The Dark Parade #39: Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell

Hey everybody, welcome to a new episode of The Dark Parade. It has been a while, but this is going to be an episode with an honest to goodness guest on it. I am joined today by our old pal, Richard Glenn Schmidt. Hello, this is the Doom show, even though that show is temporarily on a hiatus. But we talk about that a little bit. But more importantly, what we're talking about is a movie. called the Japanese Evil Dead, aka Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder in Hell.

We also debate where the emphasis ought to be in that crazy title. But I think you're really going to enjoy this. We had such a good time talking about this movie. The movie itself is available on Shudder. So I encourage you to seek it out if you have never seen it. So far, everyone who has watched it has had a really good time with it. As long as you can enjoy a lo-fi kind of horror movie, you're really going to get a lot out of it, I think.

So anyway, it's been a while since we've done one of these. Thanks for sticking with me. I plan on doing these shows with a lot more regularity to the tune of about one a month. That is me and an actual guest as opposed to the heart of horror and what you watch in episodes and maybe keep the solo episodes down to one, maybe two a month. Uh, but we'll see how all that goes again. Schedule is always in flux, but you know, getting there.

So thanks for hanging with me during all the schooling and stuff like that as I was finishing my degree and working on the test to get my license to teach and all of that fun stuff. And all of that is pretty much done. At this point. So, you know, once I actually start teaching, we'll see how things go. But as for now, things have reached a nice...

bit of equilibrium. And so enough of that nonsense. Let's get to the actual show part of the show with Richard Glenn Schmidt and bloody muscle bodybuilder in hell. Enjoy. Speaking of tangenitals, that's the way to start this episode. The shrunken tangenitals of our subject tonight.

Obviously with me here is the estimable Richard Glenn Schmidt, known as the notorious RGS, around these parts. But when... When it comes time to talk about weird Asian movies, there is like, whether it's an Echo Echo Azarack, whether it's a Tomie. Oh, God help you if you got a Tomie on your hands. Oh, boy. Oh, that's got to be rough business for all involved.

Anyway, no matter what it is, I turn to you because I know that you enjoy a lot of this weird stuff the way I do. But here's the thing I don't know. And you probably told me this, but I mean, who can... possibly be bothered to remember things that people tell you um what what is your opinion of the evil dead franchise something i i for some reason i think that you are negative on at least some of that

but maybe i'm wrong maybe i'm thinking of jamie well first of all yes i have a type yes when it comes to films these asian horror movies i gotta gotta have my my jam i can have my tome a t-shirt on because people gotta represent because people still don't appreciate her enough like not so much as i mean she's getting some representation they got the new junji ito series coming out but man people have tried so hard to forget

the first eight Tomie movies that exist. And I think it's just because they have terrible distribution, but yeah. Yeah. Right. Now that I just looked behind me at the shelf where it's like, look, I got like this whole row of Tomie movies that I've had to source from various places. But there is that one pretty good package that has, you know, four or five of them. together so wildly out of print wild is it really oh yeah oh maybe i can send one of the kids to college on that or something

There you go. You get that Tomie money. Right. Yeah. Tomie is responsible for education. And doesn't she really teach us all a lesson? I think so. She taught us to love. Thank you, Tomie, for teaching us to love again. Would that be Love, Kill, Repeat? Yeah. Oh, man. That would be a great... Was that a Tomie subtitle somewhere? Love, Kill, Repeat?

It ought to be. It should be. But yeah, Evil Dead. I got into... They're one of the touchstones of my horror movie education. from Stephen King's World of Horror, a.k.a. This is Horror from the 80s. And they were talking about the rivalry between Wes Craven and Hills Have Eyes and Evil Dead.

with Sam Raimi was very intriguing to me. And I did it. I did it. Even though they were hyping Evil Dead 2 really hard, I felt I needed to be a completist and do Evil Dead first. So I rented Evil Dead and was just... terrified like completely blown away and was relieved by Evil Dead 2 being so fun and being so more disgusting but still just not not scary to me I don't know maybe as a kid I just

The comedy was so great. And I did have a brief period where I didn't love Army of Darkness. I saw it in theaters when it came out in the 90s. When I wasn't into horror movies, that one was one I was really reluctant to revisit. I just, you know, got blah about it. But no, I really do appreciate Army of Darkness, but I think my favorite is going to be part one, the remake.

