While Sam Raimi’s 1981 indie horror sensation turned
multimillion dollar franchise The Evil Dead was always a favorite among
horror fans, for years the only way you could get it in digital form on
laserdisc was through a Japanese import.
Now long since then, the film was rereleased in America on tape,
laserdisc and eventually DVD, Blu-ray and now 4K UHD but at the height of the
film’s popularity in Japan it was inevitable someone somewhere in the country
would respond to it with their own spin on the material.
Enter writer-director-star Shinichi Fukazawa
and his 1995 shot-on-video cult favorite Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell otherwise
known to fans as The Japanese Evil Dead in this years-in-the-making
student labor-of-love as a little engine that could. Though it has the vibe of a regional
homegrown project, much like the original The Evil Dead itself did, for
years it was hard to see outside of its country of origin without turning to
serious bootlegging circles. Now thanks
to Wild Eye Releasing and their boutique label Visual Vengeance dedicated to
all things lo-fi, microbudget and videotape related, Bloody Muscle Body
Builder in Hell makes its North American debut for the very first time.
Featuring a shoestring cast of five actors with leading
producer-director-editor-star Shinichi Fukazawa at the epicenter, Bloody
Muscle Body Builder in Hell focuses on Shinji (Fukazawa) a musclebound
bodybuilder who reluctantly agrees to help his ex-girlfriend photojournalist
investigate a haunted house. Once
inside, navigating the household and meeting all of the visual story beats of
Sam Raimi’s film right down to the basement setting and a demonic entity
lurking about, they’re attacked by some sort of demonic entity intent on
possessing and killing their friends.
From here, the hour-long short feature film more or less channels many
of the key images and set ups from Sami Rami’s film including but not limited
to severed body parts twitching on the floor, eyes being poked out and lots of
blood and gore. Reportedly filming began
in 1995 but the house which belong to the director’s parents suffered an insect
infestation and shooting was delayed for several years before resuming with
reshoots in 2009 before finally seeing completion in 2010.
Initially released on DVD-R in 2012 before receiving a full-blown
theatrical and official DVD run in Japan two years later, Bloody Muscle Body
Builder in Hell first saw an international home video release in 2017 by
Terra Cotta distribution for British customers.
It wasn’t until 2022 that the boutique label Visual Vengeance picked it
up and distributed it in a new deluxe Blu-ray special edition set.
Featuring the film transferred uncompressed
from the original SD tape master, the film comes with plentiful extras
including a mini poster, reversible sleeve art and behind-the-scenes photos and
Japanese trailers. While not quite in the
same league as, say, Shinya Tsukamoto who didn’t respond to Raimi so much as he
ran circles around him, Shinichi Fukazawa’s film’s heart is in the right place
and for being made as a hobby effort with next to no money and decade spanning
production delays, Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell does a great deal
with very little resources.
Not really qualifying as V-cinema, not really
a professional independent film shoot, the homegrown charms of it are
undeniable and infectious and represent a curious quasi-underground movement
emerging in Japan between the late 1990s and early 2010s. Hard not to have tons of gory lo-fi horror
fun with!
--Andrew Kotwicki