Written, directed and produced by Shinya Tsukamoto shortly after his Tetsuo: The Iron Man became a hit at film festivals and midnight screenings world wide, Hiruko The Goblin is yet another live action big screen adaptation of a story that originally appeared in Japan in Manga form.

Hieda (Kenji Sawada) is an archeologist who has been ostracized by his peers for his theories that goblins have a lot more to do with the history of Japan than most people would like to believe. He's an odd man, with a penchant for inventing strange weapons, tools and gadgets of all shapes and sizes to help him with his studies, but he's a lonely man who still feels the pain of his wife's death a few years ago.

When Hieda hears word of a strange group of killings that have taken place in a high school not too far from him, he can't help by head on over and investigate things for himself despite the presence of some goofy kids and a potentially psychotic janitor roaming the premises. It doesn't take Hieda long to meet one of the kids, a young man named Masao (Masaki Kuodo), and the two begin to work together to try and figure out what exactly is going on. Masao's got a few issues of his own that he has to deal with, however – every time someone dies in the school, their face appears as a burning mole on his back.

Soon our dynamic duo work their way into the school one night and they're shocked to find it inhabited by the decapitated heads of the murder victims, all of whom have grown hairy spider legs and are busy running around causing a ruckus. Luckily for our two heroes the good doctor is prepared for such a catastrophe and they set out using his special equipment to eradicate the school, which lays on one of the gateways to Hell, of the obnoxious and dangerous little buggers.

Tsukamoto's Hiruko is not without its merits but it lacks a lot of what made his other films so good. Gone is the noirish irony of Bullet Ballet, the brain bending cyber punk visuals of Tetsuo or the poetic violence of Tokyo Fist. Instead, we get some wacky little spider goblin head critters running around wreaking havoc. That's not to say that spider goblin head critters aren't cool, because they are and in fact they're exceptionally cool and because of that they're the highlight of the film, but Tsukamoto doesn't really 'leave his mark' with this one the way that he has with his other films. This is simply a commercial monster film made to entertain and there's nothing wrong with that even if it does swipe shamelessly from Raimi's frenetic camera work on The Evil Dead, but it doesn't really stick with you. It's a decent way to kill an hour and a half, but unfortunately it isn't really much more than that.

Video:

The 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer on this DVD is very nice. Colors look reasonably sharp and the blue and green hues used throughout in the lighting come through very nicely. Some of the darker scenes are a little on the murky side but this is common in Japanese films for whatever reason. There is some mild edge enhancement in a few scenes and some mild shimmering in others but there aren't any problems with mpeg compression artifacts rearing their ugly heads on the display. Flesh tones look sufficiently human when they're supposed to and nicely eerie when they're not, and there isn't much to complain about in the way of print damage or heavy film grain.