Versus (2000)

Director: Ryuhei Kitamura

Screenplay: Ryuhei Kitamura and Yūdai Yamaguchi

Cast: Tak Sakaguchi as Prisoner KSC2-303, Hideo Sakaki as The Man, Chieko Misaka as The Girl, Kenji Matsuda as Yakuza Leader with butterfly knife, Yuichiro Arai as Motorcycle-riding yakuza with revolver, Minoru Matsumoto as Crazy yakuza with amulet, Kazuhito Ohba as Yakuza with glasses, Takehiro Katayama as Red-haired assassin, Ayumi Yoshihara as Long-haired female assassin, Shōichirō Masumoto as One-handed cop, Toshiro Kamiaka as Samurai warrior, Yukihito Tanikado as Cop with Barrett

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Why did I hate a film once made with hard work and independent grit, a two hour epic combining martial arts, splatter horror and post-Matrix cool? Apparently, because a younger self could not appreciate such good aspects, thus providing evidence youth does not mean good taste. There is unfortunately details I came to learn in regards to this production, which is not the fault of Versus but the inherent problem with any work with people involved who can reveal through themselves the ugly side of human beings, that I had to begin this review with and will have to talk of, as these came like sudden thunderbolts to learn at the worse time, when coming finally around the Versus as a film. As a film itself, this tragic detail is a shame as I can at least appreciate now that Ryuhei Kitamura put his time and effort into this project, one which was a difficult production just from the decision to make it an outdoor shot in the woodlands, liable to constant issues of weather conditions and practicality in getting through the shots with expected strain. Based on a mid-length film before, a lower budgeted project Down to Hell (1997), he took the idea from that of woodlands where those killed within its unholy grounds immediately return undead, and expanded upon it in a film which spun away from a sequel to its own concept. One evoking Lucio Fulci's The Beyond (1981), and its lore of gates directly to Hell, but specifying that there are 666 of them confirmed in Kitamura's world, and at the Forest of Resurrection where this film is set, this has the 444th.

The premise is very simple, and with hindsight, one can envision Versus, as a true independent production, as being the equivalent of a lot of micro-budgeted films from the West, usually shot in VHS in the past, which showed its creators wanting to make the films they grew up watching. The only difference with this was how it was able to put together production to create something very elaborate, one which managed to breakout to a wider audience through film festivals and distributors, in the case of the United Kingdom riding the wave of interest in Asian cinema into the 2000s that distributor Tartan Films made a huge part of their DVD era, with the Tartan Asian Extreme line this belonged to. Like a micro-budget film, the premise is simple, that two convicts have escaped the law, one of our lead and the closest with an actual name as Prisoner KSC2-303, played by future actor star Tak Sakaguchi in a breakout role. The set up is that these two convicts where to met a group of yakuza, only for this to immediately go south when they argue and the leader of the yakuza is killed, immediately bringing to their concern the forest they have chosen to meet at having rejuvenating properties. They have a woman they have kidnapped, played by Chieko Misaka, in tow, and there will be more goons, and two cops, one not impressed his severed hand was still connected to KSC2-303 by handcuffs, the other a braggart who yet has access to a cannon masquerading a long distance rifle. A big bad, set up in a chambara period prologue, is pulling the strings with intentions to unlock the powers of Hell's 444th gate for himself. Neither helping anyone but this villain is that this forest was where the yakuza were dumping their victims quietly in, leading now to there being undead who still had their firearms on them when buried and attempt to still use them.

Sadly this is where what was a celebratory review, with a sense of humour, has to nose dive into reality. It can sadly be confirmed that said villain is played by Hideo Sakaki, a prolific actor and director after this for film and television, who was arrested for accusations of sexual assault in 2024, part of a series of accusations Shukan Bunshun weekly magazine reported in March 2022 about him coercing actresses in sexual situations under the pretence of helping their careers¹. Sadly lead Tak Sakaguchi is connected to another scandal, all connected to a huge MeToo movement which began in the Japanese cinema industry in the late 2010s, where he was directly connected to allegations connected to Sion Sono. Unfortunately, this is a director I had immense fascination in for films like Love Exposure (2008), Sono having allegations of sexual harassment published by a Shukan Josei PRIME article from April 4th, Tak Sakaguchi apologising for his part in luring a woman to Sono in one incident². Details like this unfortunately make it difficult to engage with any production, worse in this case as this is your two lead actors, but this is sadly what happens with hindsight, a film left stranded in the past in knowledge that those involved can be alleged, or in the case of Hideo Sakaki arrested, for undefendable crimes, squandering artistic creativity in favour of absolutely indefensible actions if proven true. I could not consciously ignore this, even if this leaves a bitter taste to the review from onwards, which is a shame as everything else in context to this film is fun and entertaining, and do deserve their place in the sun as someone originally not a fan of Versus, only with this happy ending having a bitter undercurrent too running side-by-side.

Versus itself, back to the film itself and its virtues, was made with overt interest in international cinema as Ryuhei Kitamura, trained in filmmaking whilst living in Australia, wanted to make the films he liked, not only the older action films from Japan itself which he felt had died out, but also with proud influence from international cinema. This is from action films from the West, martial arts films from other countries, and also the splatter horror of the likes of Peter Jackson's early work like Bad Taste (1987), another homemade low budget breakout hit, to Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films. You can see this was a work of love having to deal with what resources they could access - they had a limited time with certain camera equipment at one point, hence why there are abrupt moments of spinning the camera around with close-ups in style - but this was thankfully the case where the crew and cast were committed to the project. This is not surprising considering the individuals involved in this project that would go on to shape a lot of pop culture into the 2000s. Thankfully, there are individuals in this production without accusations published who have contributed a lot to Japanese pop culture, especially its face in international fandoms. Co-writer Yūdai Yamaguchi is among that trend, that the likes of Sushi Typhoon started to lean into, of unconventional genre mash-ups which were more focused for Western audiences, becoming a director in his own right with the likes of Meatball Machine (2005). Composer Nobuhiko Morino, bring some nineties drum n bass to the proceedings, became a frequent collaborator with Yamaguchi and Ryuhei Kitamura. There is also the figure of Yûji Shimomura, the action director, someone who would become a huge name not necessarily in cinema, but in terms of video games, as the director the cinematic and action scenes for the likes of the Devil May Cry and Bayonetta franchises, a figure in that field who brought a level of spectacle into cut scenes and helped pave their cult statuses for memorable sequences as much as the acclaim of their gameplay.

The slightness of the film in plot, a simple tale of someone who wishes to open the door to the realm beyond death, is contrasted by the sense of personality to the film. The influences are seen, between a sword being held in the air like the Highlander films, to a Peter Jackson Brain Dead (1992) era joke of someone having their head punched through, with the camera showing us the shot between the elaborately designed (and impressive) special effect. But the sense of humour and playfulness is the film's, even when making jokes of that era of cinema when the first Matrix film was a huge global hit and this is making jokes about the lead not finding any of the sunglasses he finds being cool enough to wear, or that he needs to steal the leather jacket among other clothes of a dead man who stayed so. Versus arguably has a virtue that, even if tragically marked by the sins of those who made it, so many people were involved, and everyone onscreen, even if they do not even have proper names for the characters, has a personality and can heal with issues of watching the film with hindsight to real life. This can vary from the short yakuza, the runt, who constantly has additional firearms on his person even one piece is stolen, and is going full method in acting like a caffeinated ferret, to the cops, one with the issue his primary hand for punching was taken, and the "Expert" who claims to have trained with the FBI, and learnt to be an expert of woodland tracking living in Yellowstone Park in the USA. A personal favourite of mine in the cast, actor Kenji Matsuda, thankfully got a career in the likes of Kamen Rider series and other tokusatsu work, the flamboyant figure as vivid in his performance as the character's suave dress sense, eventually turning into a literal cat-goblin when characters join the necromancer heavy's side. Even what was something I was not a fan of in my youth, the ongoing joke the lead has to knock the female lead out to keep her safe, is contrasted with hindsight with two women in the cast who get to play as tough as the male cast and take part in the fight scenes. These characters may not have as much screen time as hoped, but they all get a scene to stand out in.

