Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell (AKA The Japanese Evil Dead)

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And it works in large part because of the obvious enthusiasm and love of the genre, especially the Evil Dead franchise, that went into it. She’d warned them not to come, and it doesn’t take long to figure out why; an evil presence has taken root on the family’s rural land, and it wants them all. Shot and edited over in Super 8 over several years, Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell, also known as The Japanese Evil Dead, is one of the most memorably titled films to have come out of the SOV boom.

I did know going in that it was inspired by The Evil Dead, but I didn’t know it was a low budget DIY SOV type deal because 80’s/90’s J-horror has just never been a part of the horror world into which I’ve taken a dive. Based on Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman’s 2010 stage play of the same name, Ghost Stories is an anthology of sorts that handily succeeds at giving you goosebumps. When a bodybuilder, his ex-girlfriend and a professional psychic enter a haunted house, they soon find themselves trapped within it.What it does feel like though is Shinichi Fukazawa’s love letter to what Evil Dead was – and the impact it made in Japan.

Zusätzlich kommt noch Stop-Motion-Technik zum Einsatz, um etwa abgetrennte Körperteile unheilvoll in Bewegung zu versetzen. Once they’re inside, the angry presence of a young woman won’t let them leave, and it’s not long before she starts possessing them. Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead films have obviously had just a slight cultural impact on the world of horror creating a tectonic plate level of shifting in the realm of horror films spawning an abundance of copycats, rip offs, cash grabs, and homages. Only, as the prologue reveals, Naoto’s dad had murdered his lover there 30 years earlier in the early ’70s, and buried her corpse beneath the floorboards. Running an economical 63 minutes, the first two thirds of Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell adopt the more straightforward horror tone of The Evil Dead, while the finale goes full-bore into Evil Dead 2‘s splatstick territory — including rudimentary optical effects, lo-fi stop-motion animation, and a fight with disembodied appendages that gives credence to the otherwise forgotten “Body Builder” part of the title.The horror is intrinsic to a family coping with grief and loss, but it’s heightened to a horrifying degree thanks to Bertino’s distinct style and twisted vision of evil. The movie’s original name, a mouthful though it may be, is equally beguiling: Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell. If you're thinking of picking this one up to purchase I urge you to check out a trailer first to know what you're getting yourself into.