Review of The Guyver (1991) by Sean-David S — 27 Sep 2009

From the moment you look at the box and see Mark Hammil's face with the image of the Guyver you know this film is going to be horrible. The fact that it mis-represnts who the Guyver is in the movie just cause Mark Hamill is a famous name tells you more.

With blatant D-Movie acting and stereotypes, horrible casting in general, and uninspired set design, the only saving grace of this movie was the designs of the Zoanoids and the Guyver itself. While it's near impossible to re-produce some of the designs of the zoanoids from the manga or anime, only one design, the main stooge zoanoid, is close to some of the icons of the source material.

Even the Guyver itself, while visually very similar, looks like they skinned a chameleon and used it for the mottled lizard-like armor, and then painted it a very bad dark blue color, making it not stand out especially with the dark set lighting for the majority of the combat scenes, though it's visibly brighter during the "rebirth" sequence. And even that comes out extremely hokey with the 'Jaws inspired' cutting of the abdomen, and coming full sized out of such a compact space (while it screams anime, it just doesn't look as believable on film.).

All in all, avoid this movie at all costs, and skip right to Guyver 2: Dark Hero.