Helldriver

Helldriver

aka ヘルドライバー aka Nihon bundan: Heru doraiba

2010
Written by Yoshihiro Nishimura & Daichi Nagisa
Directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura


Ah, Helldriver. How damn awesome are you? Pretty damn awesome! If you love the Japanese gore flicks where blood flows like an Old Faithful orgasm-quake covering everyone and everything as they scream, if you love films where zombies build things out of parts of other zombies like the world’s grossest Lego set, if you like chicks with chainsaw swords and cowboys in blade-covered trucks, if you like stories of loss and redemption and revenge, then Helldriver is a movie for you. Helldriver goes…FULL THROTTLE!! Ha! Okay, sorry, that will be the only car pun.

Another in the line of Sushi Typhoon crazed gore flicks, Helldriver features many of the repeat players along with some new leads. Yoshihiro Nishimura is the makeup effects wizard who also helmed Tokyo Gore Police, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, and a chapter in Mutant Girls Squad, along with a massive amount of makeup work in cult flicks. He keeps the tradition alive with Helldriver, and attempts to break new ground. Each of these features attempts to one-up the last one, going further and further over the top. But it’s important to be more than just gross. It must be entertaining. I’ve seen a few that haven’t been so hot. Helldriver is long, has a complicated back story, parts are redundant, and at least one part looks thrown in at the last minute just to add Asami to the cast list. But overall it is pretty cool and zips along.

Helldriver clocks in at almost 2 hours in length. Partially because they need to explain the setup, which is an alien zombie infestation that caused half of Japan to be walled off and the survivors forced to crowd into the remaining half, and the various cultural problems that it would result in (arguments over the rights of the infected, overcrowding and stranger families being forced to live together, lack of proper food, and an illicit drug trade based on the horns of the zombies, which can get you high but also randomly explode.) There is a brief bit of narration setting a lot of this up, then later Kika observes the same things herself after she’s revived.

Zombies play a major role in Helldriver, but Helldriver put some thought into their creation and mythos. This isn’t your standard Romero zombie where a brain shot kills them (thank goodness!), they are more of Return of the Living Dead zombies, but with one weak spot – a horn that grows out of their head. People were infected by breathing in an ash, which then dissipated after 6 million were infected. No one bitten becomes a zombie. Zombies are ripped apart and sewn together, creating new and horrible chimeras of destruction.

There is more than just the zombie element to Helldriver. There is a strong theme of family throughout the film. Many of the proponents of zombie rights have relatives who are infected. They even go so far as to bring body parts to their infected children to feed on. Kika has an adversarial relationship with her psychotic mother, Rikka, and her equally crazed brother Yasushi. Rikka literally becomes the zombie queen, and snatches away Kika’s heart just before she dies. Kika doesn’t die, both women are cocooned in space goo, Rikka becoming the queen while Kika being preserved until she’s revived by Japanese government and turned into an instrument of revenge. A generator is built into the hole in her chest, and it powers a chainsaw sword. She’s then abandoned until the powers that be can use her for their own ends to kill the queen. Her heart still lives in the chest of Rikka, cpnnecting the two together. Kika’s last memories are of her father being eaten and burned alive by her mother and uncle. Further flashbacks seem to imply that he was wheelchair bound as a result of their abuse, that everything the family ever had was taken by Rikka and Yasushi for their own. Rikka is so bad it is a wonder she ever even had a child, or a husband who is kind. But the family must have their reunion, Kika wants her heart back, wants to confront her mom for everything she’s done, and can’t ignore her because her mom can torture her through hurting her heart. Side characters deal with their own family issues, from missing relatives to ones that were killed by the zombies. These themes help build Helldriver into something bigger than it sounds like it would be, based on the title and premise.

And then it gets even more nuts when you figure out all the North/South Korea analogies!

