Helldriver (2010)

Loud, dark and filled to the brim with compulsory slow motion shots of gushing blood, this is a typical example of Nikkatsu/Sushi Typhoon's recent line of gore-drenched action melodramas. Relying on a derivative storyline and flat characters constructed from traumatic flashbacks, Helldriver manages to reach its goals not with the accumulation of pickled body parts and blood hoses within the gloomy scenery, but with some genuinely exhilarating battle scenes scattered about, mostly near the end, and a crowd-pleasing screenplay involving many key concepts of the zombie sub-genre.

The story is simple, but it involves many heterogeneous elements making for a surprisingly coherent, if completely implausible whole. Kika (Yumiko Hara) is a school girl who comes home one day only to find her helpless father being murdered by her psychotic mother (Eihi Shiina) and uncle, caught grounding the meat harvested from his severed legs in order to eat it succulently later. Joining the endless parade of emotionally shattered schoolgirls in the Japanese genre film landscape, Kika vies revenge and she pits her resolve squarely against her demented mother. While facing each other atop a car near the projects they call home, evil Rikka is suddenly struck by a meteor which digs a round hole in her body, right where her black heart used to be. In order to survive and commit further atrocities, she decides to rip her daughter's heart out and plug it back into her severed, but still pulsating arteries. Logic is suspended for a spell as she does so, leaving the heroine to die in front of her eyes while she laughs frantically.

The bitch is back: devilish temptress Eihi Shiina stars
as monstrous head zombie Rikka

Fast-forward many months, as Kika awakens to a new world order in which the recently dead are rising from the grave and eating the living as a result of the widespread infection caused by alien fumes from the meteor. Following pressures from human rights groups claiming that "zombies are people too", Japan is split in two halves, not unlike the British Isles from Neil Marshall's Doomsday. One half shelters the disenfranchised survivors, while the other half acts as a vast reservation for the infected. All the while, the government is secretly elaborating a program of zombie-killing cyborgs meant to eradicate the plague, the prototype of which is Kika, harboring a metal-plated, external pace-maker and a chain-katana plugged to a backpack full of gasoline.

As the plot unfolds, Kika befriends the head of a humble orphanage and his last remaining protegee, both of which are rummaging through the zombie wastelands, harvesting zombie horns for a local kingpin. You see, the grounded horns are used to create a powerful, hallucinogenic drug fetching a high price amongst the desperate poor living in shantytowns near the border. But when the battle-weary trio is arrested during a drug bust, they are forced by the new, anti-zombie government to infiltrate the Northern reservation and annihilate the head zombie, source of the plague. Of course, that head zombie is none other than Rikka, whose evil knows no bound and whose beating heart was stolen from a daughter hellbent on getting it back. The ensuing series of battles is not to be missed.

Not unlike Tokyo Gore Police, Helldriver is
also a crude political satire

I apologize for this lengthy, and mostly superfluous description of the film. Let's just say I got carried away trying to expose every one of the numerous plot points making up the narrative. After all, while the film goes all over the place, discussing important issues pertaining to drug addiction, government abuse, poverty and human rights, all within the restrictive framework of the Nikkatsu action melodrama, it manages to make sense, in a twisted, synthetic sort of way. And although no one will attend the film hoping to find anything other than ruthless gore and grotesque monsters, it's fun to find some substance in the screenplay, which, while not fully original, is a worthy addition to the zombie sub-genre, if only for its all-inclusive take on the living dead mythos.

Still, this is a crowd-pleaser, complete with imaginative, highly energetic action sequences and loads of immoral violence, directed at everyone from innocent bystanders to bloodthirsty zombies. Using a jittery camera, rapid editing and a super-loud soundtrack, the film provides all the excitement one could expect from such fare, while throwing many neat gimmicks all across the battlefield. The protagonist's motored chain-katana is one of those, and so are the modular zombie limbs used to create horrendous vehicles, flying booby traps and over-powered composite zombies. The grand finale set atop a flying giant made from thousands of slithering zombies perfectly exemplifies the extravagant Japanese approach to genre film-making, one that relegates the dramatic issues so dear to Western cinema to the backseat of a hot-rod driven by the immediate impulses and desires of the film audience. And while such an approach is bound to exacerbate the shallowness of its narrative material, it makes for some pulse-pounding, highly-entertaining films that are unimpaired by morality or plausibility.

Helldriver, your number 1 source for chicks
with metal breastplates and chain-katanas

In the end, all you need to know about this film is that the action is fast and furious and the violence messy and ruthless. Add to that a sexy, tall and thick-lipped protagonist and a manic performance by iconic villainess Eihi Shiina, and you've got what genre fans crave: a relentless effort made with contagious zeal by a bunch of genre fans like themselves. That said, the film contains a fun little reference to Odishon that shan't be lost on fans of Miike's seminal one-scene film. Enjoy.

2,5/5 Zany, but derivative crowd-pleaser is, as tagline states, a full-fledged "joy ride".