Jubeh (Tak Sakaguchi) has a killer fastball...literally. He has some strange abilities such as being able to kill people with a blazing fastball and being able to pull a lit cigarette from out of the air that is off camera. He uses his talents to kill members of the Japanese mafia and chain smoke. He goes to prison for his vigilante crimes and is forced by his neo-Nazi warden to play baseball for the prison team against the St. Black Dahlia High School girl's team is what amounts to a set up we haven't seen since the likes of "Rollerball." The film is campy funny. It has Troma style blood squirts as well as some dark comedy. It is a silly Japanese grindhouse with subscripts. Clearly a film not for everyone.Parental Guide: F-bomb (written in English subscript). No sex. Male rear nudity. Worst cavity search scene.

My favourite Japanese film is probably Love Exposure. It is fun, meaty and sexy and it is completely different. That is one of the reasons many people adore Japanese cinema: originality. It is exotic, while being entertaining. As you can imagine, it is no secret that as a man I spend money on fun. In this case, fun is women who are attractive and show off their beauty and body. Love Exposure has that. Deadball has that too and I love that part of it. However, in the story there is an element of horror and sadism that you would have to deal with so prepare for it. And of course, baseball, Japanese people and baseball! As long as Japan excites and tingles our senses and does so with this much creativity we will make sure Japanese cinema has a market on this side of the pond.

The Asian film market not only produces some of the most epic films in the industry, but also some of the strangest. The production king of low budget horror Sushi Typhoon has cornered the market with insane films like Yakuza Warrior and Mutant Girl Squad are at it again with their latest film Dead Ball bringing together two subjects that are synonymous with each other baseball and murder, right? Dead Ball follows the most feared juvenile delinquent in Japan who is sentenced to the Pterodactyl Juvenile Reformatory run by an insane headmistress who is the granddaughter of a World War II collaborator. After accidentally killing his father with a super-powered fast pitch he vowed to never play again, but is forced into a game for his life on the prison team in order to save himself and his cellmate from certain death, but this game may be more deadly than they imagined. If you have ever seen any of these types of films you know what to expect, but if not be warned these films are over the top insane, ridiculous and the exact reason they work. The story here is silly, but at first does seem to trying to keep grounded at first for about a second, but after that first pitch you know the exact kind of film you are going to get. Much like all these films, as it moves forward it just continues to get more and more over the top, but actually doesn't go near as far as some of the previous films from Sushi Typhoon. This one is actually a lot tamer than most of the others, but make no mistake it does not disappoint. The only issue here is the use of the CG blood which is the norm, but for some reason it came off a bit more cheesy than usual, hence loses some of the fun at times.Truth be told the only people watching these types of films are usually those that are already fans, so will no doubt love this one as well. It has all the gore, bizarre, goofy, violent fun that you want from this genre, but unlike some of the others this one leaves out much of the sexual aspects, with the exception of a couple of cavity search scenes you won't soon forget. In addition this release also features a spin off short film that adds to the overall fun taking a trip along with one of the more interesting characters.

As a young lad, baseball player Jûbei tragically realises the destructive force of his powerful pitching arm when he accidentally cracks open his father's head with the ball during practise. Years later, Jûbei (Tak Sakaguchi), now a crime-fighting vigilante, is placed in a correctional institution for violent juveniles run by a Nazi headmistress, who convinces the young man to join the prison baseball team, while conveniently neglecting to mention that the next game will be played to the death against the evil Saint Black Dahlias (a baseball team consisting solely of unfeasibly sexy but extremely brutal young Japanese high-school girls in almost non-existent outfits).For many years, the Japanese have been at the forefront of demented movie-making, but in the past decade or so, their 'anything goes' approach seems to have attained new levels of insanity. Deadball, for example, is a micro-budgeted comedy/horror that purposely defies all logic and sense of realism from start to finish in order to cram in as much deranged splat-stick nonsense as possible, including such mind-boggling strangeness as elbow-deep rectal cavity searches, Loony Tunes-style cartoon violence, vomit eating, a pair of cute Idol singers named Poo-poo, the rough removal of one poor guy's testicles, Jûbei thrusting his hand so far inside a villain's head that his fingers emerge from the nostrils and poke out the eyes (!!!), and an armoured steam-punk Nazi cyborg wearing a metal skirt that reveals his skinny human legs.Some of this craziness works (the film gets more and more bonkers as it progresses, so hang in there for the best bits), much of it fails dismally (sometimes due to budgetary limitations that results in a lot of poorly executed CGI, but often 'cos it was simply a crap idea in the first place). Either way, though, it's hard not to admire the imagination involved and the film-makers' gleefully manic approach.