Kika Miyata (Yumiko Hara) – Just your average girl from a troubled home whose psychotic mother eats her dad and tries to murder her just before being turned into a space zombie queen. Kika is then turned into a weapon of revenge against the zombie hordes, as she fights for the right to have her own life and be free of her mother. Easeir said than done, as her mom literally holds her heart in her chest. Yumiko Hara is awesome and can hit the right notes both in the action sequences and the family drama scenes. Nishimura uses how good she looks in action to great effect, there is plenty of visual eye candy.
Rikka Miyata (Eihi Shiina) – Crazed murderess cannibal turned zombie queen when a meteor crashes through her chest. Shiina plays Rikka as a mad goddess, dancing and spinning as the world burns around her, destruction and chaos is her playground. She does what she wants when she wants, and becoming a zombie only enhances her ego and lust for power. Eihi Shiina is a familiar face to cult cinema fans from Audition. Believe it or not, she has been in films where she’s not be a complete psychopath.
Yasushi Miyata (???) – Rikka’s brother and fellow crazy. Yasushi has a Nazi symbology thing going on, wearing Nazi patches and flags, and he even has a swastika burnt into his head by Kika (a la Charles Manson.) Is non-stop energy, a perpetual motion of manic crazy.
Kaito (Kazuki Namioka) – As Kika and her crew travel the zombie-infested wilderness, they are almost killed..until a cowboy shows up and saves them! Yes, a cowboy. Kaito here has been living in the infected zone after he found his wife dead. He even has an Ennio Morriconeish theme and drives around in a Helltruck, with giant blades on the front hood.
Taku (Yurei Yanagi) – Son of an orphanage runner who has resorted to harvesting drugs for money. Is saved by Kika when she first revives, and then he saves her. Is dealing with the legacy of his father, who was killed by one of the children he tried to save when it turned out to be a zombie.
No-name (???) – An orphan who barely talks and won’t give his name. All we know his he has a missing sister named Maya. And he fights with a giant blade.


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Zombie Ass – Toilet of the Dead

[adrotate banner=”1″]Zombie Ass is an actual movie coming out, from all places, Japan! Noboru Iguchi is the mad genius behind this title and film, which by all accounts will be yet another entry in his splatter gore genre that has made him a cult fan favorite around the globe. Zombie Ass will premier at Fantastic Fest 2011 in Austin.

I can’t read all the names on the posters, but Asami and Demo Tanaka are back, and it also stars Asana Mamori (Gravure Idol) and many more names that are too blurry to read and too close to nakedness to Google at work.

The synopsis from the Fantastic Fest website:

We are going to flush you! The most crap-tastic zombie movie ever to emerge from the sewers of low-budget filmmaking is finally upon us, and it’s from the perverted mind of cinematic madman and legendary ass-fetishist Noboru Iguchi, creator of THE MACHINE GIRL, ROBO-GEISHA and KARATE-ROBO ZABORGAR! Given free reign by a generous, independent producer to plumb the depths of his toilet-obsessed imagination, Iguchi has created a splatter comedy guaranteed to warm the bowels of those with the stomach for it. Wracked with guilt over the suicide of her sister Ai, who was tormented by high school bullies, pretty young karate student Megu accompanies a group of older friends on a camping trip into the woods: smart girl Aya, her druggie boyfriend Také, big-boobed model Maki, and nerdy Naoi. Things start to go badly when Maki finds a parasitical worm inside a fish they catch – and wolfs it down alive, in the hope that it’ll help keep her skinny! Soon after, and not so unexpectedly in situations like this, zombies show up and begin to complicate things further. After they’re attached by a crowd of poop-covered undead who emerge from an outhouse toilet, the group seeks refuge at the home of strange Dr. Tanaka and his daughter Sachi. But unbeknownst to them, Tanaka has been conducting experiments on the parasites—and the zombies!—and has another fate in mind for the five strangers from the city. What’s the connection between the parasites and the zombies? And can Megu’s karate alone help them escape, or will she have to rely on the liberating power of farts to save the day? Featuring special effects by FF 2009-2010 guest Yoshihiro Nishimura, and some truly jaw-dropping contributions from Iguchi’s genius subconscious (parasite anus-zombies?!?), ZOMBIE ASS is a heaping plate of bad taste that may go down rough but is guaranteed to come out smooth and regular.

Zombie Ass
Zombie Ass

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Horny House of Horror (Review)

Horny House of Horror

aka Fasshon heru aka Fashion Hell

2010
Directed and written by Jun Tsugita

How many different ways are there to film girls chomping off a guy’s johnson while keeping thing interesting? Well, Horny House of Horror has an answer to that, and the answer is “not enough.” As we’ve seen time and time again the past few years, Japan has become a great exporter of films that fit a genre of ridiculous gore – The Machine Girl, RoboGeisha, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, Mutant Girls Squad, Gothic & Lolita Psycho – are all examples that TarsTarkas.NET has taken the time to view. And I admit that I think some of those films are rather good, in a WTF fashion, and I’m even shocked that the genre has lasted as long as it has without getting on my nerves. But when you get enough of something, parts of it will be crappy, and with Horny House of Horror is that part.

