A meteor strikes Japan's northern island and causes a zombie outbreak. Japan divides the nation with a great wall to keep infected people out of the general population. The only way to kill these zombies is to cut off the small antler structure that grows out of their forehead.The film has heavy blood sprays and a mountain of inane scenes including a credit run at 48 minutes into the feature. Severed hands run around like Evil Dead II and are able to use chainsaws, the film's weapon of choice. The infected form their own society on their side of the wall. There appears to be an underlying political or social statement concern fascism and right to life lost in all the gore and silliness.DVD has deleted scenes mixed in with other advertising extras.Guide: No sex or swearing. Brief nudity. F-word in previews that no one watches.

While in a fight with her psychotic and cannibalistic mother, "Kika" (Yumiko Hara) has her heart ripped out at the exact same time a meteorite hits both her and her mother "Rikka" (Eihi Shiina). Both are essentially wrapped in a strange cocoon and frozen in time. Meanwhile the ash from the meteorite blankets a certain portion of Japan and those who breathe it are turned into zombie-like creatures about an hour later. What then transpires is a bizarre political debate on how to treat these infected people with one side arguing that they should be killed and the other side demanding that they be protected. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie I will just say that this particular type of film apparently appeals to a certain niche of movie-goers who really enjoy action and gore regardless of how ridiculous some of the scenes turn out to be. And there were more than a few ridiculous scenes in this movie. Naturally, this movie was never meant to be taken seriously but even so the continuous action and gore got more than a little annoying. Again, those who enjoy action and gore to the exclusion of everything else will probably love this movie. But I am not one them and I have rated it accordingly. Awful.

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.

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).