DEADBALL
DVD. Bounty Films

Utterly insane Japanese splatter movies continue to appear thick and fast, often – as is the case here – from the lunatics at Sushi Typhoon, who are rapidly cornering the market in gore-drenched lunacy. They also seem to be increasingly becoming self-parodies, which rather makes you wonder how long this particular sub-genre has left before it finally collapses under the weight of its own irony.

Deadball is a case in point. Here is a film that is so self-consciously cool and so cartoonishly silly that you wonder what could come next. Playing like a bizarre hybrid of Stir Crazy, Salute to the Jugger and SS Experiment Camp, it follows juvenile baseball ace turned killer Jubeh Yakyu (Tak Sakaguchi), who is sent to the notorious Pterodactyl Juvenile Reformatory – a violent hellhole run by Swastika-wearing Nazis, and where breakfast is literally vomit. Conned into joining the school’s baseball team, Jubeh soon realises that he and his team have been set up for a fall, as they play the sexy psycho girls of St Black Dahlia High School in a game that is more about mass slaughter than scoring points.

With a mix of terrible CGI gore and slightly less terrible physical effects, fast-paced editing, deliberately clichéd characters (a female Nazi camp doctor called Ilsa?) and knowing references to several other movies, Deadball is unquestionably entertaining. It also feels quite slight though, lacking the narrative structure (however warped) of movies like Helldriver or Machine Girl. Director Yudai Yamaguchi (who has certainly cornered the market in baseball themed horror with this and his earlier Battlefield Baseball) keeps the film moving along, but in the (rather muddled) end, nothing here seems overly memorable.

Still, for fans of crazy Japanese splatter, this should make a decent snack, if not a substantial meal, and the double-disc release comes with plenty of extras, including the 20 minute short Final Deadball and part two of Toki’s Wedding (the first part appearing on Yakuza Weapon, which we’ll be reviewing shortly), making this a worthy purchase.

DAVID FLINT

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