Deadball

In 2003, director Yudai Yamaguchi and star Tak Sakaguchi joined forces to create Battlefield Baseball. A delirious, utterly out-of-its-mind affair, it cast Sakaguchi as a gifted high school baseball pitcher drawn into a bizarre, post-apocalyptic baseball tournament to the death. It was bizarre, bloody, frequently hilarious and also a musical. And they had so much fun doing it, they’re doing it again.

Yamaguchi and Sakaguchi reunite in 2011 for Deadball, a film that is not a sequel to Battlefield Baseball but rather an entirely fresh spin on the same characters. Once again, Sakaguchi — now 35 years old — takes on the part of 17-year-old baseball prodigy Jubeh Yakyu. A troubled youth who turned to a life of crime and became Japan’s most feared juvenile delinquent after accidentally killing his father with his famed fireball pitch, Jubeh has been sent to the Pterodactyl Juvenile Reformatory. The reform school from hell, Pterodactyl is run by the granddaughter of a former Nazi collaborator and her sadistic aide Ilsa. Residents are fed vomit for breakfast and subjected to intensive body cavity searches. The only way out is baseball. Participants in the coming tournament are promised better conditions, and Jubeh will participate whether he wants to or not.

A no-holds-barred splatter comedy with no sense of good taste or decorum whatsoever, Deadball fully embraces its own insanity. This is, after all, a film that has its lead playing a character less than half his age. There’s no point in keeping a straight face after that. No gag is too extreme, no joke too tasteless for Deadball. This is a comedy by and for fans of the extreme Japanese splatter movement and it makes no excuses for that. And, yes, Tak sings. —twitchfilm.com