Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

suite92 An object from outer space strikes Hokkaido. This kicks up a cloud of ash which makes people fall to the ground, only to rise again in an hour as zombies.A large wall was erected across Honshu north of Tokyo to keep the zombies out. Refugees flood Tokyo.There's a banner: Protect the infected. Support human rights.Unfortunately, the infected eat the uninfected, but the government does not care.The zombies have an odd shaped horn; the only way to put a zombie down permanently in this film is to cut off this horn. Horns have psycho-active effects, so drug dealers collect them. The horns are volatile and explosive as well. This is all explained in a newscast/paid advertising TV session.There is social dissension about the issue: the pro-zombie rights advocates versus the Japan is for the living advocates. From the political to the gore fest: zombies with chain saws, heroes with bizarre weapons, strange eyes, spewing gore, sudden costume changes. That's in the first 30 minutes.Kika meets Taku and No-name, the last of the members of the Kamikaze Orphanage. Taku and No-name hunt for zombie horns, and the money is getting bad.Amazingly, there is formal public debate about whether or not to exterminate the zombies before they exterminate the living. The zombies eventually settle the debate by eating the prime minister.The opening credits start at 49 minutes into the film. Clever.After the credits, death row inmates are given a chance at having their sentences dropped. They are to find the woman who is the source of the zombie infestation and kill/destroy/whatever her.Kika is the daughter of the zombie queen, so Kika might be able to help locate her. They meet a skilled hunter in zombie country who helps them evade the flying heads.There's an effort to rescue No-name's sister Maya, who's been captured and sold at the zombie bar. Lots of fighting, lots of blood, but this is not the ultimate battleground.How might this turn out? Will any of our heroes survive? Will they get the zombie queen? Will the help promised by the Tokyo regime actually arrive?------Scores------Cinematography: 2/10 Ugly, badly done. Poor colour, shaky camera, and so on.Sound: 4/10 Out of sync, voice to speech. Bizarre choices for incidental music. Subtitles for the jaunty, pleasant singing would have been nice. Even more ridiculous choices of Western classical music.Acting: 0/10 I did not recognise any acting in this one. There were many people in the film who were on camera for under 30 seconds, and had few if any lines.Screenplay: 0/10 The time line is dicey, the characters are not developed in a coherent way, the visuals are poor, and the effect of the thing from outer space on Kika never made sense to me. The flashbacks are not well organised. Incredibly stupid armour, incredibly stupid mustache, ridiculous amount and presentation of blood splatter, flying heads as ammunition, heads flying with no physical reason for their movement, a stolen heart used as a voodoo instrument, and some of the stupidest fights I have ever seen. These were all part of the nonsense of the screenplay. Enough continuity errors to torpedo a hundred films that had any reasonable governance.

davidlmarks 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 partsBe 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!

mmushrm Another Yoshihiro Nishimura and Sushi Typhoon production, Helldriver has all the elements that are the mainstays of the producer and studio. You will find gore and horror mixed in with an abundance of absurdity.I personally enjoy the absurdity of the Yoshihiro Nishimura and Sushi Typhoon movies and this was no exception. This movie is a cheaply made exploitation B movie. The producers know this and don't try to foist it off as anything other then what it is. This is what makes it watchable.Helldriver does start off rather slow. It took me several attempts to finish this movie. In fact I would say the setup, the starting 1/3 of the movie was rather dull. Then the action starts.Once the action gets going it really gets going zombies, exploding zombies, zombie gangsters, flying zombies, transformer zombies and the good guys fighting them.The acting is minimalistic, probably because no one could act but then again its a zombie action movie. The girls all look good showered with blood and screaming/shouting in anger.Im only giving this movie a 6 due to its slow start. I started watching the movie then got pulled away and it took me months to get back to this movie again. However the 2/3 made up for it. Im looking forward to more movies from these guys.

joan sanchez 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.