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Battlefield Baseball. Japan 2003. Directed by Yudai Yamaguchi

Japanese Seido High has a great baseball team that wins every game they play. That is, before they have to play against Gedo High, a group of lunatics and zombies who have a habit of ripping heads and other limbs off of their contestants. But Seido High got a saviour for them - Jubeh, a dark loner with a secret from his past.

Ryuhei Kitamura (Versus) produced this absolutely insane horror / comedy vehicle, which was directed by Versus writer Yudai Yamaguchi. Battlefield Baseball is highly entertaining piece of Japanese cinema, that combines both Troma Team's intentional trash mentality and sense of humour into lead characters that could have been visiting from Takashi Miike flick. Every now and then the level of humour becomes somewhat irritating, when some quirky and bizarre situations seem to be just a raison d'etre.

Of course, this is only the minor complaint when the film has terrific amount of energy bursting into the faces of the viewers. Director Yamaguchi sure knows how to make a film going on, without "dead" moments breaking the fast-paced rhythm that Battlefield Baseball delivers. And when I found myself laughing often, I knew that this is one of those movies which deserves more than one look.

Yamaguchi uses effective camera angles, different color filters and fast cuts in creating atmosphere that gives this film a dreamy look. You will notice in certain effects that this is a low-budget film, but the money has gone into right places and if you are a fan of trash, Troma and Takashi Miike, then here's your next film to watch.

Subversive Cinema's DVD release contains a lot of extra material. There are two "Making of" -featurettes (about 50 minutes together), 10 minutes of outtakes and 6 minutes of deleted scenes, insane short films, trailers ... and this all with reasonable technical quality (picture could have been more sharp, but still OK) with new 5.1 mastered audio channel, you can't go wrong if you dig the style of Battlefield Baseball (aka Battlefield Stadium aka Jigoku kôshien).