 It is a spectacle film, the logical conclusion to every film fan who wanted to make a film in the woods, where everything is based on what is cool. It is not enough to punch a man's heart out, you need to take a bite from the freshly produced object. Swords can have laser sights regardless of their practical use, and everyone manages to find new armaments regardless of how and where they are stored. Even in terms of an actual plot, it is ambitious to cut to a chambara setting for the back-story, and the ending, which is more of a twist for the sake of it, does feel unpredictable. [Huge Spoilers] Considering how it is built up KSC2-303 is not exactly a true pure hero, but an amoral figure with some virtues, it is built up that one day he could just become an amoral figure in another reincarnation who wants to destroy everything, and the villain was at least moral evil. [Spoilers End] Like a few micro budget films, there was an alternative cut, an Ultimate Cut, where Ryuhei Kitamura wanted to improve aspects with some new footage. There is nothing drastic thankfully barring CGI planets in space in the opening with an emphasis over the lead as more amoral than presumed; instead, this version adds some additional scenes which do not jar explicitly new content, some improvements in the practical effects and just a general tweak in places. It is telling though I am happy, now on the film's wavelength, that I am happy with the original theatrical version as is, even if you do get a blood spurt for a decapitation in the original version that is a mere trickle among moments changed.

It also was a happy conclusion as, whilst sadly spoilt be the horrible tales in real life beyond films, it did lead to Ryuhei Kitamura becoming a director for a Godzilla sequel, and even getting to work in Hollywood, the same journey that Peter Jackson would have. That is enough to place a better opinion on Versus, even without the entertainment I found from this with a fresh perspective, as this was the case of one of these home spun films which became a true calling card, and because of this, I cannot hold anything but a positive bias for this film.

 

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1) Japanese film director arrested over sexual assault allegations, published by Kyodo News on February 21st 2024.

2) Sono Sion Accused of Sexual Harassment, published by Arama Japan in 2023.

Double Team (1997)

 

Director: Tsui Hark

Screenplay: Don Jakoby and Paul Mones

Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme as Jack Paul Quinn, Dennis Rodman as Yaz, Mickey Rourke as Stavros, Natacha Lindinger as Kathryn "Kath" Quinn

Ephemeral Waves

 

With this, I can shoot the dick off a hummingbird.

Double Team is one of those "guilty pleasure" films from the past, a phrase which does not work for me because I feel no guilt for this enjoyment of Double Team, but is sadly the only one I know of in the English language to best describe a film which is not successful in terms of portraying a fully immersive world to engage with, whether for the action genre or not, but wins me over for the fact the film even inexplicably exists. There was a time this was deemed a bankable prospect, teaming Belgium action actor Jean-Claude Van Damme with then basketball bad boy Dennis Rodman in a film that takes its entire premise serious without irony, as nineties as you can get.

Double Team is late in Van Damme's blockbuster era, nearing the end, which stands out for how this is a big budget film in context with its production value, even with shots at a real architectural location, a real place of historical value, to represent the Roman Colosseum, alongside stunt work and some budget for something whose scene by scene synopsis is ridiculous. Van Damme is Jack Paul Quinn, a retired "hunter" for spies, with wife and an expected child, brought back in the game by the promise to finally catch the terrorist Stavros, played by Mickey Rourke in his wilderness years. Rodman, whilst it is only halfway through when he fully joins into the plot, is Yaz the arms dealer and inventor, living up to Rodman's reputation for unconventional dress sense on court and off it whilst living in Antwerp, Belgium in the district where everyone wears rubber, divers in fish tanks replace erotic dancers, and drum n bass music scores the streets if you stop to listen. The actual film beyond this is as mad as a box of frogs, but you can also see the talent of director Tsui Hark, who is the third noticeable figure here. This was when he briefly went to American, as a lot of Hong Kong filmmakers and actors did, due to the 1997 Hong Kong transfer to China, bringing his stylistic touches even when paying tribute to John Woo's Hard Boiled (1992) in a hospital shootout with babies when Stravos loses his own son and wife during a botched attempt to catch him alive at a carnival.

The tone takes everything seriously, but from Don Jakoby and Paul Mones' script, it gets increasingly more absurd as events escalate for Quinn, and the best comparison is actually a certain type of Japanese manga, and the anime adaptations you were more likely to get in the West at the time Double Team was released, which takes its story entirely seriously but has plot escalation serves which when scrutinised individually, or shown in a live action film as here, are ridiculous. In terms of structure, this is as basic a film as you can get, where the lead is merely a name for Van Damme, and that the stakes is the generic ideal of the beautiful wife, a cipher for a fully fleshed out person rather than the person, played Natacha Lindinger. Next to a film like The Blade (1995), one of Tsui Hark's last films before he left for this brief two part Van Damme period in the United States, which is a fully fleshed out remake of The One-Armed Swordsman (1967) that emphasises telling the story in its visual style, Double Team is paltry in comparison. Instead what we get here is a heightened fever dream, as over-the-top as you can get where my pleasure comes from what it was stringing together in its content, something which starts fully when Quinn is made officially "dead" after the botched Stravos mission, ending up in what feels like a tribute to The Prisoner (1967).

Evoking the legendary British TV series about actor Patrick McGoohan being stuck in a secret colony, here Van Damme ends up in a colony for covert operatives deemed too important to let back into society, Quinn stuck imprisoned on an island with other spies and agents who were too valuable to kill. It is a premise for a high concept film by itself, as they have to act as inspectors on high tech computers, analysing terror incidents around the world with timed watches to punish those who try to escape, but like those manga, this will casually have an elaborate set piece to ditch it, including a real stunt of someone hanging off a cargo plane. This has a surreal randomness like some of the best of the action genre, excepting their artificiality, and that eventually we will get more inexplicably details like the cyber team of Italian Catholic monks, in a gothic location with the skulls of their ancestors on display underground, who are a surveillance ring of Rome with advanced computer knowledge. For a film that is surprisingly marked for eighteen year olds only to see in Britain, despite being tame for the age rating, this is the broad stereotypical cartoon of the era, which gets more delirious as it goes along despite the structure and pace being conventional next to its peers.

Van Damme found himself in this world of films, as Hark's Knock Off (1998), where things always had an absurdity, some intentionally humoured and some not, with the likes of the 1994 adaption of the Street Fighter video game franchise, which became G.I.  Joe with one liners. Van Damme is being steered along in a film like this, even when he ends up wearing a wig and shades at a point, at a no-nonsense hero in a time which was incredibly chaotic for him and would eventually drift away from the mainstream. Rodman does feel stiff in performance including all the jarring basketball references in his conversations, which is a shame as I can see the charisma is struggling to get onscreen. He is not helped by the moments where he is the butt of jokes, including having a really tall man in a very tiny Italian car, details which can be raised as problematic as you have made the star of the show, specially an African American sports star, into a comedic side character despite the fact he would have been a huge selling point, his notoriety even leading to himself in World Championship Wrestling in 1997 at the same time. When this is not the case, you can see where the charisma is, even if he would have never been a huge film star unless he drastically became more comfortable with line readings. When he is allowed to be a living manga character, his stuff gets to be interesting in terms of a celebrity becoming a cinematic one. Insanely tall, towering over everyone else with his suits and face piercings, and with disregard for logic for the better as Yaz not only has constant costume changes per scene but different hair dye jobs too, Rodman was the selling point to the film even if times the movie wants to make him entirely a side kick, even appearing in vocal cameo for the end credit song, Just a Freak by Crystal Waters to emphasis this fact.