I love the Evil Dead remake so much. A couple nitpicks. No, go ahead. I'm sorry. A couple nitpicks, but overall, that Evil Dead remake is magic. And, of course, the series. I'm going to tell you not to watch it, but have you seen the trailer for Evil Dead Rise? I did my thing where I just watched like 20 seconds of it and went, yep, that's for me. That is for me. Totally down. I've seen two trailers for it now, and I kind of regret seeing the second one, I think. But...

Not because it made me want to watch the movie less. It was just like we were talking about before we started recording. But, you know, it is that thing of, oh, well, now I know some beats of the movie that maybe I didn't want to know. Too much. Yeah. Yeah. But it looks good. It looks like it's kind of carrying on in the spirit of that remake of like, let's just get gnarly with this. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, Ash versus Evil Dead. I was shocked.

by how great that was. I had a couple of episodes that I felt like they were spinning their wheels trying to get to the same episode number, episode count as previous seasons. But I would forgive those now. If I watch the series, I just remember where those were and be like, ah, whatever. But no, I guess I'm a big Evil Dead fan. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a shockingly solid franchise, you know, for obviously the early stuff like Sam Raimi.

The Evil Dead movies are where he kind of shows off the most and gets most directory. Other than drag me to hell, you know, drag me to hell was sort of a return to form for him of let me just be weird and gross and throw the camera around all kinds of crazy ways and stuff. Turn that amplifier up to 11. I remember that movie was fucking loud. Oh, my God. The only movie that was louder than that in, like, memory, in a recent memory, was...

that last Resident Evil movie, Return of Wrecking City. Welcome to Wrecking. No, the last one with Mila. The last proper one with Mila. That thing was ear shredding. ear shreddingly loud and was what's really funny to me was my friend uh his wife was with us and she fell asleep and slept through like 40 minutes of the last like the last 40 minutes she was unconscious was she drunk no she was just they were in a they're in a band

And I think that sleeping through loud things, and plus, I mean, I wouldn't say that movie's bad, but it wasn't holding her attention. It's... man I have such a love hate relationship with those Resident Evil movies I bought that box set and it has sat unopened for a year I keep threatening to watch all this because I love the first couple of them so much And then I have found that all of them are at least watchable, even when they get real stupid. Right. And...

There's almost that moment where it gets stupid enough that it becomes ultra entertaining again. Yep. But I do remember the last couple being such nonsense that I was like, I'm not even, like, I don't understand the plot enough to think this is stupid. I just don't understand it. I'm just confused. What happened? Paul W.S. Anderson, what am I supposed to know about these people at this point? He doesn't know. He had no idea. Everyone's a clone. Why is everyone a clone?

You know, it's like those last couple of Underworld movies, too. Oh, yeah. I was like, you know, this palette. this color palette can go off right now i don't want to look at this gray anymore it's like uh that zombie movie speaking of zombies uh undead yeah that australian one that's getting a blu-ray and i was like Looking at the screenshots like, ooh, they really made a choice of that color palette. And the reviewer on Mondo Digital was like, no.

This color palette did not age well. This looks like garbage now. Yeah, I should go back and revisit that. The thing I remember most about Undead was how... bonkers the end was oh that it just takes that crazy left turn it's like oh okay well more people need to go for that yeah there was that zombie movie um

it was called ravenous the translated title was ravenous but it was not the uh the cannibal movie ravenous this was a french zombie movie called ravenous from i know the movie you're talking about it's been a while but yes it was 2017 and it was uh less a famous i'm i'm cannot speak french y'all um

french-language canadian horror film in 2017 cannot recommend it enough yeah i remember that being quite with is that the one with like the chair piles and stuff yeah yeah yeah that was cool yes that's a really good wow wow yeah that was a breath of fresh air yeah yeah it's tough to find a really unique zombie movie and that certainly was that felt different enough to warrant its existence unlike

any number of movies starring bing rames that art the zach snyder dawn of the dead uh because he it feels like he was in three or four that were like you know last last days on earth and zombie apocalypse and stuff like that uh all right in my later years i am now more uh house of the dead Then I am Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead. Boy, that's a choice. Although I do like, I like Jurgen Prochnow in that I think he's having a lot of fun. And the fact that Clint Howard.

is along for the ride also makes me happy in that and 25 minutes of the movie is them walking across the front yard of a house yeah but the action sequences do not... They're entertaining, but they're not well done. No, they are. They are not... I'm trying to think of the phrase. They're...