Up until the last third of the movie, the majority of the blood on display is arterial spray gushing out of the crotches of three unfortunate men. The rest is talking. And talking. And anticipating. At this point in the genre’s life, it is too late to try to do a slow buildup to the crazy, we’ve gotten to the point where we need a constant stream of crazy violence, much like the sprays of blood desired.

With a pedigree including writer/director Jun Tsugita (Mutant Girls Squad), and gore effects by Yoshihiro Nishimura (Tokyo Gore Police, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, and many more), this seemed like it would be a treat. Even some of the familiar cast members from Sushi Typhoon films pop up. But things just don’t go together right. And though the film gets around the banishment of full frontal nudity in Japan by using black circles over the severed and non-severed dongs, the limited freedom isn’t incorporated in a way that takes full advantage of the effect. It’s simply an afterthought, not part of the film itself. Though a small point, it is indicative of how much of the film doesn’t go together well.

The opening 16mm slideshow strip of a guy going to a sex massage club on the way home from work was rather nice – it is probably my favrite part of the film as a whole, and made me expect that things would be good throughout. But shadows of the strip remind me of my reading of Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein, which will sour you on the sex industry in Japan like nothing else will. We jump into our first victim, whose gets is wang rolled into a sushi roll that is promptly chomped by his working girl as he screams helplessly and blood reddens the world.

So let’s meet the cast!

Nagisa (Saori Hara) – This sushi-loving masseuse is the newest filly in the herd. She’s also the most reluctant. Saori Hara is an AV star who also does a good deal of softcore flicks. Oddly enough, she’s also in Deep Sea Monster Reigo, as well as 3-D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy. Back when she was Mai Nanami, I commented that she hadn’t done much of anything. Now she’s done much of everyone!
Nonoko (Asami Sugiura) – The most experienced working girl and the most jaded. Truly enjoys her job, even if it is apparent she hates herself and everyone else. Lesbionic with Kaori Asami is also an AV star, but her biggest fame is appearing in all the Noboru Iguchi and friends ridiculous gore films such as The Machine Girl, RoboGeisha, Mutant Girls Squad, Gothic & Lolita Psycho.
Kaori (Mint Suzuki) – Kaori is the new girl in the club, forced into a life of selling her body after her parents died to care for her younger siblings. But not is all as it seems with her. Mint Suzuki is an AV star whose films you can probably find with a quick Google search.
Nakazu (Yuya Ishikawa) – Nakazu is going to get married to his lovely girl Misa, thus his friends drag him out to have sex with some random chicks! He’s not that into it. Then things get interesting… Yuya Ishikawa is a familiar site in these ridiculous gore films, popping up inThe Machine Girl (plus the short sequel), RoboGeisha, and Gothic & Lolita Psycho.
Uno (Toushi Yanagi) – Uno is no slouch in picking women to have sex with in sex clubs. He’s also a karate master out of nowhere!
Toshida (Wani Kansai) – The bald member of the crew, fancies himself and expert in the ways of sex parlors. Too bad he isn’t an expert in not getting a boner!


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Gothic & Lolita Psycho (Review)

Gothic & Lolita Psycho

aka Gosurori shokeinin

2010
Directed by Go Ohara
Written by Kuroki Hisakatsu

Rina Akiyama
Go Ohara’s followup to Geisha vs. Ninjas delves into the genre of the splatter films that have become a popular export from Japan. To help he’s recruited Yoshihiro Nishimura of Tokyo Gore Police, Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl, and Mutant Girls Squad fame to handle the gore effects and makeup. Ohara continues the general themes of Geisha vs. Ninjas, with a girl hunting down people responsible for the death of a parent, an episodic structure of bad guy fights, and secret truths being revealed at the end about the parent but it not making a difference in the quest for revenge.
Minami Tsukui
There are only a few fight sequences in this film, though they are pretty long. Some of them are interesting, some of them are boring and overstay their welcome. As a rule, the only interesting fights are against female opponents, though the final fight does get interesting as well. But the guy opponents are either: a psychic who levitates around like a lunatic, a guy who cries for his life for like 5 minutes, or a generic gang of thugs. The final boss entertains an element of danger and risk, though having seen these films enough I knew what the danger would entail, but there was an additional feature of the final fight that made it different from the other ubergore films. It isn’t as wild and crazy as Noboru Iguchi splatter flick, but it does have it’s own charm.