The story itself for Double Team is conventional, merely a pretext for the scenarios, which is the ultimate critique for a film like this were it not for the sense I really do not care. Hark's flair is visually here when it can be, such as precise use of slow motion in the baroquely staged carnival shoot out. Even something which is banal and cannot be defended, the prominent Coca Cola placement, is used with such a ridiculous extent it eventually is subverted by accident, one cola vending machine explicitly in the Roman Colosseum used as a defensive shield strong enough to withstand a bomb that decimates a major landmark. There is enough of a severity, with complete late of irony, to help the film along with an earnest nature, where even its goofy humour are less mocking itself but a wackiness from films from the nineties including Van Damme's own. If this had shown any irony whatsoever, rather than be so back accident in have comedic moments, I might have despised this, where if there is an illusion of caring for these archetypes in an absurd film, the film makers not even giving the decency to care for their fate, as sadly happens in others, would have made this unbearable. The sense of serious is found in allowing characters to goof off but not mock the film as flimsy, whilst Mickey Rourke, , in a period before Sin City (2005) brought him back into mainstream attention, helps with this whether he was acting his emotionally scarred terrorist Starvos with sincerity or pure professionalism.

This is film, in mind to this, that would need all the commitment you could get, and it pays off for myself in terms of how it has the most over-the-top ending you could find, ridiculous but what I have hoped others from the likes of Steven Seagal but never got. The finale takes place at the Colosseum, with a newly born baby in peril, landmines planted in the ground, Rodzilla entering on a dirt bike, and a real tiger with animal trainers involved in the production, because landmines and one-on-one combat were not enough to kill Quinn in what is. For a higher budget production, it is in context, a mad experience to witness, more so as this is not a low budget made with CGI production of decades later, where irony sadly becomes a more occuring trend in multiple genres, but with the aforementioned real tiger, a real motorbike stunt and real pyrotechnics alongside nineties era computer effects. And that is why, whilst I realise how cheesy the production is, I love the film in spite of itself because of this sincere batshit logic matched with the production values and cast. Even when they struggle, to make something more than a half arsed production with a sense of deliberately sabotaging itself in irony is appreciated. There is a pleasure, even if irrational, for managing to sincerely play with the strange set of selling points this did even if I admit this is a strange non-sequitur for those involved including Tsui Hark, who continued this with the equally weird Knock Off, before going back to Hong Kong cinema with a sense none of this happened.

Yakuza Apocalypse (2015)

 

Director: Takashi Miike

Screenplay: Yoshitaka Yamaguchi

Cast: Hayato Ichihara as Akira Kageyama; Riko Narumi as Kyoko; Shô Aoyagi as Angus; Kiyohiko Shibukawa as Aratetsu; Ryushin Tei as Killer Priest; Yayan Ruhian as Kyoken (Mad Dog); Masanori Mimoto as Kaeru-kun (The Frog)

Cinema of the Abstract

 

Yakuza Apocalypse is when one refuses to die when shot full of holes because you are a yakuza vampire, and the toughest opponent is in a giant frog costume. Or that Takeshi Miike, used to the crime genre and yakuza tales, returns to the genre in his later career and make an epic work proudly deadpan in how increasingly absurd it is as it goes along. Yakuza Apocalypse is going to be an acquired taste especially at this point Miike’s career, where he gained acclaimed for films like 13 Assassins (2010), because it is a cavalcade of new absurdities followed by a finale which is left unanswered. This is a film which takes itself seriously only to be argued to be a pure joke by the end, set in a town where the recession hit leaving it unstable, the yakuza looking after the place about to devour itself when the noble and kind hearted leader, who also happens to be a vampire, is assassinated in a power shift. This feels like a throwback to a certain type of film from Miike’s direct-to-video era in the nineties, specially the more brazenly pulpier ones like Full Metal Yakuza (1997), and in that context, what could already appeal to a viewer without prior experience as a “wacky” cult film gains more credibility in this knowing how Miike, helped in this film by screenwriter Yoshitaka Yamaguchi, carved a niche for this type of movie that felt a bar higher than others.

With significantly less transgressive (and in places problematic) content from some of those earlier films, Miike’s virtue even without the gems of his more seriously minded tone is being able to juggle tones fully, between being able to be sincere in the moment only to undercut expectations, such as the leader’s food source being former yakuza, imprisoned in a cellar, who spend their time knitting and being treated as if in a reform school for criminals. One of his most loyal members, Akira Kageyama (Hayato Ichihara), is the one yakuza who cannot get a tattoo due to his sensitive skin, which will change when his boss is killed but not without passing on the mantle of yakuza vampire to protect the town. What this becomes after this lengthy set up is a freewheeling mass of pulp storytelling where the time allows it to be fleshed out even when a joke. Clearly this was made as a flex in genre for the sake of genre, apt as this was produced by Nikkatsu, who at this point looked back at their legacy – the constant stream of crime and genre b-films from the fifties and sixties, to their pinku films – and produced films inspired from them in the then-modern era of the 2010s, not throwbacks but modern equivalents. Yakuza Apocalypse feels like what would happen if Seijun Suzuki had not been fired for what he got away with for a film like Branded to Kill (1967), adding here horror, open surrealism and martial arts fight scenes.

And credit to Miike and the production team, they hired martial artists and shoot it well, including the stunt casting of Yayan Ruhian, an Indonesia actor and martial artist who came to prominence through Gareth Evans’ The Raid (2011), here getting to play a striking member of the villainous group who took over the yakuza, if with an eccentric touch that he starts with wearing a nice ironed shirt, glasses and looking like a buff train spotter with a backpack full of maps, one of the many times Yakuza Apocalypse presents its story with seriousness whilst also being sardonic about it. That the film ends with no resolve – a central villain, an actual kappa, disappears with no explanation, or the world ending scenario about a giant kaiju sized frog creature –has happened a few times in his career. Whether it was time, budget or the source material not being fully available, be it Fudoh: The Next Generation (1996) having an open ending, or Dead or Alive (1999) famously ending with the most abrupt shift into worldwide destruction possible, Miike has done this so many times with his career that it is a trademark. It feels on purpose a lot of the time, and there is so much that stands within these films, as here too, where even his more indulgent genre films are more interesting than many. There is a whole series of weird subplots which make this particular case more standout, where an older female yakuza, having betrayed her boss, goes through a Lady Macbeth scenario if she keeps hearing a dripping noise only in her brain and tries growing civilians in a green house, or that Kageyama ends up turning everyone into yakuza vampires, from schoolgirls to young boys who upgrade by removing their hair (and fear) with revenge in their heart and a new afro-perm.

It is, as a film which fits the director’s career, one which would raise an eyebrow for many, for good as well as he still takes the production seriously, still making these broad archetypes have meaning to them even when the scenarios are absurd, such as the female yakuza losing her sanity or Kageyama having to grow up quickly in his role. Even when this is utterly insane, it is depicted with the likes of a frog mascot being the ultimate fighter, who is cast with a competent martial artist who can even fight in a full mascot costume. That one figure emphasizes, even as pure pulp for the sake of entertainment, the little weird details which have been with Miike’s films early in the career, playing to the joke (he struggles down stares) whilst still being credible as a figure in the world itself (including his death stare). Yakuza Apocalypse among Takashi Miike’s films is not a canonical title, but it is one which succeeds if you take it as a pure entertainment spectacle with all its absurdist touches; if you have been a fan of his, aware of how prolific he is and how films in this tone came before, this is a follow up to this in his career again which is successful.

