Also known as “the Japanese Evil Dead” for reasons that quickly become clear: it is an obviously Japanese production and an obvious knockoff of… er, homage to Sam Raimi’s classic, translated from a cabin in the American woods to a house in the Japanese suburbs. Except it was made with resources so limited that Evil Dead looks like a major Hollywood production by comparison (even Raimi wasn’t limited to eight millimetre film). I don’t know exactly what year to file this under, cos it was mostly shot in 1995 but then bits were reshot over the next fourteen years and it was another five years before it actually got a proper release. 1995? 2014? I don’t know, but whatever, you kind of have to admire director Shinichi Fukuzawa’s determination to get it out there even if it took nearly two decades; he’s never made another film since then, but he really wanted this one out there at least…
Anyway, Fukuzawa also plays the titular bodybuilder, who reconnects with old girlfriend Mika who’s investigating a supposedly haunted house. They go with a psychic in tow. Things go sideways, obviously. But this is not the sort of thing you’re watching for its originality or technical brilliance. You’re here for the gore, which is ridiculous in both quality and quantity, and I think Fukuzawa does things with it I can’t remember even Raimi doing. BMB also kind of put me in mind of Dennis Muren’s Equinox, which started life as a semi-amateur production before getting an actual proper release; it began as a bunch of teenagers making the sort of film that they themselves would want to see, and BMB gives a similar vibe… except that, unlike Dennis Muren, who wound up on a stack of major Hollywood effects jobs and has nine Oscars to his credit, Fukuzawa never turned it into a career. And yet BMB feels like that wasn’t the point anyway; it feels more like Fukuzawa was in this for the hell of it, it was a labour of love more than money. It’s a film that needs some understanding of the circumstances of its production, but there’s a weird charm to it. And it’s only 62 minutes long, a compactness you have to admire as much as anything.
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