We watched an unsubtitled DVD, so some names are just descriptions and plot points are guesses. At TarsTarkas.NET, we don’t need no stinking subtitles. There’s gonna be spoilers below, so if you aren’t cool with spoilers go read some other review.
Misaki Momose

Yuki (Rina Akiyama) – Rina Akiyama gained fame with a trademark “butt pose” in gravure magazines, leading people to call her “Bishiri no Joo” (Queen of the Beautiful Ass) and “Oshirina” (shorted version.) This movie decides the best way to capitalize on that fame is to put her in clothes that cover and de-emphasize her posterior as much as possible. Hm. Rina Akiyama has been in a bunch of Kamen Rider flicks.
Gambling Maiden (Minami Tsukui) – Head of an underground club where all your secret sins and desires can be obtained, for a price. Overseas the illicit gambling in the facility via her skull blade dice shaker. Slices and dices anyone she opposes. Minami Tsukui was the star of Geisha vs Ninjas so we all knew that Ohara was going to squeeze her in somewhere.
Spoon Guy (Masahito Okamoto) – Johnny ESP here bends spoons like he’s in the Matrix, harasses girls, and flies around like a weird-o. Not particularly scary, just weird.
One-eyed Schoolgirl (Misaki Momose) – One-eyed Schoolgirl is awesome, and the coolest villain in this piece. Her bladed twin-guns of death combined with her schoolgirl attire and dopey attitude make her memorable far after the DVD is out of your player and you’re watching Holmes Inspection on HGTV. Her character name is Redei Eru, but that’s too difficult to remember. Misaki Momose hasn’t been in much, but if this appearance is any indication, she will be popping up in a lot of flicks soon.
Leader of the Cult Masato (Ruito Aoyagi) – This jolly worshipper of the devil laughs all the time. Who knew Satanism was so hilarious? This guy! Leader does not fear the long arm of the law, for his arm is longer…
Jiro (Yurei Yanagi) – Yuki’s father who builds the Gothic Lolita weapons she uses in her revenge quest. He also may know more about why her mother was targeted than he let’s on. A priest who is wheelchair bound after the attack on his family. Yurei Yanagi was in both the first two Ringu and first two Ju-on movies.

Misaki Momose

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Mutant Girls Squad (Review)

Mutant Girls Squad

aka Sento shojo: Chi no tekkamen densetsu

2010
Directed by Noboru Iguchi, Yoshihiro Nishimura, and Tak Sakaguchi

Is that all you got, movie?

So I’ll just copy the background of this pretty much directly from the ad material: Tak Sakaguichi (star of Versus), Noboru Iguchi (director of The Machine Girl and Robogeisha), and Yoshihiro Nishimura (tons of effects work and director on Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl and Tokyo Gore Police) got together in 2009’s New York Asian Film Festival, got drunk, and vowed to combine their efforts Voltron-style into one super movie. And here is the fruits of their blood-splattered loins. As those three are masters of the hip new subgenre of Japanese Ultragore, one expects this X-Men-ish flick to be the reddest thing under the sun. Imagine the worst oil spills known to man, only the black crude is instead red goo, and you know what to expect. And Mutant Girls Squad delivers on that effect.

But besides the blood spurting out like the lawn sprinklers at the local driving range, does Mutant Girls Squad deliver on the one thing I want, which is an entertaining film. And I declare that yes, Mutant Girls Squad is entertaining! I actually like it the most of all the gore flicks I have seen so far save The Machine Girl. The characters are more developed than usual, the storyline is a bit more detailed, and it looks like the three directors decided to try to outdo each other with fancier, technical shots.

Trumpy, you can do magic!

At this point having seen movies with girls with machine gun arms, girls with machine gun butts, swords coming out from butts, missing limbs being used as boomerangs, characters turning into mechanical monstrosities, every adult male being insanely perverted, and side characters being simply yelling people in wacky costumes, it takes a little more to make me take notice. Sure, you have a chainsaw coming out of your butt, but as you aren’t fighting a woman with flamethrower breasts I am not jumping for joy. Some of the characters are imaginative, including the girl with a weird mutant head best friend (which is sadly barely touched on) and the not-so secret final form of the Astro-Mutant.

There will be spoilers below, but we’ll not reveal every little detail, though probably enough that if you care you should hold off. We’re not going to point out every cameo and reused actor and actress from previous outings by these directors, as not only would that double the length of this review, it would be embarrassing when I missed like 4 or 5 of them. So we’ll only point out the highlights and let you know now there is plenty of interesting things to see if you pay attention.

Yeah, yeah, we’ve all gone through that phase of life where we have a giant cannon arm and was turned into a robot.

