7. The Guyver (Screaming Mad George & Steve Wang, 1991)
The Guyver is a live action adaptation of a Japanese sci-fi/horror manga series from the 80s. To give Western viewers an idea, it's essentially the equivalent of a feature length episode of Power Rangers. There's a hero and there's monsters, with a whole lot of ultra-cartoonish, choreographed fight scenes, bad acting, and not a good deal of plot development. They clearly spent all their time, money and energies on the character costumes, sacrificing pretty much everything else in the process- except for the special effects, which can be pretty awesome at parts. The story is detailed in the Star Wars-esque introduction. Basically, there is a race of alien beings- called Zoanoids- that have lived on earth for millennia, and whom created humans. The Zoanoids are insectoid shapeshifters who live the majority of their lives in human form, and work for a corporation called Cronos- which is headed by the Zoanoid Overlord. The plot is based around the existence of a technology called The Guyver, which is a sort of biological space armour that renders the wearer more or less invincible. The Guyver was stolen by a Zoanoid scientist with a human daughter, who felt that human's would be wiped off the face of the earth if it got into the hands of the Zoanoid Overlord. He stole and hid it, sacrificing himself to keep it out of the hands of Cronos. The very existence of Cronos seems to be for the purpose of tracking The Guyver technology down for the Zoanoids. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EMDGS1NqL0 It is accidently found by a young man (who also happens to be the love interest of the dead scientist's daughter). When he is jumped by a group of thugs, The Guyver drops out, and his head is crushed into it. Suddenly, The Guyver transmorphs into the young man, becoming part of his body. He now IS The Guyver, and uses his new found abilities to give the thugs a mighty beat down. After learning what has just happened to him, The Guyver teams up with a local CIA Agent (Mark Hamill) and the scientists daughter, with plans to take down the Cronos Corporation, eliminate the Zoanoid Overlord and stop the Zoanoid plot to rid the earth of humans, once and for all. At one point, the Zoanoids capture Mark Hamill, and have him hooked up to some sort of technological device. He is freed by the girl and The Guyver before anything seems to happen to him. But then- without any explanation whatsoever- he grabs his knee and falls to the ground. Something comes out of his ass, and he shapeshifts into a cockroach-looking Zoanoid, which then immediately dies!!! I mean, what the hell just happened!? The utter absurdity of Hamill's death comes from the fact that the film leaves you to read into what just happened yourself (ie he was undergoing some process to change him into a Zoanoid, which was stopped pre-maturely when they took him out, leading to his death, rather than his conversion...I guess), without any prior explanation or retroactive comment being made at any point. They just move on to fight the Zoanoid Overlord and the film ends, Hamill-less.