Abstract Spectrum: Deadpan / Wacky

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

The Brawl Busters (1978)

 

Director: Kim Jeong-Yong

Screenplay: Richard Hung

Cast: Il-shik Jang, Yong-seok Kang, Yeong-ran Seo, Moo-Wung Choe, Mu-Seong Kwak, Debbie Ling, Chung-Il Nam, In-Ha Yoon

Ephemeral Waves

 

Starring "Black Jack Chan", the more notable detail for myself in the credits is Joseph Lai (and to a lesser extent Tomas Tang), a delightful appearance to witness in the credits alongside the familiar type of English dub voice acting here which I have only found with Godfrey Ho films. It was a pleasing surprise to return to this world of Joseph Lai, even if this is clearly a South Korean martial arts film he has taken and re-appropriated for an English speaking audience, as much an influence on Ho's infamous cut-and-paste ninja films and a sharp reminder that both, before the likes of Ninja Terminator (1985), had their names on a glut of martial arts films, in this particular case a South Korean entry from director Kim Jeong-Yong. Rather than a film about a 'Jack Chan', likely in mind to Jackie Chan's growing success, this is a film from a prolific filmmaker who spent a great deal of time in martial arts cinema as much as producing one-off curiosities like War Of The God Monsters (1985), a Korean kaiju movie that now immediately stands out as an enticing film to witness.

This like many of any country of origin has a very familiar premise - an evil leader, very good at martial arts, had a family slain over a priceless sword their patriarch won but he felt was rightly his, the only survivor a female baby who, rescued by a Buddhist monk, is out for revenge as the head of an all-female assassination group. A mysterious male martial artist, who makes his entrance catching darts in the air holes of his flute, is tagging along behind her as an ally. It is like many of these films, not just other Joseph Lai productions, so this film's level of unpredictability is a habit of martial arts cinema I am glad exists. This, even with the casual swearing per the Lai production formula of their English dubs, has its own energy, which does also help with the few things which do feel less well in terms of telling a simple story. It is a bit convoluted at first, causing confusion unnecessarily when our female lead, is pictured as a villain contrasted by a son willing to avenge a slain father of one of her targets, despite the later having been a baddie and his son a minor henchman in the end. Our lead does as well, sadly, gets maligned in n her own film to the male lead, so it is to Brawl Buster's virtues that it has a frenzied energy to make up for its imperfections. It even pulls off the "it was all a dream" segment for the lead villain, dreaming of killing the female assassin with his bedroom trap mechanisms, including one of a few times a net confounds a person, which is among its gleefully creative moments for what is a story and plot seen many times before. Especially for something not as perfectly explained as it is should be, factoring in that this English dub from the Joseph Lai group probably took liberties with the source material, this is a huge virtue.

You can see this in even the minor henchmen having their idiosyncratic special moves, a trope which has carried through martial arts from Shaw Brothers to a South Korean production like this thankfully. Tornado feet and extending sleeve attacks, razor male ponytail whips, steel claws (which look like oven mitts with foil claws to be honest), and even crushing spike trap set pieces are among the cavalcade of idiosyncratic pieces to this, to the point I see these martial arts films and realise video games were clearly inspired by these types of films. Even beyond the likes of Kung Fu Master (1984) by Irem just being martial arts stories adapted into a new medium, it is with how bosses in arcade games were clearly following the concept of escalation of each villain has their own idiosyncratic abilities. Hell, even the habit found just in Joseph Lai films like this, but other martial arts movies, of two heroes needing to team together to fight one main villain, which could be seen as unfair and is contrasted by Western films having one-on-one brawls, evokes how multiplayer co-operative games, like scrolling beat-em-ups, cane have players teaming together to actually get to the end of the game.

This comparison is apt as, baring the disappointment that our female lead, and her bevy of four female assassin assistants as the leads as promised in the beginning, a lot of the appeal of The Brawl Busters is that same cathartic unpredictability. The martial arts is solid, and our female protagonist still gets to be a strong character in terms of fighting skill, so a film like this is worthwhile if you have a taste for these type of productions. That is important as being able to split these obscurer martial arts films from each other, and able to appreciate them for their quirks, is different from watching some of the most acclaimed of this genre who have their own auras. As someone who went beyond those ninja films to binging multiple films in succession from this earlier Godfrey Ho-Joseph Lai martial arts films, I can attested to both how one should not try to do that, but also that even lower tier cheesy films like this can show their moments and personalities that, even if it is a scene or something silly, make them rewarding. The Brawl Busters you can appreciate for its bugnuts imagination and the level of creativity to any work like this even if not one of the acclaimed ones.

Fire Dragon (1983)

 

Director: Chester Wong Chung-Gwong

Cast: Chung Kwan as John; Yi-Chan Lu as Jessie; Chien-Ping Li as Jessie; Hung-Lieh Chen as Sai-ichi; Ti Chin as Wesley; Jackie Chan as Alan (archive footage); Brigitte Lin as Lily (archive footage)

An Abstract Candidate

 

It is nice to know, early in his career, martial arts superstar Jackie Chan’s filmography gets into the more unashamed luridness and exploitation of Hong Kong cinema, where it is not enough to fire guns at a car in the opening scene to kill the driver, but to drop a giant net over it, as nets even confound automobiles let alone human beings, and then blow it up with a rocket launcher. The opening theme is going to break out into Donna Summer’s I Feel Love and Hi-NRG dance music, and between this and Fantasy Mission Force (1983), Chan has even in just two films has a surprising amount of times where Nazis have been the villains, which is fitting as, part of its own tradition in this region’s cinema, this shamelessly recycles and re-contextualizes Fantasy Mission Force footage into a new film from the same year that film was released.

That film can be viewed as an early production in the “mo lei tau film” genre which the likes of Stephen Chow became famous for, which as a phrase can be translated as “makes no sense”¹ and in itself explains the tone of Fantasy Mission Force perfectly. That film was already weird and on purpose, with actors abruptly in a variety of costumes from steel helmets to dressing up as Scotsmen in kilts, to its tonal shifts from slapstick comedy to a jarring serious ending with characters dead. Fire Dragon manages to be its own take on what is usually equated to Godfrey Ho and producer Joseph Lai, a duo infamous from this period of re-contextualizing existing or unfinished films into what I have called for myself cut-and-paste ninja films, and here Fire Dragon shows this was something others did themselves, with the added peculiarity that the director of this film, Chester Wong Chung-Gwong, only has this film on their Internet Movie Database page. This possesses the same unpredictability of a Godfrey Ho film, when you can have someone get decapitated underwater abruptly by a motorboat engine passing by, or killers jumping out of birthday cakes to knife someone. The use of Fantasy Mission Force alone, a film where Chan was a comedic side character who took centre stage in the ending, is to the point of retelling a new story from it even when it makes no sense to, the scenes involving a haunted house of real ghosts from the previous film, strange in themselves, more strange here to use to introduce the characters, leading to actually bizarre results.

There is new footage here, a plot involving Chinese Nazis, nefarious individuals connected to two new heroes to fight them, a man and a woman, whilst the original cast of Fantasy Mission Force (including Brigitte Lin, a star in her own right including in Wong Kar-Wai films) are reused and attempted to be linked to as a band of criminals after gold. Jackie Chan gets ridiculous dubbing here as in the older film, more goofball with random blues guitar licks scoring his fight scenes here rather than the Godfrey Ho-like English dubbing he got earlier, reintroduced as in FMF fighting an evil sumo for his first scenes. It is clear this also comes when Chan started becoming a big name in his homeland, as there is a stand-in used in scenes whose face we never seen, even introduced in a room with posters and photos of Chan himself from other films used for the close-up shots instead of an actual face. Martial arts cinema had done this before Fire Dragon with Bruce Lee after his abrupt death in 1973, but there were actual actors playing Lee such as Bruce Lai as “Bruceploitation” stars, with their faces seen, which makes Fire Dragon a very odd contrast especially in mind that, decades after this film, Chan was very much alive and breaking in Hollywood by the nineties.

