Nihon bundan: Heru doraibâ (Helldriver)

Japanese live action feature length film, 2010, NR, 117 minutes, horror, zombie. Spoken word is in Japanese; English subtitles.
IMDB: 5.3/10.0 from 783 audience ratings. Estimated budget: 600,000 USD.
Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' 34% liked it from 318 audience ratings.
Netflix: 2.4/5.0 from 35,993 audience ratings.
Directed by: Yoshihiro Nishimura.
Starring: Yumiko Hara as Kika, Eihi Shiina as Rikka, Kazuki Namioka as Kaito, Yurei Yanagi as Taku.

An object from outer space strikes Hokkaido. This kicks up a cloud of ash which makes people fall to the ground, only to rise again in an hour as zombies.

A large wall was erected across Honshu north of Tokyo to keep the zombies out. Refugees flood Tokyo.

Unfortunately, the infected eat the uninfected, but the government does not care.

The zombies have an odd shaped horn; the only way to put a zombie down permanently in this film is to cut off this horn. Horns have psycho-active effects, so drug dealers collect them. The horns are volatile and explosive as well. This is all explained in a newscast/paid advertising TV session.

There is social dissension about the issue: the pro-zombie rights advocates versus the Japan is for the living advocates.

From the political to the gorefest: zombies with chain saws, heroes with bizarre weapons, strange eyes, spewing gore, sudden costume changes. That's in the first 30 minutes.

Kika meets Taku and No-name, the last of the members of the Kamikaze Orphanage. Taku and No-name hunt for zombie horns, and the money is getting bad.

Amazingly, there is formal public debate about whether or not to exterminate the zombies before they exterminate the living. The zombies eventually settle the debate by eating the prime minister.

After the credits, death row inmates are given a chance at having their sentences dropped. They are to find the woman who is the source of the zombie infestation and kill/destroy/whatever her.

Kika is the daughter of the zombie queen, so Kika might be able to help locate her. They meet a skilled hunter in zombie country who helps them evade the flying heads.

There's an effort to rescue No-name's sister Maya, who's been captured and sold at the zombie bar. Lots of fighting, lots of blood, but this is not the ultimate battleground.

How might this turn out? Will any of our heroes survive? Will they get the zombie queen? Will the help promised by the Tokyo regime actually arrive?

Zombies. Mysterious power from outer space. Odd politics. Might be a cult classic. Absurd mustache.
One line summary: The civil rights of zombies discussed during a national blood bath.
One star of five.

Sound: 4/10 Out of sync, voice to speech. Bizarre choices for incidental music. Subtitles for the jaunty, pleasant singing would have been nice. Even more ridiculous choices of Western classical music.

Acting: 0/10 I did not recognise any acting in this one. There were many people in the film who were on camera for under 30 seconds, and had few if any lines.

Screenplay: 0/10 The timeline is dicey, the characters are not developed in a coherent way, the visuals are poor, and the effect of the thing from outer space on Kika never made sense to me. The flashbacks are not well organised. Incredibly stupid armour, incredibly stupid mustache, ridiculous amount and presentation of blood splatter, flying heads as ammunition, heads flying with no physical reason for their movement, a stolen heart used as a voodoo instrument, and some of the stupidest fights I have ever seen. These were all part of the nonsense of the screenplay. Enough continuity errors to torpedo a hundred films that had any reasonable governance.

Reviews of streaming video