The aftermath of STAR WARS is a sad one, at least for Luke Skywalker it is. The movie made Harrison Ford and Chewbacca household names, while it made the name Mark Hamill synonamous with low grade sci-fi. Despite the fact he was the leading man and the story's heroic star, Hamill faded into near obscurity, doing movies like SLIPSTREAM, TIME RUNNER, and one of the WATCHERS movies! Even worse, when the time calls for it (and it often does) the desperate for work stooge does voiceovers for cartoons... from one of the biggest films of all time to, well, this. Hell, his list of works and his new gruff image make him a candidate for the Ron Perlman school of B-acting. But, before I get into the whole Ron Perlman thing, let's try to get back on track.

Adapted from the Japanese anime and manga of the same name, THE GUYVER is an action-adventure sci-fi kung-fu flick, with plenty of cheesy production values and cameos by a series of some of my favorite b-alumni! Produced by resident horror/sci-fi God Brian Yuzna (RE-ANIMATOR and FROM BEYOND), the film also includes a few of Yuzna's old pals from RE-ANIMATOR, David Gale and Jeffrey Combs! Despite all this though, something just doesn't work out... We open with a gang of your everyday street type thugs, as they chase down a fugitive scientist. To do so though, the group (lead by Michael Berryman of THE HILLS HAVE EYES) turn into life-sized Ultraman toys! Their rubber faced wrath and judo are too much for the scientist, whom they wind up killing. Meanwhile, waiting for a rendevous with the now dead lab coater, is Max (Hamill), a detective who was supposed to get some major league info and material from the poor corpse, involving the man's emplyers at the Chronos Corporation... big time businesses with names like "Chronos" or "Maxatech" or "IBM" are always evil businesses that wind up holding some dark secrets, like Nazi super soldiers or paying a lower-than-legal minimum wage! Anyway, we're next introduced to our bumbling hero Sean, who's stumbling about in an alleyway on his scooter. He discovers the secret device that the corporate goons were looking for all along: the Guyver. Unsure as to just what the device is, Sean decides to take it for himself. But while in the ominous alley, Sean gets scooter-jacked by a legion of angry urban stereotypes! They kick his ass despite his best David Carradine impersonation, and he gets smacked headfirst into the Guyver unit... and now the weird shit starts!

As with all films like this that are supposed to show that the wormy little victim can rise up and defeat his oppressors, Sean's fall somehow activates the Guyver, as it sends many steely tendrils around his head, ltching oto him like a squid out of water! It covers the dweeb in a crazy bio-mechanical suit of living armor, that allows Sean to finally be on the giving end of an ass-kicking for once! As the Guyver, Sean leaves the street vermin beaten and busted on, in a fighting style that combines Batman with the Toxic Avenger! After kicking the pale stereotypes' asses around a while, the armor retracts itself... into Sean's neck! Hmmmm, maybe that brain tumor of mine isn't a brain tumor after all...

As for the corporate thugs, their next target in the search for the Guyver unit, is the murdered professor's mouth watering dish of a daughter, Mizky, who also happens to be Sean's love interest! And, had Sean not left for FIVE minutes, he could've turned into the Guyver and saved her tight Asian ass! Oh well, this leads to a chase as Max (who, since he was a friend of Mizky's father, has joined the couple in the mystery to find out what happened to the dead guy) and Sean, and a screaming Linnea Quigley (credited simply as "Scream Queen") help Mizky escape her persuers, until the trio are trapped in a warehouse. The goons then show their true colors once more, as they transform to their Power Rangers counterparts and bare their rubber faced wrath upon the heroes. Max winds up clobbered (if only he'd used the force he wouldn't be in this situation) and two more guys in monster suits, uhm, I mean, two more "villainous mutants" arrive... we all know these guys serve one purpose: as more fodder for the Guyver's kill count. But hey, at least they play their role well, as Sean turns superhero once more and kicks their slimey asses (scary thought) with ease, blasting them to monster hash. But, despite all his nifty cool powers like lasers and elbow-based slashing blades, Guyver Sean is no match for a mutated-more-than-usual Michael Berryman!

