Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell (1995)

Art by Graham Humphreys

Director: Shinichi Fukazawa

Screenplay: Shinichi Fukazawa

Cast: Shinichi Fukazawa as Shinji, Asako Nosaka as Mika, Masahiro Kai the Psychic

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

A guy needs muscles after all!

Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell from the get-go has the story of its director Shinichi Fukazawa. An outsider to the Japanese film industry, he was interested with bodybuilding, splatter films imported into Japan like the Evil Dead series started by Sam Raimi's 1981 independently made horror film¹, deciding to make what would become a film just over an hour in tribute. It belongs to a long history of Japanese lower budget films like this with homemade splatter effects and mid-nineties video production. The difference to others, like those made for the straight-to-video market, like Jôji Iida's Cyclops (1987), which were forty plus or so minute mini-features which got released soon after they were filmed for the video market, Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell was left unfinished and unseen for fifteen years¹. It took, according to its star/writer/director/practical effects creator Fukazawa seven and a half years just to shoot the film, between re-scheduling, problems with the film stock he was forced to film on, and working around his and his cast's lives, and another seven and a half years for post-production¹. Fukazawa was finally able to complete the production in 2009 after beginning the editing process of all the 8mm film started on from 2005². Including having to take an additional two years for the original independent version of DVD¹, Fukazawa was finally able to complete the production which would become a work of international interest as well.

Those two obsessions of its lead/director Shinichi Fukazawa are very clearly visible in the film itself, and far from a critique to note the clear tributes to the Evil Dead films, as a tribute that came to us long after originally intended, by the time the Evil Dead became a pop culture institution, this really stands out again because of this. The plot is very simple, set up in a thirty years earlier prologue where a man accidently kills the girlfriend, he was about to leave, when she was trying to kill him with a knife. Burying the body in the house, this is the father of our lead Shinji (also played by Fukazawa), aptly leaving a curse for the son of a different woman he would marry that will haunt Shinji. Keeping the house as an heirloom, in real life a house the director's real father was going to scrap that was in a Tokyo suburb and his son took advantage of to film within¹, Shinji will only go back when convinced by an ex-girlfriend and journalist Mika (Asako Nosaka). With her fascination in haunted houses and wishing to write about examples like her old flame's, when learning of the strange goings-on in the premises, Mika takes him to the building.

He does not believe in ghosts, only in fitness and that smoking ruins one's beauty by sapping away the vitamin C in one's body, but the curse of his father before he met his mother now is in his lap. He goes with Mika and a male psychic (Masahiro Kai), and the later becomes the start of the hauntings as he has legitimate psychic abilities, allowing the ghost of the jilted girlfriend to possess him, thinking Shinji as his lookalike is his father and deserving punishment. It feels a homemade production, which begins because when wanting to use another 16mm or Betacam, Shinichi Fukazawa for the budget had to use 8mm, which caused as much as the problems which would cause this film to take as long as it did to be finished even in terms of digitizing the footage in the extended post-production¹.  Thankfully, with a complete film, it has the charm and atmosphere of a home movie of the time, played on a projector with actually sprockets, adding a distinct look. With hindsight, especially as its production history adds a layer like it was rediscovered and rebuilt, that helps in mood as, in mind to the homemade quality of the first Evil Dead, you see a one-man band show an incredible amount of moxy and quality to this, as well as provide a distinct tone to this film. There are visible lifts from The Evil Dead, as the psychic is possessed and even dismemberment will not stop a spurned lover who confuses son for father, but there is as much its own spin on the material even when Shinichi Fukazawa does get a moment to say "Groovy" like Bruce Campbell.

It has its own atmosphere, helped by the small house the production was able to spill fake blood within and furthered by the practical methods to depict this gory splatter fest, the later entirely of Shinichi Fukazawa's own craft and in itself worthy of incredible praise. Some moments have eerieness to them, such as the father returning from the dead on a TV, and others are funny, such as the punch line to a random criticism of Mika's smoking biting the leads when trying to dispose of evil sentient corpse pieces. The practical effects, even the moments where they seemingly took still images and coloured over them, are memorable especially as it is overtly humorous and deliberately repulsive in the "slapstick" tone. As a fan of films like Evil Dead or Peter Jackson's Braindead (1992) when he wanted to make the film, Fukazawa got the right tone with what he loved from these films, in touches like the hand-feet meldings to the attempts at dynamic shots like the camera following flying projectiles taken from Raimi. His interest in body building does come into play, being able to hulk out of his shirt onscreen and use gym equipment as an improvised crossbow at one point, itself adding a distinct touch to the proceedings.

Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell even in terms of its turbulent gestation history really exemplifies what entices about micro-budget cinema for me. It is about outsiders who get to make films away from industries to their personalities, putting everything including probably actual blood into the materials to get it made. Shinichi Fukazawa has yet to make another film, but he can at least be proud he completed this one, with the warm reception received even globally as the perfect introduction to this type of cinema in attitude.

======

1) An Interview with Director Shinichi Fukazawa, Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell, written by Ken Wynne for Attack from Planet B and published on April 28th 2017.

2) Reel Review: Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell, written for Morbidly Beautiful and published October 11th 2017.