Guyver: Dark Hero (1994)

PLOT: A young man possessed by weaponized alien armor known as the Guyver travels to a mysterious archaeological dig site that may hold the key to explaining its origins. It may also hold around 800 million barrels of salted caramel, a candy lover’s dream.

Director: Steve Wang
Writers: Steve Wang, Nathan Long, Yoshiki Takaya
Cast: David Hayter, Kathy Christopherson, Christopher Michael, Bruno Patrick

PLOT THICKENER

You know that old saying about how “clothes make the person?” Somewhat true! Certain articles of clothing can make you feel cool and confident. Yet other outfits will make you feel like a bargain-bin Mayor McCheese on a casual Friday. Somewhere between these two ends of the fashion spectrum is the sort of clothing that can make you feel like you can jump really high, perform lethal martial arts moves, and shoot lasers out of your chest. But what if this clothing -- hell, let’s call it armor -- couldn’t be removed at all? What if it was actually part of your body and you were merely hosting it? This is the premise of Bio-Booster Armor Guyver, a Japanese manga series from the 1980s and 90s that was adapted for the American film screen twice by filmmaker Steve Wang: first in 1991 under the title, The Guyver, and again just three years later as Guyver: Dark Hero.

Sean Barker (Hayter) keeps waking up violently in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat. Night terrors? Consuming sugar too close to bedtime? Yeah, close. Some time has passed since the Guyver, an alien bio-armor, took over his body. It has a mind of its own and activates at random, turning Sean into a lethal fighting machine. Sure -- it was useful when he was battling the Cronos Corporation, a nefarious group trying to locate the Guyver for its own evil means, but now it’s just cramping his style. On the one hand, it lets him fight large criminal enterprises with relative ease, but on the other hand, he can’t go to the grocery store to shop for soup ingredients without worrying about the Guyver taking control of his faculties and blasting the produce section to a pulpy mess.

While watching a local news story about some mysterious killings near a covert dig site, Sean notices footage of cave paintings that correlate to the notebook sketches he’s been compulsively doodling in his waking hours. He takes a taxi to a general store -- like most of us did before Google Maps -- seeking help to identify a non-specific location he’s curious to visit. Once there, he meets Cori Edwards (Christopherson) a researcher buying a case of cheap beer for her archaeological dig team. Initially reluctant because of potential stranger danger, she finally agrees to take him there based on the intrigue of his notebook sketches. She fibs to the dig organizers on his behalf and Sean is suddenly lending a hand in their efforts.

In time, he begins to discover the objectives for the dig, the shadowy sources of its financing, and the various intentions of some of the so-called “researchers” on the project. The mysterious killings, previously attributed to wildlife or even a werewolf, may be the work of Zoanoids, the monstrous shape-shifting battle forms that comprise the Cronos Corporation. Will Sean find the source behind the Guyver? Can he defeat Cronos and the Zoanoids and rid himself of the Guyver once and for all? And will the persistent lower back pain he experiences after consecutive hours of shoveling respond better to a heated pad or deep tissue massage? Maybe a little of both?

The last few Octobers, I’ve made a concerted effort to focus on movies that feature some sort of monsters, spooky elements, and schlocky gore. Prior to watching it, I had no idea that Guyver: Dark Hero would satisfy all these criteria. While I’ve never seen the first one -- by all indications, this is the stronger of the two efforts -- the sequel stands on its own as an enjoyable romp that requires little pretext or understanding of the source material. At its core, this is a film about a man who is unable to control his body and the misdeeds that result from its strange powers. Anyone who has eaten at Chipotle can probably relate.

The creature design of the various Zoanoids might seem familiar to those viewers who have watched any number of Kamen Rider or Power Rangers episodes, but what threw me for a loop was the amount of blood and gore during the fight scenes. It was a minor but effective touch that upped the shlock factor and raised the stakes within the story (who wants to see a vanquished enemy dissolve out of a composite shot?!) The spectacle of violence may even make you disregard the fact that the action scenes are unevenly distributed and the fight choreography is a bit inconsistent.

The fight scenes are quite good for the most part, even with the obvious performative restrictions of bulky costuming. Fight choreographer Koichi Sakamoto and his Alpha Stunt Team certainly deserve credit for that. There’s some goofy stuff -- surprise wrestling moves, a plodding splash-fight in the water, and Guyver killing an enemy with his random laser titties -- but all of it is forgivable in the context of this cinematic universe. What can’t be ignored is staging your climactic fight in a cave with a bunch of stalagmites and stalactites and not incorporating them into the choreography at all. Friggin’ Cliffhanger got it -- why didn’t this film?