They're not a part of the movie, is they? No. Like, Uwe Boll clearly saw The Matrix and said, oh, I should do that. Yep. I can burn up some running time with this business. All right, well, all right, speaking of... burning up time with business so all right so i i for some reason i thought you were softer on evil dead 2 uh than you are

But I think I saw... I know I saw Evil Dead first. I've probably told this story before. But there was a place in my hometown where I live right now. And... It was called Camera World, but they rented VHS tapes and they had a catalog of every VHS tape you could rent from there. And it was pretty big. And the description of, and I used to go through as a kid and like circle the movies that I wanted to rent because I didn't have a lot to do. This was before the days of the internet. I couldn't.

just you know be on a bulletin border uh and and talk about you know slash fiction and whatnot um and the uh description for evil dead was the goriest movie ever made and i was like well then i have to see that because i like some gory stuff and the thing i wasn't prepared for because it was you know depending on your bar like it's a pretty bloody movie and all

And gory and whatnot. But I wasn't prepared for how intense it was. And it felt very aggressive. Like that movie felt mean-spirited. Like it wanted to scare you and not in the... fun house kind of like hey didn't we all have a good time kids kind of way but in the like you know i hope you're happy kind of way like at the end of it you're like oh i don't feel good

Like how much of it was the zeitgeist of like really cruel, like late seventies, early eight. Like it's, it's like predicting things like maniac and shit like with that intensity. Yeah. But also like how much of that is just a. the pure torture for everyone involved making that because it's like it was basically Texas Chainsaw Massacre but cold yeah yeah you know yeah and maybe not as many

decomposing piles of awful right it was just disgusting sticky blood on everything yeah but yeah they were trying to be funny it was supposed to be slapstick Well, and that's where they got with 2, finally. They turned that dial over to, let's just have a good time. And that's fine by me. I think Evil Dead 2 is one of the... like not just a personal touchdown but i think it's one of those tipping points in movies where it was like here's how you do a horror comedy you know like

that and reanimator are the two movies that are like, Oh, this is how you do it. You know, like don't, don't play it as a comedy. Just let the comedy come out of the ridiculousness of the situation. And so when. you know bruce gamble is attaching a chainsaw to his hand it you're like this is nonsense but i love every second of it you know um and so like ourselves there was another fan of the evil dead movies and his name was shinichi fukazawa and he's very motivated very motivated young man and

I had heard of Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder in Hell for a while before I ever saw it. And... uh what what was your experience with like was is this one you've seen a number of times or are you no this was um this was was when you're like digging under the bottom of the barrel looking for those other Japanese horror films because I'm like loving that sweet spot of late 90s through early 2000s. I'm like really honing in on there.

And then just the frustration you find out that there's horror movies from every single decade from Japan, but so many of them are either lost or the people who own them have... no interest in putting them out or they're asking for too much money and distributors are like no dude these these blu-ray companies are like no we're not paying you that crazy amount of money yeah um So anytime something like pops up that's new to me from Asia, from the 80s, 90s, 70s, I'm excited, especially if it's...

I swear like the nineties was something magical was happening over there. I don't know what, what was going on, but, um, I had read that this existed and I never expected to see it. Because there's a couple other short ones, shorter movies. This clocks in at 62 minutes. There's a couple more that are around an hour or under an hour from the 80s that... feel like just wall-to-wall weirdo splatterfests. I'm struggling to remember the names of the other ones now.

Maybe I'll come up with those before we're done talking. Yeah, I've found some of those, but this one had not popped up yet. So this is from my first viewing. I just watched this for the first time last night. Oh, that's great. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, so Shinichi... Hold on, I'm going to get his name wrong every time. Shinichi Fukuzawa, because I want to say Fuzikawa.

