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Released by: Visual Vengeance
Released on: July 26th, 2022.
Director: Shinichi Fukazawa
Cast: Shinichi Fukazawa, Masaaki Kai, Masahiro Kai, Aki Tama Mai, Asako Nosaka
Year: 1995
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Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder In Hell – Movie Review:
Made over a period of more than a decade by writer, director and star Shinichi Fukazawa, 1995’s Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder In Hell is unofficially known as ‘The Japanese Evil Dead’ and for good reason, as Fukazawa’s sixty-three minute no-budget epic definitely does wear its influences very plainly on its gooey, gory sleeve.
When the movie opens, a man uses a shovel to decapitate and then dispose of the body of his demonically possessed lady friend, hiding her corpse under the floorboards of a simple home. From here, we meet a bodybuilder named Naoto (Fukazawa) who we learn lost his parents at a young age. He gets a phone call, during his workout no less, from his former flame Mika (Masaaki Kai), hoping that he’ll let bygones be bygones and help her conduct some journalism work she needs to do inside a house that is reportedly haunted. He’s not quite over her and he agrees, and before too long the two meet up with a psychic (Asako Nosaka) and get to work inside the house that we, of course, recognize from the opening scene.
It turns out that the house was once owned by Naoto’s dead father and that dear old dad was the man who killed the woman, his mother, years back. Almost immediately, the psychic realizes that something isn’t quite right with the place, but they carry on and quickly learn that there are things in the house that would very much like to murder all three of our main characters in as grisly a manner as possible.
Thankfully, Naoto is pretty handy with a shotgun…
Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder From Hell was originally shot on 8mm in 1995. It was then edited on tape about a decade later and then not actually properly released until 2012 when Fukazawa ran off a hundred copies on DVD-R just to get it out there.
Despite the fact that it was made for peanuts and that it isn’t the most original picture you’ll ever see, Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder From Hell works really well. More than just a fan film, it’s a nicely paced, over the top splatter fest with some fantastic micro-budget stop motion effects work and a really amusing turn from Shinichi Fukazawa, doing his best to channel Bruce Campbell (and, more often than not, succeeding at if!) in the lead role. Masaaki Kai and Asako Nosaka are both pretty fun in their supporting roles, clearly sharing Fukazawa’s passion for the project.
If the movie is light on plot (and it is), it makes up for that with a whole lot of infectious enthusiasm and love for genre.
Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder In Hell – Blu-ray Review:
Visual Vengeance brings Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder In Hell in its first official North American home video release on Region Free Blu-ray famed at 1.33.1 fullframe taken from an “archival 1995 SD master from original tapes remastered in 1080p” with the sixty-three minute feature using up 16.3GBs of space on a 25GB disc. The transfer shows its tape sourced roots, detail is soft and can’t possibly reach typical Blu-ray standards but this is, for the most part, a perfectly watchable presentation. Colors look reasonably solid here and the compression isn’t bad. Black levels are decent if never reference quality.
The main audio option for Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder In Hell is a 16-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Mono track in Japanese. Optional English subtitles are provided. Audio quality is good, if never amazing. The levels are properly balanced and the track is fairly clean, if limited in range by the original elements.
Extras start off with a commentary track featuring Japanese film historian James Harper, the author of Flowers From Hell: The Modern Japanese Horror Film. He notes that the film establishes its connection to Evil Dead right from the start, Fukazawa's channeling Bruce Campbell's performing style, the use of stop motion effects in the picture, the influence of certain nineties V-cinema horror pictures, Japanese culture's obsession with ghosts and the way they tend to be depicted in Japanese film, details on some of the cinematography and camera setups, the aggressive type of language used in the later part of the movie and quite a bit more.
A second commentary track features directors Adam Green and Joe Lynch, who are having a good time with the movie. They joke about dubbing the picture when it starts out, the shot on video moviemaking scene during the period when this picture was made, the 8mm format and how essential sound is to filmmaking, what Fukazawa was able to accomplish with very limited resources, when and where Fukazawa apes Raimi and when he goes out on his own, the quality of the quirky effects work in the movie and plenty of other topics. They goof off for the first ten minutes or so but once they get that, mostly, out of their collective system this turns out to be pretty interesting.
There are a few short featurettes included on the disc as well, starting with a new interview with director Shinichi Fukazawa that runs just over four minutes and sees the man discuss the movie’s fifteen year voyage to completion, the influence of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell and what his intentions were with making the movie.
The disc also includes just over two minutes of outtakes showing off some pretty fun gore effects, a two minute Special Effects Video that showcases some of the effects work used for the severed hand and the melting zombie, as well as two different original trailers for teh feature, a behind the scenes image gallery and a second image gallery of various promotional images and stills.
Trailers for a few other Visual Vengeance titles (Slaughter Day, Todd Sheets' Moon Child, The Necro Files) play before the main menu screen loads. Chapter selection is also provided.
Once again, Visual Vengeance has gone all out on the packaging for this release. The disc fits inside a clear keepcase that also holds a folded collectible mini-poster, an insert booklet containing three pages of liner notes on the movie by Matt Desiderio of Horror Boobs, a vintage style laminated video store rental card, a sheet of video store rental stickers and some reversible cover sleeve art with the newly created Visual Vengeance are on one side and the original Japanese home video art on the reverse. A slip cover is also included.
Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder In Hell - The Final Word:
Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder In Hell is a blast from start to finish, a really enjoyable, if extremely familiar horror picture that movies at a nice, quick pace and features some great, low budget effects work. Visual Vengeance’s Blu-ray release won’t wow you with its transfer but it presents this underseen picture in decent enough shape and with a nice selection of extra features as well. All in all, this is a solid package for a really fun movie.