Even with all the fun stuff Wang puts in the mix, the film’s excessive run-time -- over two hours -- was nearly a deal-breaker. It drags quite badly in spots and the narrative gets bogged down by attempts to translate what I assume were frequent panels of Sean’s internal monologue strewn throughout the series. It’s chatty to a fault and the script tries to juggle too many secondary plot points and character motivations.  Fans of the original manga series or the initial anime adaptations might appreciate it, but I think viewers approaching the film without that context may risk becoming disengaged. There’s a better film somewhere in here if the filmmakers had left around 20 minutes of narrative fat on the cutting room floor.

VERDICT

If, like me, your introduction to the pairing of Sakamoto and Wang was the non-Gosling Drive (1997) your expectations might have been set artificially high, but the cool stunt shit is here along with plenty of wacky visual touches. The acting performances are serviceable but you’re watching this movie for dudes fighting in elaborate creature suits. They’re aren’t many American tokusatsu (“monster”) films out there, even fewer good ones, and Guyver: Dark Hero might be the best.

AVAILABILITY

• DVD or VHS (Amazon, eBay)
• Streaming via Amazon Prime

3.5 / 7

The Master Demon (1991)

PLOT: One master demon. One severed hand. Ranchera music. One mesh half-shirt. Eight gallons of blood and make-up. Blend until smooth and then bake for approximately 81 minutes, or until set.

Director: Samuel Oldham
Writer: Samuel Oldham
Cast: Eric Lee, Gerald Okamura, Sid Campbell, Steve Nave, Ava Cadell, Kay Baxter Young, Tony Halme, Art Camacho

PLOT THICKENER

Among vampires, zombies, and men who are also wolves, demons can get lost in the horror movie mix. Cinematic representations of demons have ranged from frothing (Lamberto Bava’s Demons), to possessive and Assyrian (Pazuzu in The Exorcist), and even slapstick (The Evil Dead series). In his 1991 film, The Master Demon, director Samuel Oldham sought to expose a few of the traits conspicuously absent from the demon’s cinematic lexicon, freakishly high cheekbones and the ability to levitate gardening tools among them.

Centuries ago, there existed the White Warrior (Lee), a swordsman with an incredible mane of hair worthy of lead guitar duty in Motley Crue or Warrant. His primary adversary was the Master Demon (Okamura), a hideous underworld martial artist with a mastery of black magic. During a bloody mano-a-mano confrontation as part of the “Dragon Wars,” the White Warrior severed the Master Demon’s hand, disappearing him back to the world from which he came. The White Warrior, near-death from his wounds, brought the hand to a nearby monk, who performed some incantations and placed it under lock and key in a wooden box. To ensure the Master Demon never regained his powers, he couldn’t be allowed to become whole again.

Many years later, the White Warrior has been reborn as Tong Lee, a great martial artist but otherwise regular guy who likes mesh half-shirts and Mexican food. Similarly, the Demon Master walks among the living as shipping magnate (and art collector), Kwan Cheng. After a thief makes off with a certain ancient wooden box on exhibit in an art gallery, the two are drawn back into conflict. While reading from a sacred book, Cheng inadvertently conjures up the powerful Medusa (Baxter), another force from the underworld, who admonishes him for allowing the remains to be stolen before fatally breaking his neck. She tracks the wooden box back to a private investigator named Cameron Massey (Nave) who randomly received it from a crooked art dealer with a knife lodged in his head. (Who put it there? Medusa, of course!) The resulting scrum at Cameron’s apartment draws the attention of not only Tong Lee, but also the cops! Investigating detective Wayne Besecker (Campbell), Cameron, and Lee, are suddenly thrown together as humanity’s last hope against a resurgent Master Demon, Medusa, and an army of fighters.

Umm… where do I start? How Oldham pulled together this cast is a great mystery; it’s one of the more off-the-wall supporting casts I’ve ever seen, even for a low-budget martial arts film. Before he was a pro wrestler, politican, and recording musical artist, Tony Halme was just a 300-pound Finnish dude looking for film work, and he’s perfectly cast as a henchman who can’t be trusted with any dialogue. Ava Cadell -- most famous for her work as a sex and love therapist -- appeared in many bit parts in film and television in the 1970s and 80s, but has a fairly prominent role as Jan, Cameron’s secretary. (Her first scene involves quitting her job as Cameron’s secretary). The romantic pairing of Jan with Besecker felt like an odd choice -- their goofy, drawn-out love scene is a record needle-scratch moment -- but her quirky line delivery adds occasional humor to the story. Among all of these personalities, the most consistently imposing figure is cut not by the martial artist leads, but by female bodybuilding pioneer, Kay Baxter Young, who tragically died in a car accident in 1988. How her character of Medusa fits into the film’s mythos is never really explained, but when she can demolish an entire building with a single punch (this is a thing that happened), that level of detail is inconsequential.

