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Badmovies.org Forum  |  Information Exchange  |  Movie Reviews  |  Submitted Reader Reviews  |  "The Guyver" (1991). « previous next »
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Author Topic: "The Guyver" (1991).  (Read 15733 times)
Ken Shabby
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« on: August 17, 2010, 10:54:58 PM »

THE GUYVER
Rated PG-13
3 Slimes
Copyright 1991 The Guyver Productions, Inc.
Submitted by "Ken Shabby"


THE CHARACTERS

Sean Barker- He gets beat up, becomes the Guyver, gets beat up more, dies, and then comes back to life. I've had crazier weekends.

Max Reed- Mark Hamill! Insert Star Wars pun here. Turns into a Zoanoid and dies.

Mizky Segawa- This dreadfully annoying girl spends much of this 92-minute film sobbing, whining, and acting like more of a prop or plot device than a human character.

Balcus- David Gale! The head honcho of the Cronos Corporation. He has a mind-controlling zit on his head. He also gets blown up.

Lisker- Michael Berryman! The not-so-happy leader of a gang of mutant misfits. Gets his head ripped open in Zoanoid form.

Striker- Jimmie Walker! The comic relief (and I use that term VERY lightly in this case) Zoanoid who raps. Alot. Survives the ordeal.

Weber- Lisker's girlfriend or something or other. Her Zoanoid form never fails to bring a smirk or two to my face. Slashed offscreen by the Guyver.

Ramsey- The heavyset, Russian fourth wheel to Lisker's gang. Gets electrocuted in Zoanoid form.

Dr. Segawa- A plot point like his daughter. I guess it runs in the family. His head gets crushed in Zoanoid form.

Dr. East- Jeffery Combs! As you may know, he played "Dr. West" in Re-Animator. Dr. East, Dr. West. Please kill me. Suffers from a bizarre, unexplained plot death.


LESSONS LEARNED

Penises are funny.
Aikido is akin to poor dancing skills.
Rapping can be hazardous to your health, my health, your friends' and familys' health, etc.
Monsters are more afraid of you than you are of them.
It takes several hours for some people to order take-out.
Man was created by E.T.
Some mutants are more equal than others.
Digestion can result in the creation of life.
Mark Hamill waits for no one.


STUFF TO WATCH FOR

1 min.- Marcellus Wallace's soul?! Oh, nope. Just an all-powerful alien weapon.
7 min.- WHEEEEEE!!!
13 min.- Annoying scene transition 1/504,603...or so.
14 min.- He ought to have that looked at.
31 min.- RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST TOAST!
45 min.- A rapping monster holding up a toilet seat...what?
51 min.- NO! NO MORE RAPPING! FOR GOD'S SAKES, NO MORE!
72 min.- Jaws reference. Why not.
84 min.- FALCON KICK!
End Credits- "No Zoanoids were harmed during the making of this movie". OK, that's pretty funny.


NOTABLE QUOTES

Lisker: He must have... pulled a switch.
Balcus: Brilliant. Do you realize what's at stake? The most powerful weapon ever conceived. A one-of-a-kind prototype, lost for centuries. And all you have for me is "he pulled a switch"?

Ronnie the Punk: I'm just playing you man. Yeah, that's it, I'm just playing.
The Guyver: Then let's play.

Zoanoid Lisker: I killed you once, and I'll kill you again.
The Guyver: You can't kill me. I've been rejected by death.


THE PLOT

Our film starts as a text crawl force-feeds the audience the origins of the Guyver, an all-powerful bio-boosting alien armor, and the Zoanoids, a race of soldiers who can transform into vicious mutants. Wait, text crawl intro, Mark Hamill. Hmmmm...But anyway, our story really starts as rogue Cronos Corporation scientist Dr Tetsu Segawa replaces a stolen Guyver unit with another box, leaving the unit safely hidden behind. Unfortunately for him, Lisker and his very motley crew manage to chase him down. When Segawa refuses to come back to Cronos, he morphs into his trout-like alter ego, Super Fish-Man. Unfortunately, Segawa's zoanoid form is no match for Lisker in his zoanoid form, and he leaves the scaly scientist's head something akin to a watermelon in front of Gallagher. Segawa's fish-like appearance becomes a gag-factory host for insults from Lisker's posse, including such "gems" as "Turn him into sushi" or "Teriyaki sauce!" I think we're in for a special treat here.

