1987 / 50m - Japan
Sci-fi, Horror - Animation
3.5*/5.0*
Hell Target poster

Watches

January 26, 2023

3.5*/5.0*

A nifty little surprise. Hell Target is a pretty generic-sounding title that failed to impress when it was originally released on VHS. The remaining copies are not of the best quality, but it's not difficult to see that this could be a major hit if someone would clean it up and re-release it. Fans of horror and sci-fi would do good to seek this one out.

A space crew is on their way to a forbidden planet, in search of a lost vessel. When they arrive on the hostile planet, it quickly dawns on them that monsters are lurking in the shadows. The crew isn't prepared to fight off these intergalactic foes and only one of them survives. Knowing that a new ship will be sent if nothing is heard from them, he'll have to figure out a way to prevent the next ship from falling into the same trap.

The animation is really good, the art style is detailed and the horror elements are pretty effective. The plot is simple, then again the film is only 50 minutes long, so it's not a big surprise this film chose genre execution over an elaborate plot or well-developed characters. This is exactly the kind of film I hoped to find when I started my quest to catch up with some of the older/shorter anime films I've missed.