The fight scenes are not so great, but they’re also not really why you’re watching this sort of film. Eric Lee and Gerald Okamura are both talented martial artists and they’ve done better action sequences in other films. The film features fighting book-ends involving them both, a scene where Lee flying through a window from the *outside* to jump-kick a guy in Cameron’s living room (awesome!) and a fat section in the middle of the film where the Master Demon’s army rumbles with our heroes in a parking lot. From a logistical perspective, this sort of dynamic (15+ fighters) can be a mess to manage. Oldham tries to break it down into digestible chunks by following each hero separately through different fights of roughly equal length, but the scene overall felt long as a result. It was also difficult to take Cameron seriously as a fighter due to his “Butte Police” shirt.

The director made some interesting choices in this film, some probably influenced by budget, and others probably influenced by a lack of time. YouTube has become a sanctuary for direct-to-video productions, and it’s the easiest way to watch this particular one, but I’d like to see how the original home video release compares to what I watched. In the version Oldham has made available on his YouTube channel, the title credit graphics and even some of the special effects reflect production technologies that appear a lot newer than the film’s 1991 release date. Was Oldham trying to improve on whatever was there originally? More specifically, there are some odd effects that occur when the Master Demon incurs a battle wound; instead of spurting blood or cutting to a gory close-up, laser-like tendons emerge from the injuries and they look like they came from some consumer-grade video editing program from the early 2000s. Curious choice, but perhaps the director felt a need to tinker after the fact.

Oldham’s other uses of horror elements are more effective. Some are traditional -- think smoke machines and strobe lights -- while others are garish, such as drill-torture and a quick cutaway to a bloody, faceless, skull. A scene in which Lee encourages his comrades to drink his blood to gain some of his powers features a convincing bloodletting effect not fit for the squeamish viewer. These visuals fit the film’s WTF aesthetics perfectly, and serve the director’s larger objective of a true genre mash-up. Also true to the horror film formula are the make-up effects used on Gerald Okamura’s demon; they range from dark, grotesque blobs to facial protrusions that would look right at home in your favorite Troma film or an art-rock album cover from Annie Clark and David Byrne.

VERDICT

If you were on board for 1985’s Furious and enjoyed the weird mix of martial arts and kitchen-sink aesthetics, this film might be the closest thing to its cinematic spiritual successor. That said, this film has a brand of try-hard charm that won’t vibe with some viewers, and it can be hit-and-miss. Personally, I really dig when young or first-time directors throw a lifetime of influences at the wall to blend it into a single film -- especially when they include horror, action, and Highlander-esque story elements -- and Oldham’s attempt is admirable.

AVAILABILITY

Amazon, YouTube.

3.5 / 7

Devil's Express (1976)

PLOT: A New York City martial artist and his protégé travel to China for a retreat that will sharpen their skills and minds. When the student lifts a shiny souvenir from a mysterious cave, the unleashed bad juju threatens to destroy them all.

Director: Barry Rosen
Writers: Barry Rosen, Niki Patton, Pascual Vaquer, CeOtis Robinson, Bobbi Sapperstein
Cast: Warhawk Tanzania, Wilfredo Roldan, Larry Fleischman, Aki Aleong



PLOT THICKENER
No pairing of city and era was as versatile and evocative for a genre movie filming location than New York City in the 1970s. Its dilapidated tenements were perfect for a post-apocalyptic near-future. Need a seedy area to situate your drug-dealing and prostitution morality play? Times Square is your place. If the mise-en-scène for your crime-thriller needs to suggest the hidden dangers of traveling alone, pick any subway platform or public park on the map. Alleys, basketball courts, and dodgy underpasses: the list goes on. Director Barry Rosen got plenty of mileage out of NYC for 1976’s Devil’s Express -- originally released as Gang Wars but known as Death Express in the UK and referred to as Phantom of the Subway during production -- where it somehow doubles as both ancient China and modern-day Hong Kong. Young filmmakers, take note: access to an urban botanical garden goes a long way in your storytelling.

In ancient China, a group of holy men are out picking berries in the forest or something when they realize they’d totally forgotten about the sacred blood ritual scheduled that day. They place an amulet on the heavy wooden crate they’ve been lugging around before setting it below the ground in a spooky cavern. While their lower backs might be thanking them, their arteries are not. The lead holy man strikes down his friends before offing himself and following all of THAT, a cryptic title card announces to the audience that yes, Devil’s Express is a Phantom Production. You’re goddamn right it is!

