The Japanese Evil Dead – ‘Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell’ Is a Must-Watch for Sam Raimi Fans

Despite lacking a cool older relative or friend to show me the ropes, my early exposure to the horror genre was fairly conventional. I started with the big slasher franchises then worked my way through other genre classics before seeking out increasingly obscure titles a journey that continues to this day. After binging through Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street, I soon discovered Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy.

Well before the remake or Ash vs. Evil Dead, I distinctly recall reading about unofficial Evil Dead installments on web forums to sate my appetite while waiting for the franchise’s long-gestating fourth entry. There’s the La Casa series in Italy, wherein unrelated movies (including House II and House III, but not the original House!) were marketed as Evil Dead sequels, and Japan’s Evil Dead Trap, whose similarities to Raimi’s work begin and end with the title. But the one movie that always eluded me was The Japanese Evil Dead.

The Japanese Evil Dead is not just a descriptor; that’s the title the movie became known as internationally. The movie’s original name, a mouthful though it may be, is equally beguiling: Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell. Whatever you want to call it, I needed to track it down. Many years later, Visual Vengeance Wild Eye Releasing’s recently launched sister label crafting special edition releases for micro-budget genre films has given the film its first official North American release.

As it turns out, Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell didn’t wholly exist when I had first heard about it. Although the project began in 1994, post-production wasn’t fully completed until 2010. It was self-released with a run of 100 burned DVDs in 2012 followed by official Japanese distribution in 2014. Its first international release came from the UK in 2017, and it has finally made its way to the US in 2022.

The arduous odyssey to completion would be challenging for a production of any size, but Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell‘s hurdles were compounded by the fact that it was practically a one-man crew; Shinichi Fukazawa serves as writer, director, producer, editor, special effects artist, and star. Upon learning that his father was planning to demolish his old house in Tokyo, the budding filmmaker opted to utilize the location for his 8mm love letter to the Evil Dead trilogy.

“I love the three movies of the Evil Dead series, and this is definitely a tribute to those,” Fukazawa explains. He cites Dawn of the Dead as the movie that made him a horror fan, but it was seeing Army of Darkness that inspired him to entertain audiences. “The reason I wanted to make this movie was because I wanted to be like Bruce Cambpell’s Ash from The Evil Dead, and I wanted to kick zombies around like him. I happened to be working out then and I was training myself, so I figured I should make use of that too.”

“Tribute” is a generous term; Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell apes so much from Evil Dead that it’s virtually an unauthorized remake. It’s not quite a shot-for-shot recreation, but several major beats are replicated (the lead character even gets to say “Groovy!”), and the general style/energy can be directly attributed to Raimi. There’s a certain charm to its commitment, but Fukazawa also filters the Evil Dead demonic possession plot through the lens of a traditional Japanese ghost story.

It opens with a prologue set in early 1970s Tokyo, wherein Fukazawa appears as an analogue for Ash sporting perfectly quaffed dark hair, clad in a blue button-up shirt, armed with a shovel and proceeds to defeat his knife-wielding girlfriend and bury her under the floorboards of his house. The set-up and iconography are instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with the Evil Dead franchise but would otherwise play as nonsensical.

Japanese Evil Dead bloody muscle

30 years later, unemployed bodybuilder Wakabayashi (Fukazawa in a dual role) gets a call from his ex-girlfriend, Mika (Asako Nosaka), a writer working on an article on haunted locations. Joined by stoic psychic Mizuguchi (Masahiro Kai), they head to the allegedly haunted house that belonged to Shinji’s father. Once they’re inside, the angry presence of a young woman won’t let them leave, and it’s not long before she starts possessing them.

Running an economical 63 minutes, the first two thirds of Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell adopt the more straightforward horror tone of The Evil Dead, while the finale goes full-bore into Evil Dead 2‘s splatstick territory including rudimentary optical effects, lo-fi stop-motion animation, and a fight with disembodied appendages that gives credence to the otherwise forgotten “Body Builder” part of the title. Although no one does it quite like Raimi, Fukazawa admirably attempts to emulate his kinetic ingenuity.

What initially appealed to me about The Evil Dead is how Raimi and company’s scrappy, do-it-yourself ethic translates on screen. Beyond being an effective horror movie, it feels like it was made by a group of friends for fun rather than commerce. Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell embodies that same spirit, albeit with even more limited means. It may have taken decades to be properly released, but I’m grateful Fukazawa never gave up on it.

Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell is currently streaming on Tubi, but if you’re an Evil Dead fan, you’re going to want to possess (pun very much intended) Visual Vengeance’s Blu-ray. The wildly entertaining audio commentary by filmmakers Adam Green (Hatchet) and Joe Lynch (Wrong Turn 2) is worth the price alone.

Japanese Evil Dead blu-ray

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