Lisker (Berryman) lets himself go, slamming Guyver Sean around, smashing him in the face repeatedly with his big forehead zit (that thing just looks like it's begging to be popped!) and ultimately defeating the wet-nosed do-gooder when he plucks the shiny steel ball-baring out of the hero's face. After he gets his plated ass stomped into oblivion, Guyver Sean melts down into a pile of goop and . As for for Mizky and Max, the goon squad nab them up and take them back to their evil corporate backer Fulton Balcus (David Gale), head of the sinister syndicate known as the Chronos Corporation, where they probably finance such projects as nuclear powered toilet brushes and glow-in-the-dark sporks, items for *dramatic pause* items for the fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuture! Anyway, Mr. Balcus tells our heroes that his hideous mutant followers are his vision of the next step in mankind's evilution... oh boy, EVIL-ution, where do I come up with these things?! After a bunch of bumbling around from Balcus's incompitent minions, the pearly headstone of the Guyver unit winds up down the gullet of the head mad scientist of Chronos Corp's research department, Dr. East, who is also a monster... am I the only guy around who can't grow horns out of his ass and breath fire?! Well, I could do that kind of shit, but you get my point. Dr. East, I have to mention, is played in his human form by the Godfather to my movie collection, Jeffrey Combs! I'm also going to say it's a safe bet that his character's name, Dr. East, is a play on Combs's groundbreaking role in RE-ANIMATOR as Dr. Herbert WEST... subtle yes, but Beavis like it too.

After a JAWS inspired "rebirth", Guyver Sean breaks from East's mutated torso, ready to kick ass yet again and get some revenge against them funny lookin' goons! Though he has no problem wasting all the baddies, our savior is too late, at least for Max, who's been put through some FDA un-approved tests that have turned him into one of the monsters. Unfortunately, Guyver Sean interrupted the process, leaving Max incomplete. The undeveloped gene structure quickly halts and Max goes down for the count. This leads to the obscene final duel between good and evil, as Guyver Sean battles with a HUGE and mutated Balcus. Balcus is disposed of soon enough though, thanx in no small part to the big chest cannon disintegrator beam in the armor's chest plate. Sean and Mizky live through the ordeal, which, though is a happy storybook ending, is also very sad since they're the two worst actors in the entire movie! Well, except for Jimmie Walker... "Dyno-mite!"

THE GUYVER seems like a kid's movie at first, with it's cheesy rubber villains that look like they just escaped a Roger Corman set or a filming of a "Mighty Morphing Power Rangers" episode. However, the excessive violence of the film and the all around graphic gore make you think otherwise. Besides, I don't think David Gale and his talent of perversion would make it past too many MPAA censors is this were meant to be a G flick. But, even if you look past the fact that the monsters look like they should be featured in the next TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES movie, trying to take this film to a more grown up and serious level, you can't help but notice that some of these monsters are just irredeemable. Keep watch, as you'll notice some of them wearing a necktie, gold chains, or even the occasional Rolex! The comedy was far from it's intentions of actually being funny, especially all those horrible minute made rap craps from Walker's loose lipped character Strider. The acting, despite the excellence of the cast, was terrible, because all the focus of the film sat with the two most pathetic thespians in the whole movie! Though the loose extensions of the suits seemed to flap a lot, I ddn't mind the fghting scenes, though they occur so frequently it causes two problems: the fights get boring and repetitive after a short while, and they take away from time that could be told in developing a real story. I do give the film points though for some of the special FX, especially the Guyver armor, which looks about as good as you can get it without CGI. Also, I love Barryman and Gale, who always make good bad guys. I'd say I loved Combs and Quigley, but they had little to no lines or anything, so they're basically ignored. So, if they can better define who the movie's aimed at in the next GUYVER film, and possibly stiffen up the monsters (you know there's gonna be more monsters) a little so they don't have big floppy ears or rubbery spikes flailing around all the time, maybe give us a story we haven't stumbled over a million times, and perhaps, just perhaps, there will be something worth watching. Oh yeah, and get rid of Jimmie Walker!

Sequels: GUYVER 2: DARK HERO

If You Liked This Flick, Check Out: the GUYVER anime or TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES II: THE SECRET OF THE OOZE