Adding to the strangeness is that this stunt double, alongside weaving new footage around Fantasy Mission Force (and old costumes from that film), does their own elaborate fight scenes with comedy and that blues lick. That is certainly memorable, and it explains touches like having the Nazis, or that they have women in cave women costumes, even fighting to the death, reflecting the scene where the leads (as reused here) encounter a village of Amazons. Fantasy Mission Force was already a bizarre film, and needing to match the footage here for a new narrative, the results get even weirder at times here even if they co-exist as equals in different ways of strangeness. It is also clear this managed to even access unused footage, or more versions of Fantasy Mission Force exist, as there are a few scenes that I never saw and feel hallucinated from out takes there, like torture involving German shepherds licking one’s feet on pain of a metal ball hitting repeatedly in the head when you twitch your legs back. There is also an attempt, not well, to link such scenes, such as the potential death by snu snu with regular sized, petite model-like Amazons for one too-lucky male figure. Fire Dragon, for someone not used to this type of cinema from Hong Kong, would not be viewed as good film making, not how cinema is meant to be constructed this way. Even Bernard Hermann’s legendary shower scene score for Psycho (1960) is used at one point, this region of martial arts cinema its own mad delirium that has to be accepted on its own terms.

It is the kind of film you still also have to admire for the chutzpah, where people were still filmed as extras on crucifixes at the Nazi camp, there just because as set dressing even if it would have cost more to film than add more spare old footage, the logic not found yet still earnestly trying to be entertaining if still exploitation. The story is thread bare, and yet as a Frankenstein’s project to retell a new film with vast limits of new footage, that in itself if you are prepared becomes the pleasure in its own form, the mechanizations of trying to make a new film from an old one like an experimental game, including the Jackie Chan factor, adding to the curiosity factor.

Abstract Spectrum: Random/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

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1)      Stephen Chow & Hong Kong Mo Lei Tau Comedy, written by Nick Dodet and published for Pig China on March 8th 2016.

Ninja III: The Domination (1984)

 

Director: Sam Firstenberg

Screenplay: James R. Silke

Cast: Shô Kosugi as Yamada; Lucinda Dickey as Christie; Jordan Bennett as Secord; David Chung as Black Ninja; Dale Ishimoto as Okuda; James Hong as Miyashima

Ephemeral Waves

 

Only a ninja can destroy a ninja.

Out of the Cannon Group canon, Ninja III could be seen as one of their most infamous productions, where after Israeli expats and independent film producers Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan helped produce the eighties craze for ninjas, with Enter the Ninja (1981) and Revenge of the Ninja (1983), the cousins backed another production by director Sam Firstenberg with Shô Kosugi, the Japanese star who became central to considerable few of these ninja films in the eighties (such as Pray for Death (1985) and Nine Deaths of the Ninja (1985)) in the United States. This one however would imagine what would happen if you were possessed by the ghost of an evil ninja.

The film does not slouch with a ridiculous opening which is yet, with hindsight to how Cannon Group were not a company able to throw a lot of money around, that is impressive with age. It becomes a far more ambitious and mad spectacle, especially knowing one of Cannon's ultimate swords of Damocles over its head was trying to spend too much on films which were not successful. In how the prologue establishes the evil ninja, assassinating someone on a golf course, it becomes a prolonged act a mayhem before he becomes the ghost that possesses Lucinda Dickey of Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984), slaughtering everyone including the police who chase after him. Alongside how long and extravagant the scene is on its small budget, there is the fact this was before CGI was prominent, so that is a real stunt person hanging off a real helicopter in a ninja costume at one point.

Eventually the numbers game is too much, but this ninja still survived having holes blown into him with firearms, even shotguns, and massacre a whole lot of the cops after him. This was just the prologue, eventually crawling along in the desert where he encounters Christie, Lucinda Dickey's character a telephone pole engineer in the day, passing to her his katana which contains his soul and possesses her. This is, undoubtedly, a bizarre film as it goes along, a reminder that Cannon Group were a curious beast, who funded so legitimately talented figures, including working with John Cassavetes as a director or Jean-Luc Godard, even if that later production King Lear (1987) was effectively a middle finger to Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan. They also released films presuming they would be hits but coming from a complete naivety at points - Going Bananas (1987), a children's film, has the bizarre anecdote from Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014) about Menahem Golan meeting with the handlers of Clyde the orangutan (Clint Eastwood's co-star from Every Which Way But Loose (1978) and Any Which Way You Can (1980)) to discuss a potential movie deal, only to eventually have to have a dwarf actor in an obvious suit. They could hit trends perfectly, like the original Breakin' film or cashing in on superhero films, but Ninja III does come from the studio being out of touch in a magical way for their productions.

Nothing is more of the eighties, of its moment, in one shot than within Ninja III where Lucinda Dickey is playing Tapper (1983), on an arcade machine she can somehow afford to own, in aerobics lycra. The film after its opening does, honestly, struggle at times with its own shambolic nature, but there is an infectiousness to the proceedings if you can appreciate this film, as Christie begins under the ninja's influence to kill the police officers who finished him off, one attempting to romance her by way of being such an annoyance she finally gives in. Alongside the question of whether pouring V8 vegetable juice on yourself can be considered sexy, which does happen in this film, the other obvious concern is that this definitely is not even like other American martial arts films from this period, in that this really does not focus on the martial arts, yet the idea here of a supernatural ninja is not as trivialising as you would think. This does evoke the cut-and-paste ninja films which made Hong Kong filmmaker Godfrey Ho's infamous reputation, with this in comparison managing a slicker nature in its eighties cheese than some of the productions Ho and his producer at the time Joseph Lai had, but still retaining the DNA. Its supernatural nature makes the comparison perfect, even riffing on The Exorcist with a much appreciated cameo by James Hong as a spiritualist who realises he is out of his depth with an evil ghost ninja. The film is not really even a Shô Kosugi work either as, whilst a name for the tale to sell it, he is a minor figure here, a good ninja out for revenge, for his lost eye and his slain master, travelling to the United States after the evil ninja and happy to perform his own form of exorcism when he realises the circumstances. Instead, this film becomes a curious hodgepodge of aspects and plot points of its own.

A film like this would be even lower budget in the modern straight to streaming era, making one like this which got cinema releases at one point more fascinating. It has its lengthy dialogue scenes, but the strangeness of the production from Cannon Group does feel a one off, not a great film but a compelling one. The Godfrey Ho comparison is apt, and honestly, whilst the real Japanese ninja were people who disguised themselves to blend into surroundings, in Japanese pop culture they have taken ninja to their own exaggerated forms. Particularly in mind to The Kouga Ninja Scrolls (1958–1959), a novel by the Japanese author Futaro Yamada and its lasting impact on depictions in decades after, alongside the influence of cult pop culture media like video games, ninja in Japanese pop culture have been exaggerated as supernatural figures who have bee hives growing out of their backs, let alone their own infinite supply of shuriken like this film has. The difference is that, like the moody synth score by Udi Harpaz and Misha Segal, this has its own quirks from reinterpreting ninja in a Western hemisphere alongside its unintentional aspects, such as its extended aerobics sequence for comedy. Whilst this cannot hold a candle to the Hong Kong and Japanese martial arts films from this era, there is the fictional ninja iconography, like Japan's, which is quirky with hindsight.

