In short: Guyver: Dark Hero (1994)

Sean Barker (now played by the voice of Solid Snake himself, David Hayter) is still fused with the alien bio-armor called the Guyver. Despite apparently having destroyed the evil mutant thingies of the first film, the Guyver still pushes Sean into going out at night to commit bloody violence on more or less deserving criminals. Sean, not a killer at heart, feels very unhappy with a situation that doesn’t just put a lot of blood on his hands – certainly not all of it shed in self-defence or the defence of innocents – but now also costs him his relationship to movie number one’s love interest Mizky.

So he’s actually rather okay with following strange feelings, symbols on a cave wall, and a sensationalist TV report to an archaeological dig in a pretty attractive wooded mountain region. And wouldn’t you know it, the film gods have also put an obvious new love interest (Kathy Christopherson) in his way, as well as the realization that he might not have beaten his enemies quite as successfully as he thought. At least, there’s something really strange going on at the dig, what with a potential werewolf roaming the area, and way too much well-armed security hanging around. Oh, and a UFO right out of the third Quatermass film. Perhaps this is the right place to find out the truth about the Guyver unit.

The second and final Guyver film is directed by Steve Wang alone, Screaming Mad George having taken his particular kind of effects work and his co-directing skills wherever Screaming Mad Georges go. Consequently, the monsters in this one aren’t as awesomely grotesque as some of the best ones in the first film and follow more the standard rubber suit ways of tokusatsu. Which, mind you, is still a little grotesque and very nice to look at in action.

The film also loses the horrible humour of the first part, going for your typical dark superhero feel and heroic inner turmoil (was Zack Snyder taking notes?) without borderline racist characters wasting the audience’s time making horrible jokes. Hayter is also a huge improvement over Jack Armstrong. He may not exactly radiate charisma like the sun, but he has proper camera presence and is able to actually express the emotions the script asks him to express; plus, his moodiness doesn’t feel like a little kid sulking. Why, I found myself even liking this version of Sean instead of tolerating him. The villains are an improvement too, hamming it up nicely and given the Guyver more than enough reason for punching and elbow blade sticking.

Speaking of violence, the action scenes are excellent US tokusatsu with drive and the appropriate amount of imaginative silliness, and staged with the sort of sugar high energy this sort of action thrives on.


The film will be a bit too long and starting somewhat too slow for some, but I found myself enjoying its attempts at building its own mythology out of bits and pieces found in other pop culture nearly as much as the fighting, making the second Guyver movie by far the superior piece of entertainment. And unlike more than many a Japanese tokusatsu of the last fifteen years or so, Dark Hero never feels as if it puts selling toys before being an entertaining film.

Three Films Make A Post: When the angels kiss the demons,... you'd better be ready.

Wolves (2014): I didn’t get the memo, but it turns out we needed another urban fantasy YA coming-of-age movie where a lot of acting talent (poor Stephen McHattie and Jason Momoa! Poor everyone else!) is wasted on a script that has not a single memorable idea, dubious dialogue, characters without all that pesky character, and a story that’s so obvious and by now so overdone even the least imaginative viewer will know and understand everything that’s going on here before the thirty minute mark is reached. Things like subtlety, complexity and ambiguity are of course completely out of the question, following the seeming philosophy of about 50 percent of YA stuff that “young adult” means “stupid”, which I – as a former young adult – find pretty infuriating and patronizing.

After reading various interviews with director/writer/Solid Snake David Hayter that talk up his love for classic monster movies, I’d also have expected this to be, you know, more of a monster movie, and less of a crap superhero origin tale. I’d have taken a good superhero origin tale – which we know Hayter as a writer can do – but that’s not happening in this one either. As a director, Hayter is slick but lacking in style or taste, leaving us with a movie that’s not horrible but intensely forgettable.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014): So, if anyone asked oneself how the Michael Bay empire would react to the fact that the last half decade or so has proven that you can in fact make a blockbuster movie that has a degree of intelligence and personality and still keeps all the explosions, this piece of crap is your answer. Bay and his troupe just don’t care as long as the money keeps coming in, and, going by script and direction of this thing, putting effort in when you might as well get paid without making any is against the Baysian principles. So, yeah, Turtles is still everything that made older Bay productions so hateful, including no effort, no love, no sense of fun and a script so idiotic it’s difficult to believe it was written by actual human beings.

Bigfoot Wars (2014): Speaking of crap, there’s also this concoction of breasts and gore that might sound fun on paper (everyone love’s a bigfoot, even if they seem to be the new zombies after all) but is horrible in all aspects beyond the good old “well, at least the camera’s in focus most of the time”. For some, this might just barely push the so bad it’s good buttons. Me, I found myself annoyed and somewhat bored. The film seems made in the same spirit of not giving a crap as the Bay Turtles, though Bigfoot Wars does at least have the excuse of a tiny budget. Not that this helps much when you actually have to sit down and watch it…

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