Streaming on Amazon Prime!

HELLDRIVER (2010)

Directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura
Written by Yoshihiro Nishimura & Daichi Nagisa
Starring Yumiko Hara, Eihi Shiina, Yurei Yanagi, Kazuki Namioka, Kentaro Kishi, Mizuki Kusumi, Minoru Torihada, & Guadalcanal Taka

I knew I was in for something out of the ordinary when the film just sort of starts out of the blue with the madness and then one hour into the story, the opening credits appear. As unconventional as that is cinematically, it makes for a pretty damn cool experience to know you are in for one hell of a long drive (especially since that first hour is filled with zombie gore and mayhem already). HELLDRIVER is an epic from Yoshihiro Nishimura, the mad mind who brought you TOKYO GORE POLICE and THE MACHINE GIRL. If you’ve never experienced either of those two kinetic masterworks of gore and awesome, I pity you…or maybe I’m jealous that you get to experience these blood-soaked gems for the first time.

HELLDRIVER takes bits from those two films and amps it up to 11. The film is a celebration of over the top and gross out special effects. Though much of the effects are completely unrealistic, the film jumps into the blood headfirst and never comes up for air. Five minutes never goes by without a dismemberment, a fountain spray of blood, or some offbeat monster creation of body parts and nightmare stuff. Nishimura pulls nary a punch and though he lingers quite a bit to make this more of a showcase of effects and splatter rather than an actual cohesive story, the narrative does make sense most of the time.

The story, as far as I understand it, goes like this; a brother and sister team of serial killers attack a family brutally in the opening scene. Just as the sister is about to kill her final victim, she’s hit by a comet from the sky and spews black ash all over Tokyo. When inhaled, the ash creates zombies with horned pineal glands which are both their source of power and their greatest weakness. A band of warriors recruited by the government is the only force stopping the rampant destruction from the horned zombies. Kika (played fiercely by Yumiko Hara) leads the way with her chainsaw sword…

Yep, her sword has a rotating chainsaw blade around the edge. Pretty damn sweet, I know.

And this is what this gore-fest is all about. It’s a bunch of cool ways for these warriors to take on these monsters. Heads explode. Nipples are bitten off. Still-walking bodies are eaten down to the bones before falling over. Each minute tries to out-mindfuck you more than the last. I mean, a woman who just gave birth swings her undead newborn around like a biting, giggling weapon on an umbilical rope. A man sword fights a monster with his car. It rains biting zombie heads. A woman with doll parts on her face and at least ten arms swordfights our heroine. Things blow up for no reason. Cars are made out of body parts. Every minute is delightfully daffy.

HELLDRIVER is not a film to be taken seriously. It’s something to turn on in the background during a party as a collection of odd and grotesque imagery. But beware; the images are so damn fantastically insane that it’s likely to take over the whole situation and you’ll have a party of people with their jaws on the floor watching in awe. Enjoy this film for the trip down a bloody rabbit hole it is. Don’t try to make sense of it. Just let it wash over you like a crazy rainstorm. Trust me, even if you’ve seen other Asian horror splatterfests, you still won’t be ready for HELLDRIVER. This two hour long all-you-can-eat buffet of swords, zombies, gore, and just plain cool comic book mayhem has to be seen to be believed.

Check out the trailer here!!