The only real issue with this film, truthfully, is that it is exoticising Japanese culture, which is definitely problematic, and whilst his cameo is fun, undeniably a Chinese American actor in James Hong playing a Japanese character, or one who is ambiguous in his spiritual clinic's aesthetic whilst being able to understand a Japanese ghost, shows Ninja III has aged. But the film itself, with its legacy of infamy, is too gleefully weird to just dismiss, especially as it lives up to its mad reputation and does not feel too low budget to cop out of what it promised. The ninja fad as well of the eighties has an added quirk which is meaningful for myself in that, thanks to a certain person named James Ferman, the head of the British Board of Film Classification who started in 1975 and was thankfully ousted in 1999, we would have never gotten a film like this unless with severe censorship until the DVD era. I was too young for this to care, and Godfrey Ho's ninja films were the ones I got to first, but Ferman was responsible for numerous practices which are right to view of puritanical or just bizarre in British film censorship, one of them being he had scenes of things like nunchucks and shurikens removed from films under the fear of British children imitating them, which even compromised the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. This makes a film like Ninja III even more idiosyncratic, as the ninja fad is this strange eighties concept in terms of their Western depictions that we would have not gotten the full extent of. A film like Ninja III would have not been seen in its proper form, outside of bootlegging, until the DVD era here, and its additional time capsule nature of pure eighties oddness, mainlining some of Cannon Group's most charming but also infamous aspects in one production, was a huge experience for me even if this was less a great viewing experience entire for just the film, but the experience itself. Certainly it was an entertaining experience too as a film, not as weird as I had presumed in some ways, more with a greater sense of cheesy eccentricity that won me over, but this is definitely a case of a film which you need to appreciate a "cult" film to get the best out of this or you will think this is dumb. Those who can appreciate just that extended prologue on the golf course will be happy that, if that wins them over, the film will be a great experience for them onwards.

Guyver: Dark Hero (1994)

 

Director: Steve Wang

Screenplay: Nathan Long and Steve Wang

Based on the manga by Yoshiki Takaya

Cast: David Hayter as Sean Barker; Kathy Christopherson as Cori; Bruno Patrick as Crane; Christopher Michael as Atkins; Stuart Weiss as Marcus

Ephemeral Waves/A 1000 Anime Crossover

 

Next up, more Elvis sightings.

Guyver: Dark Hero is a vast contrast to the original 1991 adaptation of the Guyver. Aki Komine and horror legend Brian Yuzna are gone as producers; notable, and needing a paragraph to begin this review as this sequel, are the producers which took over, showing this from the get-go was where things got serious. Ken Iyadomi was Executive Vice President of Bandai Entertainment at its inception in 1996 to 2006, and VHS anime publishers LA Hero and Manga Entertainment beforehand, and from 2018 at Sunrise Inc., the legendary animation studio; he was involved as a producer for the likes of Ninja Scroll (1993), Ghost in the Shell (1995) and The Visions of Escaflowne (1996), just in three random choices three significant anime titles, Escaflowne a series, from that era, and he even involved as a producer for an episode of the 2021 live action Cowboy Bebop series. Hirohiko Sueyoshi, producer on Wings of Honneamise (1987), Nobuhiko Ôbayashi's adaptation of the Kazuo Umezu manga The Drifting Classroom (1987), and Macross Plus (1994), alongside being involved with Guyver: Out of Control (1986), the first attempt to adapt the original manga, as an executive producer. Yutaka Wada, with this one of his last productions as a producer, can at least credit in his small filmography being a producer on Mamoru Oshii's Angel Egg (1985), one of the most experimental theatrical anime ever made and a holy grail for Western fans to have, and being on the production committee for Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), one of the first films Hayao Miyazaki made alongside The Castle of Cagliostro (1979) as the director, rather than in the animation department or directing animated television series.

Vivian Wu is gone, the romance between her and the lead character completely ignored, with Kathy Christopherson in the equivalent position here, an actress who would return in Steve Wang's Western interpretation of Kamen Rider, Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight (2008-9), and in terms of tone, this sequel changes a lot. Having watched this film multiple times before, having never seen the 1991 adaptation until much later, Guyver: Dark Hero is a b-movie but as a curious attempt to meld an older American monster movie with Japanese tokusatsu action sequences, one which wanted to get the tone of the source material right. Even with strange touches like the monsters having cat noises mixed into their grunts, this was a more successful production in terms of the premise.

It is still attached to the prequel, nodding to this existing after the end of the prequel but with the life of Sean Barker, now played by David Hayter, a troubled one afterwards. Having been able to watch this film without needing to know about the prequel, this feels severed entirely in that Sean is a figure possessed by an alien bio-armour called the Guyver, part of his form permanently, which now pushes him to stalk criminals randomly at night as the opening sequence has. When a television report, for a show devoted to fringe Elvis sightings and UFOs, brings up an apparent werewolf attack in Utah, Sean to his surprise sees images involved with this news report, near an archaeological dig, which are close to his experiences with the Chronos Corporation in the prequel and dreams from co-existing with alien armour in his body.  

David Hayter is now the Guyver, going on a journey to Utah where an archaeological excavation has found symbols on the wall similar to those found in his notebooks recording his dreams. The result is far more a no-nonsense sci-fi plot, ditching most of the comedy of the prequel as the archaeologists are working for a deeply suspicious company, with something in the woods killing any locals bumbling near the excavation site. Hayter, continuing the 1991 Guyver having a fascinating cavalcade of pop culture figures, is inexplicably linked from this to the future of American box office blockbusters as. Alongside his legacy as the voice actor playing Solid Snake in the Metal Gear Solid video game franchise, he wrote the screenplays X-Men (2000) and X-Men 2 (2003), arguably among the first films before the wave in the Millennium, before the Marvel Cinematic Universe came to be and Batman was revived with Batman Begins (2005), when superheroes dominated pop culture. Even at this time, Hayter was more a voice actor, from the 1996-7 Spider-Man animated series I grew up with, playing Captain America, to anime English dubbing for the likes of Fushigi Yûgi (1995), so it is befitting his legacy as Solid Snake in an iconic series is also one of his most important roles in pop culture, as important to the Hideo Kojima developed franchise as the gameplay in the West.

Baring badly dated computer effects, and some compromise for losing Screaming Mad George and the higher practical effects budget, there is however such a bizarre irony to be found in how Dark Hero was probably a lower budget production next to the prequel, but has such a drastically improved sense of production value and ambition in its smaller scale. Noticeable is Steve Wang's collaboration with Koichi Sakamoto and his Alpha Stunt Team, Sakamoto the fight coordinator, which is a huge virtue for Dark Hero. This film will recycle Michael Berryman's monster costume from the prequel for a random goon, to show some penny pinching, but this production ups the scale drastically in ambition and to fight scenes which are utterly exhilarating. Considering he has worked in a variety of roles after this film on Power Rangers, Kamen Rider, Ultraman and Japanese tokusatsu productions, the Tokyo born Koichi Sakamoto brought a huge weight to the film, and that is not ignoring others on the crew. Among those credited with stunts with Sakamoto - Ken Goodman, Tatsuro Koike and Akihiro Noguchi - you can connect dots before and after this film to Jackie Chan film from his early Hong Kong superstar era, Hollywood box office films to even stunt coordination for videogames like Sega's Yakuza series. You can argue the plot's a little flimsy, but seeing a man, even with the padding of a giant rubber monster costume, get propelled into metal scaffolding is still painful and striking to witness, rough but efficient fight scenes that replace the grace of Hong Kong martial arts for a more visceral nature of Japanese combat movies.