For no good reason other than I'm foolish. And I think I may have had a series of small strokes. But Shinichi Fukuzawa... basically copped to the fact that he was like hey i saw evil dead and evil dead 2 and i thought those movies were rad and i thought what if i made that only in japan And for a long time, I had always heard of it as the Japanese Evil Dead. Right. Which is sort of the alternate title of it, which is a weird alternate title just to call yourself the Japanese Evil Dead.

But that's how I'd known about it. And like you, it was one of those movies that I'd heard about, but I didn't ever expect to see because there wasn't an official release. In fact, the first official release of it.

internationally at least wasn't until 2017 so you know like Shudder picked it up not so long ago and so now like everybody can go see it and I encourage you to yeah i was like i can't find it all right i bought the dvd and you're like cool but it's for free here i'm like all right i bought the dvd

And then it was on Shudder, and I'm like, I have every way to watch this. Someone just emailed it to me. But, I mean, great, because if Shinichi Fukuzawa gets a few extra bucks off of this, like, I would love it. I don't...

he does not appear to have a long filmography he made one other horror movie well one other movie that happens to be a very unusual looking movie I just watched a trailer for it today called Violator yeah yeah yeah it looks bonkers right and so i would i would love for him to make more movies because it seems like he's got a really weird sense of like a weird aesthetic almost but so

He doesn't have a ton of money and wants to make Evil Dead. So the result of that is, what if the Evil Dead was in Japan? Not in the woods, but in kind of the suburbs. And you had fewer people. Yep. To the tune of three. Small cast and crew. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it feels so homemade. And I think that's part of its charm. You know, like that's one of the things I actually like about it is that it does feel very much like it's a guy and his pals putting on a high school play.

based on the Evil Dead. It's like Evil Dead fan fiction that somehow made it to regional theater. I love the because it looks like it was shot on Super 8. But I don't know because they're adding VHS effects and there's a couple shots in it that were clearly shot later on, I think on a different camera completely. I don't know what this was shot on. I would love to know. But for most of the movie, it looks like 8mm film. And then some post-production stuff via video.

Right, some additional grain that they added. Yeah, it's something. And so Shinichi Fukuzawa does double duty here, playing both. shinji and naoto his father yep and if you thought for two seconds that

The movie was not, in fact, based on the Evil Dead. One look at Naoto's outfit in the opening of this movie, because it just opens in a living room. Where Naoto, who played by Shinichi Fukuzawa, is in the blue chambray work shirt. the you know the ash pants and shoes and everything like it looks like ash and um so you might be fooled into believing This is just gonna be like, oh, we're gonna start with Ash in the cabin. Oh, no, no. Shinichi Fukuzawa has way more up his sleeve than that.

So it's just this woman saying like, I love you. How could you leave me for some other woman? And she freaks out and tries to stab him. And he's like, aha, you try to stab me. I'll stab you instead. and so he does he just straight up murders this one i mean granted she seems to be unhinged but just murder someone and rather than say call the authorities he's like how about I just bury her under this plywood in the living room of my house or her house one presumes I guess and

No, it's got to be theirs because Shinji later is like, well, this is a house that my dad owned. Right. So maybe he was putting this lady up. Because it's hard to believe that Naoto went on to like court Shinji's mother and they just like hung out and ate popcorn and watched TV over the dead body of this woman.

yeah i have to admire this movie's resistance of any kind of setup like i you know even just like a shot a shot of her like of them moving in or a shot of her like finding out about it or or any establishing anything this movie's like nap nap right who needs it you here to have a good time you here to Learn, nerd. Who needs exposition? My son's gonna be a bodybuilder. How dare you?

dude we'll get to it there is there is a moment in this movie that truly is on par with bruce willis saying groovy and it's not shinji saying groovy which also happens Did you say Bruce Willis, or did you say Bruce Campbell? Did I say Bruce Willis? Bruce Willis, Star of Die Hard, and Evil Dead. Yabba-dabba-doo-ba-dabba-dee-ba-dabba-doo-ba. That's my Ben Stiller show reference for you guys. Everyone said, come to the cabin. Have a few laughs. Groovy, baby.