Rin (Yumi Sugimoto) – Our heroine is just a girl who a mutant arm who slaughters dozens of people because normal humans hate and despise her. Then she gets involved with the Mutant Underground and has to fight them as well. Yumi Sugimoto is a model, singer, and actress in such work as the tokusatsu series Engine Sentai Go-onger
Rei (Yuko Takayama) – Rei was sold to a freakshow as a child, and a boy loved her, but he was killed. She can grow a bird carapace and is a good fighter and tough girl. Yuko Takayama is a model and actress who also has a part in the tokusatsu movie Masked Rider Den-o Trilogy The Movie Episode Blue
Yoshie (Suzuka Morita) – The sweet member of the Mutant Girls Squad who breaks out the tentacles when duty calls. Usually dressed as a nurse. Why? Why not! Suzuka Morita has also gone tokusatsu in the series Samurai Sentai Shinkenger. It must be a requirement to be on a tokusatsu show if you’re a model.
Kisaragi (Tak Sakaguchi) – Kisaragi is the Hiruko (mutant) leader who cross-dresses (or is supposed to be a girl, I am not sure) and worships almighty Izanami. Mr. Director! How do all you Versus fanboys like this? I’m not sure this character could get any creepier. Actually, he could if he was a member of Fred Phelps’ church…
Astro-Mutant (Maki Mizui) – Maki Mizui is an AV star and has been Noboru Iguchi’s assistant since at lease The Machine Girl. Fanatical member of the Hiruko group who supports her leader. Miki Mizui’s AV films are some sort of disturbing genre that I don’t know the name of, but since it’s Japanese you can be assured it is both incredibly gross and a result of deep cultural repression.
Okay, movie, you have redeemed yourself!

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Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (Review)

Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl

aka Kyuketsu Shojo tai Shojo Furanken

2009
Directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura and Naoyuki Tomomatsu

Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (hereafter VGxFG due to our crippling laziness in both typing and copy/pasting the movie title) is from the same Japanese goremasters that brought us The Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police, and Hypertrophy Genitals Girl. That’s the movie where the girl has the giant genitals. It won six Oscars. Yoshihiro Nishimura is a special effects expert who has directed several of the gore flicks, while Naoyuki Tomomatsu is a director and writer who also produces a lot of gore flicks such as Stacy and Zombie Self-Defense Force . VGxFG is based on a manga I haven’t read because I only read scifi novels published around the time my mom was born I get from used book stores. I also read books about McBroom’s Farm, but there were never and Vampire Girls fighting Frankenstein Girls. Maybe some of his kids were vampires or Frankensteins, he had like a million of them and also ran a zoo at one point besides the farm where I bet the Silver-Tailed Teakettler fought the Sidehill Gouger.

If you like gore and splatter effects and CGI blood, then this movie has that stuff and you probably already at least know about it. But maybe you haven’t bothered to rent it from NetFlix yet and are deciding on if you should see it or requesting Goonies one more time. And that is where TarsTarkas.NET can help. First of all, go get Goonies from a used DVD store, you can probably get it for like $5 thanks the the economic apocalypse. Second, give us $5 as well. This doesn’t help you, but it helps us. Everyone wins! (Everyone at TarsTarkas.NET!)

VGxFG is much like the Twilight saga, in that there are two specially powered teenagers fighting over the heart of a normal teenagers. Sure, the sexes are reversed, and the werewolf is a Frankenstein monster now, but it is similar. And no one sits in a window for four months while some generic alt rock blares in the background about possibilities. Come to think of it, VGxFG is nothing like Twilight. Forget I said anything!

Let’s get the Roll Call out of the way before I devote another paragraph to how VGxFG is exactly like Lethal Weapon 3

Monami Arukado/Vampire Girl (Yukie Kawamura) – A lonely vampire girl searching for love by tricking boys into eating her blood. Just like all other women… Yukie Kawamura is a gravure idol so check out her gallery we put together.
Keiko Furano/Frankenstein Girl (Eri Otoguro) – dresses in the gothic-lolita style tough girl with a squad of three gang members who bully Jyugon into being her boyfriend…until Monami comes along. Is eventually killed and rebuilt by her father as Frankenstein Girl ready for revenge.
Jyugon Mizushima (Takumi Saito) – The innocent cute boy trapped in a world where two super-powered girls battle over his heart without consulting him in the slightest. Isn’t love grand?
Kenji Furano (Kanji Tsuda) – Vice-Principal/science teacher and Keiko’s father. Also secretly a mad scientist who experiments on the students.
Midori (Sayaka Kametani) – The over-sexed school nurse Mizushima goes to see because he’s still freaking out. It turns out she is also the mad assistant to Kenji Furano for his crazed experiments in chopping up students.


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