The result, mentioning that cross between the American monster movie and a martial arts film, does stand out more from its forest setting and exterior cave sets too, a sense of atmosphere in general the original adaptation of Guyver never had. For every line reading slightly under the mark or the clichéd plotting sticking out, I cannot help but admire the clear love put on display to make a great film, more so as the woodlands have a significant positive effect on the mood and that, even if the transformations are cut down and simplified, the production value is actually superior everywhere else in the film against the prequel. Even in mind that, yes, this is a low budget film where actors in rubber suits are fighting in the middle of the Angeles National Forest in California, posing as Utah, that in itself has a pleasure in itself that is simple, more so as this is a significantly more serious film in tone even with a few moments of weird humour. The gore, when there, is in its nastiest form, whilst the plot becomes the back-story of the Guyver's origins, leading to the film going as far as having an elaborate living interior of a spaceship for a set with multiple rooms. There is even an elaborate flashback to primitive times with stage bound sets, model work and almost psychedelic colours as cavemen dance around a bonfire and turn into monsters to explain the origins of the Zoanoids.

In the perfect world, the Screaming Mad George effects and David Gale would have been used in a film like Dark Hero rather than the 1991 Guyver film, making one better film, but in the real world this is still a superior work even if one sadly less easy to access. That is also unfair to Bruno Patrick, an actor who barely has a filmography with this the most well known of his films, as Crane, effectively the main villain though he serves a figurehead of the Chronos Corporation. One scene, a monologue even as an outright villain, has an unexpected choice of words to it, almost coming off as subtext in he and Hayter's Sean Barker being people with secrets that force them to be shunned from the world, wishing to be normal again. You can as a viewer indeed read a variety of different contexts in that sequence, even a queer one, despite this very much being a monster fighting film where Crane then turns into a monster a moment afterwards. Even how this deals with the idea of an evil Guyver, least taking the idea of what happens when a Zoanoid gets hold of a Guyver unit, is at least an escalation.

This is a film which stands by its technical qualities in the areas the production wished to focus on and improve from the prequel, and they stand out well. With these virtues, the foundations are prevented from collapsing like so many examples in the same areas do so easily, with a lot of these type of genre films of this ilk not being this well made. I say this in mind to the 1991 The Guyver, which is not a good film but I have nothing by sympathy for those on and behind the camera for trying; the problem with it was how it did not clearly has a consistency with the tone and material. If more films were like The Guyver: Dark Hero in genre cinema, despite its flaws in story and composition, the ideas and their recreation are beautiful to see by themselves, their macabre physicality evoking far more than a rush job, either with practical or CGI effects, would. Steve Wang's career is sadly smaller than it should be, though he worked over the decades, but he went on after this to Drive (1997), that production vaulting this film in terms of quality. Among comic adaptations like this, The Guyver: Dark Hero can climb out the pit of bodies, with its head held high and a severed spinal column of a weaker film of a higher budget, in its bloodied claws, managing to be more impressive to me for having to work with less and still getting so much right in the process.

The Guyver (1991)

 

Director(s): Steve Wang and Screaming Mad George

Screenplay: Jon Purdy

Based on the manga by Yoshiki Takaya

Cast: Jack Armstrong as Sean Barker/The Guyver; Vivian Wu as Mizky Segawa; Mark Hamill as Max Reed; David Gale as Fulton Balcus; Michael Berryman as Lisker; Jimmie Walker as Striker

Ephemeral Waves/A 1000 Anime Tie-In

 

Note: The version of The Guyver (1991) watched is the director's cut, which involved a flashy editing technique added to cut between scenes, but also visibly removing shots of violence which is brought up in the review.

This review will also be re-posted at my other blog 1000 Anime for a little cross-promotion between them. Please take a look at a wide selection of reviews I do there as well.

 

Yoshiki Takaya's manga The Guyver was at one point one of the first Japanese manga and anime franchises to transition over to the West, and one of my earliest memories as a child to the idea of "manga" or "anime" involved the 1991 film itself, a small news article about The Guyver with the exceptionally deceiving poster of co-star Mark Hamill's face against one-half of the iconic Guyver helmet. In Japan itself, Yoshiki Takaya's manga started in 1985 and is still going thirty plus years on through multiple magazines, with two anime adaptations for straight-to-video, 1986 and 1989, and one I grew up with getting into anime, a television series between 2005 to 2006 which was an attempt rejuvenate the franchise. The OVAs, specifically the 1989 multi-episode one, gained an infamy when released in the West for its violence, whilst the TV series was undermined by not having ultra-violence that made the anime notorious, despite the late anime distributor ADV Films selling the series off this infamy, and that it does not have an actual ending. In the West, two live action films were made, one produced by Brian Yuzna with Steve Wang and Screaming Mad George making their directorial debuts, the sequel three years later with Steve Wang on his own in the director's chair and taking a drastically different direction in tone. Together they are curiosities.

Made as a Japanese co-production, Yuzna himself is a man I admire. Connected to Stuart Gordon, the director famous for Re-Animator (1985), Yuzna himself as a filmmaker has a fascinating series of strange and imaginative horror films, some involving Screaming Mad George, birth name Joji Tani, a practical effects designer from Japan whose reputation when he moved to the United States and worked in cinema have had a lasting legacy. Steve Wang, a Taiwanese makeup artist and creature designer who emigrated to the USA as a child, would comes into the directorial chair in his small filmography here as a co-director, and especially with a film called Drive (1997), gained himself cult recognition.

The Guyver, as the 1991 film, is however a strange mess. The plot is from the source - an evil corporation called Chronos are after an alien bio-armour, the titular Guyver. Set in the United States, a young man named Sean Barker (Jack Armstrong) finds the Guyver and is infected by it, creating living armour which grows from his body when he needs it. The Guyver is a tokusatsu influenced production, like an ultra-violent Power Rangers in the image most have of it, as Chronos has its members and test victims used in experiments where they turn into horrifying monsters. This is contrasted by the weapons the Guyver has, with its arm blades to a chest laser beam, designed to slice them the pieces.

Yuzna's Japan-US co-production decided not to follow his wheelhouse of gore and elaborate special effects in films like Society (1989) or Bride of Re-Animator (1990), but only have the special effects...at least at times. The director's cut, the more readily available version, has scenes of gore cut, but even the film without these missing fragments is incredibly goofy at times, creating a contradiction of a film you could not give to a child without causing potential nightmares, at least its most lasting moments, but other times has incredibly silly humour. The first Guyver film, the more easy to find, is a peculiar thing with its tendrils connected to Stuart Gordon and Yuzna, with the evil Chronos Corporation headed by leader Fulton Balcus, played by David Gale who is famous for Re-Animator. Balcus wants the Guyver bio-armour and sends "Zoanoids", humans who can turn into humanoid monsters, after Sean Barker.

The one success, the only success, in terms of consistency is the practical effects. Screaming Mad George is legendary and notorious for his work, from the human cockroach sequence from A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) to the "Shunting" scene from Society, visceral body horror which even if you can see the seams is so nightmarish and gooey that it borders surrealism. Moments show this in The Guyver, seeing him and everyone in the practical effect department having a field day with the premise. Whether it is horror film veteran Michael Berryman and various actors turning into various humanoid beasts or the spectacular Guyver armour itself, a warrior with cyberpunk and insect-like traits, they are all applaudable. It is, however, a film struggling with a premise, possible in anime and manga, which has an apocalyptic tone on a large scale, and also requires martial arts to pull off even fights between men in rubber suits. Guyver: Dark Hero will try to overcome this, to greater success, but this prequel struggles.

