Executscan Expected more

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Brooklynn There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Tyler Ernst Maybe it's just me and my odd liking of corny horror movies but I liked HellDriver a lot. I haven't really seen any other films by Yoshihiro Nishimura so I didn't really have a bias on this film compared to the others. To me, this movie was just a lot of crazy, bloody fun with random chainsaws and exploding heads.I found the designs for everything were fantastic, from Chainsaw Katana to the car made out of mutilated body parts. I liked how the zombies were different than the usual moaning, shuffling, beasts and actually had some character to them. The characters were also very well made in my opinion, and their attire and weaponry even more so.The only thing I did not like about HellDriver were the small parts that took place in the "Zombie Bar" scenes. The blood spewing nipples and the random zombie with multiple penises were a bit much, and I really don't see why those things were necessary. I did like the other "boss" zombies that appeared in those scenes though: the battles with Katana-filled zombie, the baby lasso zombie, and the zombie made from multiple arms were so corny that they were awesome.If you're not the fan of hack-and-slash, than this isn't a movie for you and if you don't have an odd sense of humor, than it isn't for you either. The point of the movie was just to be ridiculous and silly, so why look at it any other way than that. Overall, HellDriver was a ridiculous over-the-top horror comedy that I guess you have to have certain tastes to enjoy.

BA_Harrison Nikkatsu subsidiary Sushi Typhoon, the company that brought us outrageous splatterfests Alien vs Ninja and Deadball, clearly believe that nothing succeeds quite like excess: comic/horror Helldriver, directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura (Tokyo Gore Police), is quite possibly their most manic, insane and relentlessly gory effort thus far.The film stars Yumiko Hara as chainsaw wielding Kika, who is charged with leading a group on a mission into the zombie infested northern half of Japan to find and kill the 'zombie queen' (played by Eihi Shiina, of Audition fame), a former mass murderer who just happens to be Kika's mother Rikka. During their perilous journey, Kika and pals face such absurd threats as a hail of decapitated zombie heads, a multi-limbed creature with swords and machine guns at the end of each appendage and tiny arms in its face, and a zombie driving a car made from dismembered body parts.Other madness on display includes a battle between a car and Rikka's zombie husband, a zombie baby on an absurdly long umbilical cord, and lots and lots of inventive gore, including a young woman (Mizuki Kusumi?) having both her nipples bitten off, the result being fountains of blood erupting from her breasts.Obviously, to realistically bring such craziness to life would cost an awful lot of yen—clearly more than Sushi Typhoon have to spare—which is why the majority of the effects in this film (particularly the ones achieved though the use of CGI) look rather cheap and cartoon-like. Fortunately, with the action being so bonkers, this lack of realism is actually quite fitting and does little to reduce the film's overall enjoyment factor.What does drag the film down, however, is the rather overlong running time—at almost two hours long, such relentless mayhem does become a little tedious—and the fact that lead actress Hara, with her lack of curves and over-sized mouth, isn't as attractive as I would have liked: Asami would have made for a much better heroine (and by better, I mean sexier, of course).

trashgang I liked so many extreme gory flicks coming from Japan in the eighties and nineties because they were full of gore and red stuff. But times are changing and lately flicks coming from Japan aren't my cup of tea anymore. It started with Takashi Miiki's Yattâman (Yatterman). I loved the man and every gorehound has at least seen one of his flicks. The last one I liked was from Masters Of Horror 'Imprint' which I even bought uncut on Blu Ray. But Yatterman was something weird, it contained too much of CGI and had a strange story. It failed completely for me and I hoped that this new kind of shooting was a one in a kind.Was I wrong, I saw this due Asami being in it who I met at a convention and tried to talk with, she only understood Japanese, luckily Kurando Mitsutake (Samurai Avenger: The Blind Wolf) was there to translate everything. Another reason was that Eihi Shiina (Audition) was in it, she's back in business and Asami is a new star in her native land. What we have is an extremely gory flick but it made me think of Yatterman. So much CGI and weird things like zombies with horns. And the scene with the mother tearing out the heart of her child is indeed gory but it's full of CGI and exaggerated things that I disliked it.If this is the new way of making Japanese flicks then I guess I will leave that scene. For the moment things I liked was Vampire Girls vs Frankenstein Girls or Alien vs Ninja but Helldriver wasn't my thing. I can dig weird story lines but this was over the top. But I won't give up, I would like to see Erotibot with Asami, let's hope this is old school HK III. Maybe Yoshihiro Nishimura, the director, should better staid at his make-up department (Tokyo Gore Police or Machine Girl).Gore 5/5 Nudity 1/5 Effects 4/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 1/5

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.