Nihon bundan: Heru doraibâ

Okay, when you go to see a so-bad-it's-good horror/zombie movie, there are a few expectations that need to be met and I could never get past the fact that the act of watching zombies getting killed wasn't amusing. Seriously. The movie used thousands of liters of blood and all too often watching it spray was not remotely funny. The movie delivers on a lot of fronts, but at the end of the day there was too much gore and weird sh*t going on and not enough hilarity and cheering on the hero on screen.

When I saw the movie, it was the headliner for a horror movie film festival and by all means all of the circumstances for movie success were there, but it was just one of those ineffable things where the movie just didn't live up to the expectations.

tl;dr Had potential, but not as entertaining/lighthearted as it should have been

I love Asian cinema. I love gore from time to time, but I am not big fan of gory flicks.... but this one is damn entertaining. Fans of the genre will surely love it (as well as gorehounds) but other more mainstream audiences will hate it and get confused most of the time.

"Helldriver" is what could be considered "new wave of Japanese grindhouse" and it has everything good grindhouse needs: little to no story, weird moments, lot of gore, violence and blood. There's not much nudity in this one, but gore and blood splatters go over the top in every possible way.

Plot is rather simple: meteor (!?) falls to Earth, turning nearly all people in Japan into some kind of zombie mutants. Kika (Yumiko Hara) is sent to chop the heck out of them and kill mutant leader. Other folks join her in her mission. Now, first part of the movie is bit awkward (in a good) way, having nice amount of social\ politics\religious satire (but gore and action scenes still happen here) and somewhere around the half of the movie, title shows up (not kidding). After that, the movie "really" begins, which is pretty much hack'n'slash after that.

What makes HELLDRIVER great is that movie doesn't take itself very seriously (I was laughing most of the time, even in bloodiest scenes), gore FX are well done, and what impresses me the most are makeup effects on some "boss" monsters. I swear, at least half of the budget must have gone on makeup and fake blood (and this movie has insane amount of blood, maybe even more then Peter Jackson's "Braindead").

Some really cool villains (and original) and great fight scenes (and hilarious at the same time!) with them. Most of the time you'll keep asking yourself "how the heck they are gonna top the last scene" in terms of (un)logic, visuals and action.

Yumiko Hara is also very pretty and looks like Japanese action heroine. Hope we'll see more of her in future. Eihi Shiina (from Tokyo Gore Police, Audition) plays main villain, and she's wonderful as usual. Her scenes are over the top most of the time, but they fit movie perfectly, since Helldriver itself is way over the top in every possible element.

Turn off your logic and remember "it's just a movie". Enjoy the mayhem that happens on screen, and you'll surely like Helldriver.

I would be lying if I said that there is no fun to be had from watching this, but the whole thing feels like an experiment in absurdity rather than anything else and that is a shame as there is some real creativity here and there.

What I mean by creativity is that there are planes and cars made out of zombies, a zombie mother with a zombie baby still attached to her foetus which she uses as a weapon and, last but not least, the most insane zombie king and queen ever. But then the protagonist is an Alice rip-off (from the 'Resident Evil' film franchise).

In short, this film is a mixed bag in which the film-makers attempted to create the most absurd film ever. And I think they succeeded but at the expense of any real substance.

Kika -- part machine, part woman-- all zombie slayer!

We've seen zombie slayers with Samurai swords, we've seen zombie slayers with chainsaws! But we've never seen a cyborg zombie slayer with a Samurai chainsaw-sword and pole dancing skills!

In this version of dystopia, the "infected" are people afflicted by a virus that causes antlers to sprout from their brain (much like the real-life Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus which invades ants' brains, to eventually erupt from their heads to release spores that will infect other ants).

These antlers cause the afflicted to resemble Japanese melons. The origin of this affliction is extraterrestrial as well as familial-- Mother Dearest is a psycho-bitch from hell (with Kika's heart, literally) and Kika's uncle has a Swastika burned into his forehead (ala Charles Manson).

And kids being kids, can't leave well enough alone, are grinding up the zombie antlers to experience a new form of high.

To keep the infected at bay, a great wall has been erected to separate them from the population. But other nefarious forces are at work, and the wall is breached.

Now on Death Row, Kika and cohorts are presented with a choice: face what will ultimately be an unfair trial, or volunteer to take out the "Zombie Queen"-- Mother Dearest.

What ensues is sheer mayhem, as our group battles its way through the zombie horde. But not just any zombie horde! We see:

Zombie women hurtling zombie babies attached to them with umbilical cords (like Medieval flails)!

• The Zombie Bar - A Female zombie boxer - Zombie people-wranglers - Zombies doing Michael Jackson's Thriller - Samurai Pin-cushion zombie (looking more like a grotesque porcupine than, say, Hellraiser's Pinhead) who duals (wait for it) with a truck! - A flailing mutant zombie thing with small baby arms (holding a knife and fork) growing out of it's face (words alone can not adequately describe this creature) that ultimately (d)evolves into a "General Grievous" (Star Wars)-like fighting machine - A Zombie car made out of zombie parts

Be warned, the gore is very graphic at times. But if you've read this far, I'm sure you aren't taking anything here as a warning. Dismemberment and fire-hose gushers from every body part and orifice are spaced out about every minute or two.

"Hell Driver" has a tremendous amount of style and fountains of blood, guts and brains... lots of corny prosthetics and absolutely zero logic. It is silly to the extreme-- but that is the point. A screwed up cartoon for adults (that are stoned). Full marks for creativity here!

Interesting mix of Zombie and Gore action film, with many references to many modern fantasy and sci-fi movies and Japanese gore taste for fine bleeding fans. With some elements taken from the 'trifids', some post-apocalyptic scenes like Carpenter's Rescue from NY, some characters like Blade Runner's ones, references to I'm Legend and many more, this extra-large mesh-up film can be either disgusting and creative the most of times. Following with the well known Japanese tradition of telling the story with a bunch of flashbacks and flash-forwards, it contains lots of absurdities and null deployed characters, lots of story lines, irregular tempo and several flashes of very very intense action with astounding sound. For these actions it deserve to be watched, but for the others it's a waste of time, unless gore zombie films are your main interest.