eyes) also transforms into a monster and smashes the fishman’s brains right out of his skull. Screaming Mad George’s effects look characteristically great and we’re barely three minutes into the movie.
Look, I don’t know how to properly convey this: I fucking love movie monsters. Screw Jaws theory: the more I can see the monsters, the better. In The Guyver, there is very little cheating going on. They don’t hide the monsters in the darkness. They don’t cut away after we get the briefest of glimpses. The monsters walk around and talk like any other character in the movie. It’s like Muppets for adults, only these Muppets fight each other.
Enter Mark Hamill’s character, Max Reed, a CIA agent who was working with the rogue scientist to bring the Chronos corporation down. He informs the scientist’s daughter (Vivian Wu) that her father’s been murdered. As he brings her to the scene of the crime, her milquetoast boyfriend (Jack Armstrong) happens across the artifact, which attaches to his skull and turns him into the Guyver: a human encapsulated in an alien suit of armor that exponentially increases his martial arts prowess.
The suit is supposed to be made of metal. It actually looked like metal on the original VHS release. Now, in some closeups, the metal clearly looks like rubber in high definition. I’m not complaining. Just an observation. When you go to a puppet show and you can see the rods controlling the arms, you don’t ask for your money back, do you? It’s all part of the charm.
After dispatching the least convincing street gang in cinema history, Guyver fights the corporate thugs, all of whom can transform into distinctly grotesque monsters (my favorite is the lady-monster with tits). It’s clear the performer in the Guyver costume knows at least some martial arts, but I suspect no one else did as the rubber monsters throw themselves at the hero with all the skill of a street fight on WorldStarHipHop. To be fair, The Guyver had approximately twenty percent the production budget of the Ninja Turtles so it probably wasn’t a good idea to put highly athletic performers in pricey-looking monster suits; they’d be tearing all the time, slowing down production.
I want to get the bad out of the way because the rest is fantastic. The only thing that overtly sucks about The Guyver is its comedic sensibilities, which are on par with a Saturday morning cartoon. Had very young kids not been its target audience, I have a feeling this would have been an even bigger cult classic than it is today. The movie has several funny moments that arise naturally, at least when the characters aren’t trying to be funny, which are reminiscent of many other films producer Brian Yuzna was involved in. But as soon as the filmmakers contrive goofy dialogue, the cringe is radioactive. Even as a kid I thought these jokes were insultingly bad.
For instance, Jimmy Walker of Good Times fame plays one of the monster shapeshifters. Somehow he manages to go the entire movie without saying his catchphrase “Dyn-o-mite!” That is until the final shot of the movie, at which point the filmmakers couldn’t resist the low hanging fruit. In another scene, Walker leaps over a wall and accidentally finds himself on the set of a B-movie (how’s that for meta?). Scream queen Linnea Quigley cameos (presumably as herself) and the fictional director of the production, not realizing Walker is in fact an actual monster, calls cut to give him direction for the scene.
Oof.
On the other hand, you get a stupendously entertaining movie with a swift pace and, surprisingly, a satisfying amount of gore for its PG-13 rating. I’m guessing the MPAA cut it some slack because ninety-five percent of the graphic violence isn’t committed on humans, but rubber monsters. It’s the same reason the Gremlins films got away with so much violence. If The Guyver had come out today, however, it almost certainly would have gotten an R-rating.
Look, this movie’s obviously made for kids, but I enjoyed it much more as an adult. I’ll be featuring the second film tomorrow. It’s a Guyver Weekend… why the hell not?
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