i can't do an impression of that man but yeah that's you heard the best i got um but yeah so bruce campbell uh and saying groovy is what i meant obviously groovy baby yeah that's gotta be it i'm confused about japanese floors too because like he he has his

He has an axe and then... No, he has a shovel, then an axe. Whereas I would think it would be axed and shoveled to get on the floor. But he lifts up the big floor tile with the shovel. Then he just... starts taking the axe to the floor and somehow her body's in there i don't understand yeah and there's a thing where the all of her blood just gets sucked up into this like key pendant

yep yep to let you know that there's some some bona fide curse happening um which is is also pretty good uh and yeah and and so That's kind of your setup. That it's just, hey, you know, this murder happened. Cut to years later when Shinji... who we will learn is the son of the guy what murdered this lady, is just spending a few minutes working out, man. And here's what's hilarious to me.

About all of this is that he's not super ripped, you know, like he's in good shape and he's got muscles, but it's not like. a stallone or schwarzenegger not even that like it's not even a knockoff it's not like he is just a guy who works out a bunch yeah he's in that frustrating body type that a lot of people who spend a lot of time at the gym without going for the, you know, the artificial means. Yeah. You know, like they, they end up getting really lean.

And they get really fucking strong. And they look good, but they're not getting the bulk they want. And so it's like... I'm sure that burns up a lot of like, they get so pissed off that they're not like riggedy ripped, you know, but it's like, nah, dude, you're just making your body look natural. So stick with it. Do you know what I like on men? I like.

um big and natural big and natural and i'll the thing that's funny is when he puts on a shirt he just looks like a dude you know it's not like his shirt is straining to contain the muscles beneath or anything Like, he puts on a polo at one point, and it's like, you just look like you're shopping for rutabagas at the store or whatever. Like, you're just a guy. Except, alright, so...

What sets off the events of the movie is he gets a call from his ex-girlfriend, Mika, as played by Masaki Kai. And... She calls him up and says like, hey, do you still have that picture of your dad's house? And he's like, yeah, probably got it around here somewhere. And she's like, great. Will you meet me for a stroll in the park? where you can walk around in a shirt and not look muscular at all, and we'll have a little chit-chat. He shops at lean and formalists. I mean, it shocked me that...

For a movie in which the muscles play such an important part that you're not showing them off that much. uh i mean yeah you get the initial workout scene but after that i guess you're just hiding it like why don't start with a showstopper i guess is the idea you're gonna wait till the end waiting just waiting for literally any reason to take that shirt off anything it's oh did you sneeze here have my shirt which begs the question okay

Where do you put the emphasis on the title? It's Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell. Is it Bloody Muscle Body Builder? Or is it Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell? Yeah, I think the colon. I think we need bloody muscle colon. No, that doesn't make sense either. This is a tough one. I mean, did we ever find a Japanese horror movie title? generator like random generator because this feels like one uh akin to of course hero hero ghost show yeah bloody muscle

For me, it's bloody muscle bodybuilder as kind of one idea. Yeah. That is the constituent phrase to use English teacher parlance. And then you could put the colon in hell. Ooh, there you go. But it's a nonsense title. And I kind of love it because it doesn't make much sense. Because they don't go to hell. They're not in hell at any point during this. They're in a type of hell. A hellish scenario. Like, if you just took the word muscle out of it, bloody bodybuilder in hell...

makes way more sense than bloody muscle bodybuilder in hell. It's the addition of muscle of like, okay, is the muscle bloody? Are you talking about the muscles of the bodybuilder? Oh, wait. Are there other types of bodybuilders? Like you could do a strong torso bodybuilder in hell. Build up your knees. core strength bodybuilder in hell who's just all about the calisthenics. Pilates. Bloody Pilates. There's the sequel. Disgusting yoga.

bodybuilder in hell oh god zombie ass no wait that's something else yeah that oh is it ever uh a gucci you mad genius or is that oh That might not be a Gucci. I think it is, though. I just wanted to drop that title. I'll never watch that. Zombie-ass Toilet of the Dead. That's advanced. It's... I mean, it's not great, but it's silly.

