MY CALL: If Power Rangers was rated-R, but still just as hokey, you’d end up somewhere in this territory. It doesn’t measure up to most Tokyo Shock entries in terms of exploitative material, gore and effects, and coked-up lunacy. But it’s a good middle ground for those who may find Tokyo Shock to be… a little too much muchness. MORE MOVIES LIKE Zeiram: Probably The Guyver (1991). Maybe Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl (2009) or Tokyo Gore Police (2008).
Bounty hunters Iria (Yûko Moriyama; Zeiram 2, Reborn from Hell: Samurai Armageddon) and her AI partner Bob travel to Earth to capture a bio-engineered monstrosity named Zeiram. Zeiram has big stompy boots and resembles a mechanized member of The Three Storms from Big Trouble in Little China (1986). Zeiram’s headpiece has a woman’s face embedded in it, and she has a retractable prehensile neck. He also has little pods that conjure fleshy squeaking alien monsters to do his bidding… not unlike Rita summoning monsters for the Power Rangers to fight.
At first, this movie feels like a hokey PG action-comedy flick… and your expectations would be low. Iria uses a Power Ranger super suit and some clumsy roundhouse kicks to combat the cyborg and its minions. The fighting is truly kids’ show quality—just two talentless actors flinging their legs at one another. The stunts are wretched and will make you cringe or giggle, depending on how you fancy this movie. What’s more is that this Zeiram doesn’t seem that dangerous. Two buffoons give him a run for his money with their tiny car. Zeiram’s weapons are nothing special and he has very bad aim. I feel like a local SWAT team could handle this mutant alien creature just fine.
Amid this stupidity are some decent-ish creature effects and gooey slimy gross effects. But we sadly must endure a lot of bad to get to these occasionally acceptable scenes. There’s a neat stop-motion metamorphosis into a new, somewhat insectoid form. And while I really love this scene, again, we had to suffer a lot of dumb and boring to get there.
Odd observation… in the new insectoid form, the two-toed knuckle-walking legs were a LOT like what we’d later see in the aliens from Independence Day (1996). The shape of the head is oddly similar, too. So the message here is that Roland Emmerich ripped off a dumb Tokyo Shock movie for his alien design.
Yet another transformation scene occurs and this one is truly spectacular, and batshit crazy. This is like a Lovecraftian tentacle monster covered in spines, insectoid legs and… breasts? Yes. Breasts. This sort of reminds me of the finale from From Beyond (1986).
I’d suggest any of numerous Tokyo Shock films or The Guyver (1991) over this any day. But true to its ever-shifting alien form, this still makes for solid Bad Movie Tuesday fodder.
