BATTLEFIELD BASEBALL (2003)

Directed By: Yudai Yamaguchi 
Written By: Yudai Yamaguchi, Isao Kiriyama & Ryuichi Takatsu 
Based On The Comic By: Gataro Man 
Editor: Shuichi Kakesu 


Cast: Tak Sakaguchi, Atsushi Ito, Hideo Sakaki 


Battlefield Baseball is a tough game--it doesn't end until all the members on the opposing team are dead. In this game the Gedo High team is composed of blue-faced zombies, and their opponents on the Seido High team know they don't have a chance at beating them unless they can bring back a star pitcher who has a lethal pitch called the Super Tornado, but who has hung up his cleats and has no desire to return to the game.

I wanted to like this film. It's very off the wall. More of a cult movie than anything else. Which one should expect since it is based on a Japanese manga of the same name.

Much of the humor and strange occurrences are darkly funny and likeable. For instance the catcher who keeps being reincarnated m. The whipping boy head teacher.

Unfortunately for all the good things there are just way too many that drag this movie down. There just doesn’t seem to be enough action throughout. So that at times it just feels like the film is trying to fill itself out because it knows the material is thin.

The low budget nature of the film which of done creatively enough can be an asset seems to just help sink the film. As the premise needs more of a budget to work to it's best. Some of the humor can also be a bit confusing or be lost for some. It's like watching a comedy act. Where all the jokes are inside jokes they the audience seems to get except for you.

The story of this film is that a high school baseball team that has been champions have to face a supernatural team that has not been in competition for years. Now they are back, but instead of baseball they seem to fight and massacre literally the other team. So the high school team decides to recruit a new kid who literally has a killer fastball, but when the game begins he is a no show and the high school team is killed. So now he must take revenge, add in a homicidal mother who forbids her son a player on the high school team to play baseball. All the while she is carrying a secret.

This film had potential to be a home run, but it seemed to go out of bounds and to be called on a technical. Maybe the reason I feel so let down by this is the fact that the film was directed and produced by Ryuichi Takatsu, the same guy who made the classic VERSUS. Which was a great off the wall cult supernatural action thriller.he also had a limited budget there and made a masterpiece even though some aspects of that film made no sense but worked within. Here the film Already is hard to believe. So while all that follows should fit in. It will make very little sense. Never going so far as to advance the story. Instead it keeps getting distracted by itself.

This isn't so much a horror film but more a Violent fantasy. A horror themed fable or a gory horror thriller centered around a popular American pastime played out in a foreign country adaptation, Though with the over the top effects, humor and make-up the movie seems almost like a foreign TROMA STUDIOS film


GRADE: D