and it's it knows what it is like it is a better it is a movie in which you are it's it's not quite a pink movie but it is definitely brown yeah but you're definitely showing off like here are you know, pretty Japanese ladies in skimpy attire. And also there's going to be a lot of farting inexplicably, which is the thing that happens.

um i love that he his so his ex so mika calls him up and they go on this little like hangout sesh so we can give her that picture and he's she's like what are you doing he's like i quit my job okay what are you doing at all he's like working out he gives he flexes for her and kind of gives that bicep a little peck like look at this baby

and she's like well so that's all you're doing and he's like yeah my dad died left me a bunch of money i'm just trying to figure shit out that's all i'm just hanging out working out you know trying to get my head right that's all And rarely in movies do you see such an aimless protagonist. Zen. He's very zen at this moment. Zero ambition to do anything or accomplish anything. He's just floating through life, man. And...

Mika, on the other hand, is like, well, you know how I like paranormal stuff. Well, I've been like full on investigating that. And that's why I wanted you to meet up with me because you have this.

picture of the house that's got like a ghost image in it and he's like yeah what else i don't really care uh it's not my thing i don't think it's really haunted i don't believe in that nonsense you know what i believe in working out yeah that is that is what i believe in living healthy don't smoke right no hope and dope uh as i've said already today and

But then he's just like, so are you seeing anybody? And she's like, no, not really. And he's like, oh, really? Is that so? Because I don't know if I mentioned that I'm not doing jack right now. So if you want to. hang out or something and he's not he's not doing jack he is jack is he ever hell yeah I mean, not so you'd notice in the polo he's wearing, which does nothing to show off any of these sweet, sweet muscles. He is quick to point out that she starts to light up a Virginia Slim.

And he's like, every time you do that, it depletes your body of 75 milligrams of vitamin C. That blew my mind. That really blew my mind. That was like... If there's any reason to not smoke, that's it. Uh-huh. And she's like, okay, whatever, weirdo. So let's go to your... dad's house and I'm gonna take with us this guy named Mizuguchi who uh I believe this is Masahiro Kai um and

He is a psychic who is coming to the house along with them to, you know, see what's up, right? So this is our trio of psychic investigators. To go into this house. Not, again, in some far remote forest. Not in some, you know, abandoned ghost town. It's just in a neighborhood. It's just a creepy house. It's yeah. I mean, if by creepy, you mean it needs a good mo and somebody to clean up some of the garbage out of the yard, but that's it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that's kind of it.

I love Mizuguchi, even before all the shit goes down. I love this guy. He's the most serious character I've seen in a film in a long time. If you can pause it and zoom in, you can actually see he has Mega Bummer tattooed on his forehead. He's so like, this isn't funny. This is the spiritual world. Well, Shinji, though, who, by the way, not driving the car. Mika is handling that. He's just hanging out. They'd never get there. They'd never get there if he was driving.

just stop at random parks you know the sun gives you vitamin d that's important for all your muscles so um but he's drinking like energy drinks or something And trying to give them to Mizuguchi, he was like, no, no, no, I don't drink that stuff. He's like, whatevs, dude. This is good for me. This is good for muscles. And so...

They show up at this place and it is definitely one of the more evil... dead moments of the movie because you get like the camera pan across all of their faces as they're looking up at this house that looks like a totally normal suburban house by the way and

there's like a swing that's moving it doesn't do the stop like it does in the original evil dead but you get sweet right i can't believe they didn't go for that gag if you're gonna do it all do it all right because i mean it goes so far into evil dead you know aping That why would you not? But anyway, it doesn't. And Mizuguchi takes one look at this house and is like, I have to tell you all, this house is fucked. I feel a strong evil in this house. And Shiji is just like...

All right, dude, let's roll. Yeah. He ain't afraid of no ghosts because they don't exist. Right. Right. He can't see them. You know, the line is something like, you know, I can't see them. So to me, they don't exist. I don't believe in molecules. Honestly, the thing I told her about the vitamin C, I can't see that either. I don't believe in that, but I heard that. How do magnets work? Yeah, yeah.