Fast-forward several hundred years later to modern-day New York City, where a martial arts master named Luke (Tanzania) is training a friend from the police force. Don’t be getting any funny ideas though -- Luke is a righteous dude who trusts the police as much as he trusts gangs or undershirts (i.e. not very much). When his hot-headed student, Rodan (Roldan) starts talking vengeance after his crew’s latest gang rumble, Luke tries to chill him out -- the pair is scheduled to travel to Hong Kong for advanced training in both meditation and combat. The body and mind won’t work well if the spirit is in conflict.

Unfortunately, Rodan’s stress carries over into Hong Kong and Luke picks up on it and chides his student for the unnecessary distraction. Rodan gets his ass handed to him during sparring, and is jumping out of his skin during an isolated meditation session. Channeling his inner whiny teenager, he takes off into the woods and stumbles upon a spooky cavern. As Luke is deep in meditation, his student is stumbling around in the cavern’s darkness before finding the ancient amulet. He pockets it and gets defensive with Luke before they return home via transition airplane insert shot. Unfortunately for them (and the greater NYC area) whatever is inside the crate is adept enough to hitchhike on a cargo ship to follow them. Before too long, the bodies begin to pile up below the subway, and Luke might be the only one who can stop the force that his student has foolishly unleashed.

Call your immediate family members. Send your friends a text message filled with the happiest emojis. Send an updated meeting agenda for your annual performance review to your employers. Because you all need to have a conversation about Warhawk Tanzania. Your grandparents will fall in love with Warhawk’s deliberately enunciated dialogue about righteous behavior. Every one of your ex-lovers will go apeshit for the skin-tight gold-lamé overalls he wears for the final act of the film. All of your afro enthusiast friends will take careful notes. He’s no Jim Kelly on the charisma scale, but he should have been in so many more blaxploitation films with a martial arts bend. It’s kind of a shame so little is known about him. (Was his birth name really Warhawk? Is he still alive? What’s his favorite omelette? These are the top three questions in my Excel file full of them). Sure, he’s not a great actor, but every second of this film when he wasn’t on-screen, I felt like screaming into a loaf of rye bread shaped like a pillow. Warhawk Tanzania gets me pretty emotional, you guys.

Do you long for the days when gangs could rumble in alleys and public parks while attracting nary a glance from law enforcement or civilians? This film captures New Yorkers, young and old alike, at record-high levels of DGAF as stunt players and martial artists rough each other up in various city locations. Throughout it all, there are random daytime passerbys pounding the pavement in the background of just about every shot the filmmakers captured. I’d imagine that the 1970s NYC population was pretty numb to the presence of film crews at this point, but the solid fight choreography here should have undone their indifference.

For such a low-budget film, the fight scenes are quite solid, highlighted by a steady rough-and-tumble quality in different settings. We get loads of alley fights, a fight in a bar between a female bartender and a male gang member, and a fairly entertaining man vs. monster climax that will have you doing double-takes from the choppy editing and supernatural overtones. It appears that Barry Rosen, whose only directorial credits were this film and 1976’s non-action movie The Yum Yum Girls, wisely turned things over to his on-set martial artists. Many of them appear to be students of various skill level, but there’s some observable technique and combinations at work.

 

If you can believe it, Devil’s Express was the brain-child of at least five different screenwriters. I have no idea how they collaborated, but I’d like to think that the genre influences were delegated one per writer; one person injected the scary stuff, another handled the martial arts, and so on. Five different people each throwing a delicious homemade recipe at the same wall to see what sticks. Usually, films with this many cooks in the kitchen are a goddamn mess. Does that make any of those dishes any less delicious? Even when eaten off of a wall? Of course not! If the food slides off the wall and onto the floor, we’re having a different conversation, but all of the cinematic elements work fine individually and become suitably wacky when combined. People are out there eating Mountain Dew & Doritos donuts for fuck’s sake. There are bigger problems in the world than a blaxploitation-chopsocky-gang-war-whodunit-monster movie.

VERDICT
If you’re a fan of trashy genre hybrids like Raw Force and can tolerate a flimsy plot and a lack of technical polish -- and if you’re here, you clearly can -- Devil’s Express is up your spooky, poorly-lit alley. The great thing about films like these is the madcap pastiche: martial arts, blaxploitation, gang warfare, police procedural, and man-in-a-suit monster movie tropes all live comfortably side by side for a tidy 82 minutes. The end result is a bouillabaisse of 1970s independent exploitation filmmaking that will have you hunting down a pair of gold-lame overalls faster that you can say “Warhawk Tanzania!” A recommended if uneven curiosity.

AVAILABILITY
This one is available on YouTube under one of its many titles (I’ll leave it to you to find your way) but I’d advise you to track down the Code Red DVD release. Their high-definition release made use of the original negative and the film looks miles better than what you’re likely to find on any streaming service or grey market copy.

4.5 / 7