4 out of 5

Directed by: Steve Wang, Screaming Mad George

This dark, action epic that ruled part of my childhood – truly, burning out a VHS during multiple rewatches that included forcing the flick on any and every friend I had – turns out to be a goofy gem of a B-movie, with notable ties to a bloodier, but similar-vibed spectacle – Re-Animator – which would become a film to rule part of my horror-education during nigh-adulthood.  If the shared producer of Brian Yuzna didn’t tonally / visually link the movies to a certain degree, Jeffrey Combs showing up as ‘Dr. East’ in The Guyver should seal the deal.

An opening Star Wars text crawl (in the ‘director’s cut) lets us know what genre we’re dealing with here: Aliens created humans, having implanted a gene that allows those so enlightened to morph into Zoanoids.  Now, evil, hiding-behind-the-Chronos-corporation Zoanoid leader Fulton Balcus (David Gale, another Re-Animator alumni…) has overseen the creation of a weapon, The Guyver, which will help with his fittingly evil plans.  Can… can all humans morph into Zoanoids?  What are these evil plans?  Why did they create a weapon they don’t know how to use…?  There are possibly one line answers to these questions, and I am sure they are more adeptly addressed in the source manga material from whence this all came, but what’s important is that you have practical suits and miniature work that holds up marvelously to this day, giving us Predator-sized monster suits flipping about and punching each other, with occasional splashes of violence and more occasional splashes of slapstick and silly humor.  From the opening scene when some Zoanoid punks beat up a rogue member of their crew, the film pretty much kicks in to high-gear B-grade awesomeness, meet-cuteing our hero, Sean (Jack Armstrong), with The Guyver device, thus instantly allowing him to kick ass in a groovy superhero costume.  His girlfriend Mizuki (Vivian Wu) and tuff gum chewing cop max (Mark Hammil!) are along for the ride as well, as the mutated foes multiply, some light, PG-13 body horror is enacted, and then, like, a dinosaur explodes.

It’s still an epic.

While Hammil does a lot of great work here, getting into the spirit of the style of flick, Wu is unfortunately played off as a damsel, and Armstrong is, uh, horrendously flat in his performance.  I’d say there’s an attempt, from Armstrong, to capture the stage-like method in which action anime characters can speak – and it is appreciably clear that the manga and anime were inspirations for the crew beyond just the story outline – but when he’s in his human clothes, the lack of life behind his actorly eyes suggests otherwise.  So his delivery doesn’t sell much, which tends to underline the odd lack of urgency felt during some of the climactic scenes.  The majority of this can be forgiven, though, just because of how awesome the movie looks and how much fun it is.

The Arrow blu-ray is the director’s cut, which is actually the theatrical version, and the transfer is fantastically cleaned up, and there’s a good interview with Yuzna, but we could’ve wished for some of the extra violent scenes from the VHS version.  And I would’ve easily paid extra for commentary.