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.

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).

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