Jigoku Kôshien

I watched this movie not knowing much about it, but after watching it, I can truly say this is one of the most absurd movies I have ever seen. The Japanese love to mix genres, and with this one it is comedy, action, zombie film and musical all rolled into one big laugh fest. The wackiness starts off with a baseball team trying to make it to the finals but facing their first opponents the Gedo team, which consists of zombie/demons kills almost the entire team.

A rogue ex-player joins the high school and is recruited to the failed team in hopes that they can defeat them. The recruitment leads to the films first of 3 (that I can remember) comedic musical numbers giving background information on the characters.

The wide array of characters blends well for the film, and lends to the ridiculous scenes with the team facing off against the Gedo zombie team, who have their own rules for baseball, which doesnt even contain the actual game of baseball, but just attacking the other team attempting to kill them all. A movie that has to be seen to be believed. Theres no way this strange humor would work in America, so if you like off the wall comedies, try to get a copy of this movie and see for yourself.

From the star and assistant director of personal favourite VERSUS comes what may best be described as SHAOLIN SOCCER as seen through the eyes of the Takashi Miike that made HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS. i.e. one of the strangest, campest and most ridiculous films the world has ever seen.

Tak Sakaguchi plays "Jubei Baseball", a student with extraodinary baseball talent that has sworn off the sport because of... something that happened earlier. He moves to a new school where the principal has but one dream, baseball victory... which he believes he is about to achieve until he discovers his opponents are a team of zombies renowned for not leaving their opponents alive at the end of a game. Can Jubei be persuaded to join the team and help them achieve victory?

Battlefield Baseball is based on a manga, and it shows - the styling of the film is extremely comic-book like, coupled with bizarre soap opera styled melodrama. Unfortunately, the film suffers from an extremely low budget that robs it of most of the coolness that it could have had - and it shows that Ryuhei Kitamura was the real talent behind making VERSUS go so far beyond its budget, not his AD. The acting in the film is outright appalling, but this was probably at least partially deliberate - the extreme overacting and mugging is almost appropriate to the absurdity of the whole film, but isn't carried off with the kind of class or style that could have made it work better.

BB is undoubtedly a fun film, with some of the most unusual lines and events you will see - but it's ultimately too trashy even to get the "cult classic" label (and mainstream classic was never on the cards) - but it is an interesting curio, and Yudai Yamaguchi is definitely tagged for further observation.

6/10

BATTLEFIELD BASEBALL (3 outta 5 stars) Okay, this is a low budget movie... they didn't have a lot of money to spend on big action scenes (or realistic-looking gore)... but, dang, it was still a lot of fun! How can you not love a movie about a high school baseball team that has to fight an evil team that slaughters everyone they play against... and takes time out for a few musical ballads along the way? I'm not generally a fan of these "funny" Asian action movies... I prefer the more serious ones... but this movie was too outrageous for me not to enjoy. A sullen young teen who has sworn off baseball due to a childhood tragedy is the only one who can help Seido High defeat the ultra-violent psychos... but come game time he is locked away in a prison cell... will he get out in time? Don't worry about the movie making too much sense... it doesn't... but I loved the team of bad guys, particularly the head coach who is one of the coolest looking villains ever. He looks something like Jim Carrey in "The Mask"... but dressed like Marlon Brando in "The Missouri Breaks". The extremely round-eyed Bancho that we meet at the start of the movie is pretty funny, too. The movie plays out like a feature length Monty Python sketch... so if absurdity is not your thing you should probably see something else.

...it would probably look a lot like this; because like Monty Pythion, this movie deliberately goes out of its way to be as ridicules as possible. The story involves a high school baseball team, who's opponents happen to be a vicious gang of superhuman, green-faced monsters; the monster team enjoys horribly mutilating the players on the opposing team (sorry to disappoint you sports fans, but there is very little baseball is actually played). Anyhow, the high school's last hope is to try and recruit a new student with incredibly powerful baseball skills; unfortunately he has vowed never to play baseball again, after one of his pitches ends up killing his father; are you following this so far? There's a bit more to the story then that, but its not that important, sense the whole movie is really just an excuse to show us some of the most insane gags ever brought to the screen. Recommended for those with a abnormal sense of humor.

Or is it the other way round? ^^ Anyway, with cheesy SFX, over-the-top acting, and absolutely nonsensical jokes, Battlefield Baseball comes out as one hilarious film that doesn't take itself seriously for nary a minute - mixing some neat AoD tricks with the kind of Japanese humor, which is pretty typical of manga and anime.

I haven't had the pleasure to read the original manga, but the closest comparison I can call, considering all the lampooning going on here, is the anime version of Excel Saga (which incidentally has an episode about baseball heroes - make sure you watch that if you haven't yet!) The movie is quite successful in what it was trying to do (and probably one the few that manages to pull it off): it's guaranteed to make you laugh - provided you like the styles of the source material. And Tak Sakaguchi is simply great as the archetypal anti-hero a.k.a. the bad 'student with long hair and a dirty uniform'.

Two thumbs up!