We are then introduced to our hero, Sean, who's quite busy getting thrown to the ground in aikido class. A friend of his, MIzky Segawa, arrives and Sean offers a ride home. Soon, an aged ham in an overcoat, I mean Mark Hamill, slithers in and speaks with Mizky about her father's death. Apparently, he was supposed meet Segawa Sr. and get the Guyver unit from him, but Segawa was killed by the others before he could get the unit to Max. This story causes Mizky to sob annoyingly, just one of a number of times she will get on the viewer's nerves with these mannerisms. Max takes Mizky home, leaving Sean high and dry after getting sucker-punched by his aikido mat-mate a second time.

Meanwhile, at Cronos HQ one lame scene transition later, Lisker brings big-boss Balcus what they both think is the Guyver unit, and the smirking old creeper pours quasi-insulting praises unto Lisker. The mood changes immediately when Balcus instead pulls an old toaster out of the replaced briefcase. Enraged, Balcus forces what appears to be a plum-sized zit from his forehand, and using telekinetic abilities, forces a psychic smakedown on Lisker, who promises in a panic that he'll get the unit back. Yes, telekinetic zits.

Back to our heroes, Mizky and a talking road map of Los Angeles, I mean Mark Hamill, investigate Dr. Segawa's death scene, where Max gets chastised by a superior agent for "chasing Ninja Turtles" (oh yeah, they went there) and to keep away from the case. Far up above them, Sean spies on the situation, who himself is being watched by Lisker. Sean casually bumps into a little red box, spilling out the Guyver unit, which he decides to take with him. If only finding super-powerful alien armor units were that easy. Sean high-tails it to Mizky's place, where Max is with her, revealing her father's intentions to be rid of the Guyver unit. He dramatically describes it as the single most devastating weapon since the atom bomb. Max hides when Mizky answers the door to Sean, who's just here to check on her. Why a CIA agent feels the need to hide from a college student is anyone's guess, but it's all for naught when Sean sees the agent in badly-placed mirror and leaves in a rush.

I’m honestly surprised that Hamill's reflection even showed up in a mirror.

In the meantime, Lisker and crew search for the Guyver unit, throwing homeless people around and exposing us to Jimmie Walker's eye-rollingly cheesy raps. But nevermind them, our grand hero Sean gets beat up MORE, this time by a gang of dorky punks after his bike breaks down. Among these gangsters is his opponent from aikido class. Luckily he falls face-first onto the Guyver unit, which quickly fuses his body, transforming him onto the Guyver, who makes short work of the alley punks. What could be a cool scene of the Guyver throwing these fools around is watered down by cornier-than-corny lines and cartoony situations, like a knife or pair of nunchuks comically flying out of a punk's hand complete with a "whoops" stinger music cue.

The morning after (see, there's always a morning after), Sean examines a pair of small holes on the back of his neck, which is where the guyver goes in and hides until Sean calls upon it. Eeew. All seems well when he decides to Mizky again, and the pair intimately grow close in a silly, early 90's soap opera sort of scene. He decides to go out, pick up something to eat, and bring it back so the two can just "talk". Now, I assume fetching some take-out in this town takes several hours, because when Sean leaves it appears to be in the late morning or early afternoon, but when he gets back, the scene, shown in one shot, fades to dark. Like, 8:00 PM dark. What sort of sick joke is this?

Sean discovers to his horror that Ramsey and Striker have kidnapped Mizky and have killed Ms. Jansen, an aikido instructor from the beginning of the film. Luckily, she is rescued soon after by Sean and Joe Don Baker's war wound, I mean Dracula, I mean Mark Hamill as CIA agent Max Reed! This results in a short chase between our "heroes" and "bad guys". Lisker warns his fellow fellows not to transform, as they are in public. But Striker doesn't feel to embarrassed about it, and turns into his Zoanoid form, giving the faster chase. Unfortunately for him, and very unfortunately for the audience, the chase slows to about 0 when he ends up on a movie set, where he gets belittled by Linnea Quigley in a rousing little cameo. The movie's director gives Striker an out-of-context pep talk where he tells him he must be more terrifying and that the suit looks great. Because he doesn't know that that's not a suit, but in real life that actually is a guy in a suit, not real life in the movie but our real life. But in that real life in the movie the director thinks its a suit, which it is but in line with the story, it isn't, except in this scene. Does that mean he thinks the suit looks fake since Striker's a "real" monster, or does he think it looks good because he thinks it's a fake monster? But that...in...suit...Striker...Jimmie Walker...Mark Hamill...*brain implodes*.

