Starring Shinichi Fukazawa, Masaaki Kai and Asako Nosaka. Written, directed and produced by Shinichi Fukazawa.

Naoto (Fukazawa) is asked by his ex- girlfriend, Mika (Nosaka), to take her to the haunted house that Naoto has inherited from his deceased dad. They are accompanied by a psychic (Kai), who is able to pick up on an ominous presence in the building. Later, the face of Naoto’s dead father (also played by Fukazawa) appears on a TV screen to warn his son that the psychic is possessed by the ghost of his murdered lover, who has the power to prevent them from leaving the house… and Naoto is informed that the only way to deal with the psychic is to hack him to bits!

This very low budget film from Japan, also known as THE JAPANESE EVIL DEAD, looks really grainy (it was shot on Super 8) and manages to make Sam Raimi’s 1981 movie look like a big budget IMAX production in comparison! Shinichi Fukazawa filmed most of this flick in 1995, but it wasn’t released on DVD in Japan until 2012. It received an official international release in the UK by Terracotta Distribution in 2017, and since then Visual Vengeance has released the film on Blu-ray in America. 

There are lots of lo-fi FX to keep you watching BLOODY MUSCLE BODY BUILDER IN HELL, such as when the ghost drops a pendant into the psychic’s mouth, after which the pendant slithers from the victim’s mouth via jerky stop-motion effects, then bores through his eye, into his head! We also get to see a knife rammed through a head, skewering an eyeball on the blade’s tip. Some of the visual gore gags are fun, like when Naoto uses his chest expander as a kind of catapult to fire an iron bar through a zombie’s head. These effects are far from realistic, but I guess it’s the willingness of Fukazawa to try and put this stuff onscreen not matter what that counts.

As much as Fukazawa tries to emulate Sam Raimi’s first two EVIL DEAD movies (at one point the lead character even says “Groovy”), there’s a lack of real verve and bravura camera techniques compared to Raimi’s productions. The location lacks atmosphere too, with everything shot in close-up. But perhaps it’s churlish to be too critical about the film’s shortcomings, as there’s an I’m-doing-the-best-I-can determination to the proceedings, with Fukazawa trying to get as much up on screen as his budget (and his skills) will allow. Thus we get a severed head zipping about on a severed hand, more cheap and cheerful stop-motion footage, and a sequence where the dead girl uses body parts and blood to regrow herself à la a bargain basement version of what happens in HELLRAISER (1987).

The film ends with shots of a decomposing zombie body, again accomplished by stop-motion and amateur gore effects, that apes the finale of THE EVIL DEAD (1981), though it’s all done in a far less accomplished way, of course.

If you’re partial to do-it-yourself horror productions and you’re happy to ignore the many shortcomings, the non-existent budget, and a lack of professional technique, then this short, inexpertly-made, unpretentious homage to Sam Raimi’s classics just might be your cup of (tarnished) tea.