It is a really strange film, not in surrealism, but how it ended up as it did. Mark Hamill, the legendary Star Wars actor a year before he took on the voice of The Joker in Batman: The Animated Series, creating for him a career flourish as iconic as Luke Skywalker, does stand out, playing a cop on the edge trying to get the scope on the Chronos Corporation, with a sense of grandeur to his appearance. The late David Gale steals scenes with his bizarre intonations and wall chewing, even enraged by burning toast as he is by the incompetence of his minion. Vivian Wu, as the female love interest, is visibly struggling with her dialogue and not helped in the slightest by a wet, one dimensional female character she has. Alongside the fact she is cast as a Japanese character, which is dubious for her as it is as casting, she is a really strange inclusion as between Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987), a huge film in his later career which was her onscreen debut, and Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book (1996), Wu, a Chinese actress whose career is mostly in dramas in the West and China, found herself in this film sandwiched between a Bernardo Bertolucci film and Greenaway which is a curious tangent. Even her appearance in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993) at least makes sense as a second sequel to a franchise which was huge at the time and whose first feature film was a box office success.

Jack Armstrong as the hero sadly struggles out of the whole cast, in a role that, to be brutally honest, was made an a absolute charisma vacuum even by the standards of a pulp story that emphasises practical effects first, which does not help him out at all. These stories, and this is something I think of in terms of the Guyver television anime, is structured around protagonists, male leads, who are usually bland, especially in many ultra-violent anime too where the worlds and context around them are more meaningful. More so as he is put against Hamill, the advertising cynically suggesting a key Star Wars figure as the lead in some posters, as well as against Michael Berryman as the main henchmen, one of the most visually striking figure in cult cinema. Even Spice Williams, a prominent stunt actress who stands out physically here with Berryman as a physically imposing female henchwoman, gets to play out a more memorable and playful romance with Berryman in one of the few jokes of the film which do work.

Despite Steve Wang's later work such as with the Guyver sequel and Drive (1997), with fight choreography from the tokusatsu school, and of an incredibly high quality in terms of fighting and stunt work, the fights here look stilted and suffocated by the presentation, lacking what the sequel did. In sacrificing some of the practical effects in terms of beast designs in favour of men in rubber monster suits, likely injuring themselves in painful stunts but bringing an exhilarating air of chaos to the proceedings, that sequel as we get to found a kineticism which works. The result beforehand in the prequel is as stiff. More surprising is the lack of scale even by the standards of a small budget genre film, feeling like only a couple of rooms and some exterior shots were used, the script as swift in getting to its end without any sense of dramatic conflict being found.

The final issue, ultimately the creative decision which maims the film fatally at many times throughout itself, is deciding to play most of the film as a comedy, coming clearer to me now as a result of having to work around the limitations. Even if it worked on other Brian Yuzna productions like Re-Animator, the humour in those cases was incredibly grim even if there was slapstick. This has more broad, goofier with characters being buffoons, and one of the more contentious running gags being the character of Striker. Jimmie Walker, playing him, is a prolific comedian and actor especially in television, all the way back into the seventies with shows like Good Times (1974–1979), a spin-off of a series called Maude which is significant in terms of an American sitcom from that time period about an African-American family. I can see Walker's completely natural charisma here, though when he suddenly indulgences in some early nineties cheesy rap, you realise with The Guyver how tonally this is not an adaptation of Yoshiki Takaya's manga. His fish-monster character is a memorable costume, and he has one good gag of accidentally wandering on a cheap horror film scene with a Linnea Quigley cameo, but his character in general has mostly cringe inducing humour from Striker as a gag character, more an issue as his character in general and especially how his monster version looks has uncomfortable stereotyping that cannot be ignored.

This version of the concept does not really work with its material at all, and it is telling that, with a Director's Cut cutting out violence, there is a misinterpretation of the source material that undercuts it. There are moments you could not show children, and yet they are actually some of the most striking moments. Taken from the source, and recreated in the TV- series, is that the giant orb in the centre of the Guyver's head is its weakness, leading to the death of the lead and an absolutely memorable sequence of body-horror resurrection. Even if it is played for goofiness, with a knock-off Jaws theme riff, that sequence has a morbid grace, and has some humour which actually works beforehand, mainly the fact that Yuzna alumni Jeffrey Combs, of Re-Animator, makes a cameo chewing the scenery and is involved as a weird goat creature by that point. Famously [Spoiler Warning] this is the film where Luke Skywalker gets painfully turned, with Hamill submerged in practical effects latex, into a cockroach-locust hybrid, a moment that if it had been in another production would haveve been up there in Yuzna and Screaming Mad George's filmographies as being iconic. Here, the film around it does not live up to what, in between both films, is the best sequence of these American adaptations, a scene which is actually horrifying, actually tragic and adult, and is one of Screaming Mad George and the prosthetic team's best moments on this film. It is a scene which has clearly stayed with George as, alongside the woman turning into a cockroach in an Elm Street sequel, he is referring to this idea with Paranoiascape (1998), an experimental pinball game he worked on exclusively for the Japanese Playstation One market that explicitly references this as much as Society in some of the grotesque sights within it. [Spoilers End]

The Guyver is a film so painfully bad in its humour at times that it both makes little sense tonally but loses its power in context. It feels like a cheesy American action film from this era, not in terms of when they are fun, but just the clichés, whether it is the moment with a multi-ethnic gang of clumsy hoodlums, or the humour being at the expense of Michael Berryman, rather than embracing his comic timing and imposing nature more, or that no one is taken seriously even as comic characters. Jimmie Walker is even paired up with an actor named Peter Spellos as bumbling henchmen, with Spellos having a vague Eastern European accent, in scenes that undercut the actors themselves. Peter Spellos, who can go from Jim Wynorski films like Sorority House Massacre II (1990), sometimes playing the same character of Orville Ketchum, to a career in anime voice acting for work like Naruto to Cowboy Bebop (1998), is someone with clearly a lot of charisma to try to make this material work, but The Guyver is a case of a cast of fascinating individuals, from a variety of idiosyncratic areas of pop culture, not being helped by the script and tone. From anime voice acting to Star Wars to Peter Greenaway art films to prolific American sitcoms, everyone in and behind the film camera is a fascinating figure who could bring a lot to the table, but the work onscreen from the production really does not connect together.

Ultimately, it is the emphasis on the humour especially, against the paltry production, which makes The Guyver insufferable at times even when it can be charming at other times. A Jeffrey Combs goat demon, or Vivian Wu and Mark Hamill running away from what apparently is a flea monster, like characters in a one-reel silent film comedy, are charming to see, but in mind that this is The Guyver, a tokusatsu work at heart, whether you kept the gore or not, this feels like a project which grabbed at the wrong point. This is stranger considering Brian Yuzna, even if he might have not had a taste for martial arts, had a taste for horror films which got the tone for humour and the monstrous perfectly, or his fellow producer Aki Komine, who produced a series of films with Yuzna or by himself which did attempt manga adaptations with heavier leanings on action, by it Christoph Gans' Crying Freeman adaptation from 1995, or the Fist of the North Star film from 1995 which, whether good as an adaptation or not, was an attempt to get the original violent post-apocalyptic narrative to the screen¹. Komine, with Steve Wang, would also work on Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight (2008-9), Wang's attempt to bring the legendary Kamen Rider series from Japan to American children's television, so there was a sense of Komine being interesting in the type of storytelling The Guyver did not turn into inexplicably. With these curious names involved within its production, it feels instead a sense that, together, The Guyver whilst fascinating just did not gel at all in terms of creativity.

In contrast, Guyver: Dark Hero even with its own flaws managed to be more successful, but that is a review for another day....

To Be Continued...

 

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1) That and this Fist of the North Star adaptation has the curious mix of action star Gary Daniels, Malcolm McDowell, professional wrestler Leon "Vader" White,  Costas Mandylor, Downtown Julie Brown, Chris Penn, and African-American cinema pioneer Melvin Van Peebles involved, which is a strange cast to ever get in an adaptation of a Japanese manga.