Anyway back to our story as it were, Lisker and his gang, now fully transformed zoanoids, corner Max, Sean and Mizky in an abandoned warehouse. After knocking Max unconscious and taking Mizky hostage, two more zoanoid agents show up, mostly to add to the bodycount. Sean then reveals himself as the Guver to the astounded zoanoids, and what ensues is a 13-minute martial arts throwdown between the Guyver and the monsters that mostly sees the monsters getting their butts kicked or downright killed. It becomes a bit tedious when more cartoony moments and music run rampant, taking away from the otherwise surprisingly brutal drama of the fight. When Lisker battles the Guyver, he discovers that a ball on the Guyver's forehead is a weak point. As the fight ends, he gladly rips it out after the Guyver slices Weber. As he goes into hysterics (he thinks he accidentally killed Mizky), he melts into a bluish puddle of pudding, dead to the world. The zoanoids take Max and Mizky back to Cronos.

Mizky awakens to Balcus fondling her, a fear which has personally plagued me now and again. He shows her a hallway populated by tanks of developing zoanoids and explains to her the origins of the Guyver and zoanoids for the Nth time. Mizky runs from Balcus but doesn't get far when she runs into a genetics lab run by Jeffery Combs and friends. She discovers that the Guyver unit is still alive and cloning itself into a new unit, while in the meantime Max, unknownst to her, is slowly being surgically-altered into a zoanoid. Mark Hamill into mutant monster; not that different of a change up. Mizky breaks the developing unit free and threatens to destroy it if Max isn't freed. Lisker, Ramsey, Striker, and a number of other zoanoids close in, but when Striker makes a clumsy grab for the unit, it goes flying down the gullet of the goat-headed Jeffery Combs zoanoid. In a gut-churning little sequence that I still can't figure out, the Guyver fully develops with Sean inside SOMEHOW in Jeffery Zoanoid's stomach, and cuts his way out and emerges full-sized, STANDING, in the zoanoid's tiny stomach, breaking all sorts of size-related laws. In the ensuing, wacky, high-falootin' chaos, the Guyver effortlessly mows down all remaining zoanoids including Lisker, setting up for the "Dyn-O-Miiite" finale in which he goes up against Balcus's true form, the gargantuan ZoaLord...


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Nakuyabi
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« Reply #1 on: April 20, 2011, 08:09:28 PM »

You know, I remember seeing this movie, but I don't recall seeing any text crawl at the beginning. I wonder if that might be an extension someone threw in for the sake of less intelligent viewers or something. Were you watching this on a DVD? My version was on VHS.
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Kooshmeister
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« Reply #2 on: April 23, 2011, 08:17:33 AM »

The text crawl is on my copy of the DVD, which is billed as a "director's cut."
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Psycho Circus
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« Reply #3 on: April 23, 2011, 08:41:10 AM »

This film is awesome!  Thumbup
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Nakuyabi
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« Reply #4 on: April 24, 2011, 08:47:19 PM »

The text crawl is on my copy of the DVD, which is billed as a "director's cut."

That probably explains it.
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Ted C
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« Reply #5 on: April 26, 2011, 04:06:55 PM »

They made a sequel named "The Guyver: Dark Hero" that was astonishingly good for such a low budget movie.
« Last Edit: June 09, 2021, 10:16:06 AM by Ted C » Logged

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« Reply #6 on: April 26, 2011, 04:10:23 PM »

The made a sequel named "The Guyver: Dark Hero" that was astonishingly good for such a low budget movie.

Yeah, I have it on DVD, but I'm not that fond of it compared to the first film. I have to say though, the fight scene at the end is freakin' awesome! I thought they would have done a third live action instalment for sure.
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