It's Shinji and Shaggy 2 Dope trying to figure out the grand mysteries of life. Violent Jason and this one out. But yeah, so they finally go in the house after some wandering around, which seems strange for a movie that is, again, you know, 60 minutes. There is a fair amount of just beandering. Which feels appropriate for Shinji. Or maybe Shinichi Fujikawa. The movie is also in character. Right. So, one of the things...

One of the only decorations in the house is a child's rendering of some woman's face. There's a couple of drawings of this woman in the house, and I don't know who did them. I don't know where they came from. It's very sparse. Yeah. As, of course, an abandoned house would be. But it's even... It's even more sparse. It's so sparse that it makes the stuff that's there even stranger. Right, that whoever left the house, because they weren't there before, at least not that we saw.

so one presumes that somebody did these child's drawings and then came to hang them up in this abandoned house but there's no other graffiti or anything because this is clearly the home of filmmaker shinichi fukuzawa uh or a place i love the way it's shot though like that's the thing like there's some real style to this section where

um the little like glimpses of this house and because of all that grain that film grain that's all over it you get like this found footage vibe from it like almost instantly Yeah, the thing I kept thinking about the decor of this house. If you remember the movie Scrooged, there is a point where Bill Murray... Sees a picture that Alfre Woodard's child drew of Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus. And he goes, Grace, who drew this? And he says, well, my kid did. He says, right.

how many fingers does Mrs. Claus have? And she says 11. And he goes, right. It's crap. Get rid of it. And tears it down. And that's how I felt about all these drawings is. That they would rightfully be torn down by any self-respecting Bill Murray that happened to be passing through. But... But you're right though. I think a lot of these shots as they're kind of wandering around and exploring the house, it's a lot of like, hey, we're going to stand in a doorway.

In a dark room with light behind us so that we get good silhouettes and stuff. And a lot of Rainey-esque angles and that kind of thing. Like, again, this is... We are doing Evil Dead, so we're doing a lot of, like, high angles and, you know, interesting camera placement and all that. Like, it's... If you're going to rip off Sam Raimi, he did a great job, you know? And it looks pretty good. But then we get to the site of the murder. And...

Shinji hangs out to look at himself in the mirror for a bit. For a long bit. You know, I thought they were going to do the Evil Dead 2 gag of... like having the one actor that looks kind of like Bruce Campbell or Bruce Willis for that matter. Um, and then, you know, you do the cheat over the shoulder. So it looks like the mirror image is talking to him and whatnot.

But instead, he's just hanging out, like, checking his hair and making sure that he's perfectly quaffed. And meanwhile, our psychic... is uh Mizuguchi is in this room he's like this is where it happened this is this is where all the bad stuff went down and then you know we kind of get into the meat of the movie which is he just passes out at a certain point he's just whoa there goes the day he kind of like invokes the spirit to come forward

to talk about it's like he knows that it has a grudge and it's pissed off and yet you know he calls forth and the ghost kind of like sees Shinji comes out of the mirror yeah to like get him and we see this great shot of the the spirit with its creepy ghostly hand over his shoulder And that's when the clock, this tiny little plastic clock, falls off the wall and bangs our boy Mizuguchi in the head. And he falls over with his mild bruising on the back of his head.

and we see the ghost on on shinji's shoulder looking at him it's like oh it's pretty good it's a good creepy scene other than the clock falling off the wall which literally falls off the wall and then later he's like Well, I was standing in the middle of the room. How could that clock have hit me? I was like, dude, it didn't. You could throw that clock at someone as hard as you could and it would probably hurt them. But this clock just went bleh. Yeah.

But Bisaguchi is pretty quick to be like, by the way, it was the ghost who threw that clock at me. it wasn't you know and like by the i saw the ghost the whole deal and so he asks for the key because when he comes to he's in the back of the car they're like hey you know

You got hit bonked on the head. We were afraid you might have amnesia or something. And so we took you to the back of the car and we were going to take you back to town for potentially medical help. Or let you sleep it off. Maybe not wake up.

right right you well you know what they say about concussions we'll get get plenty of rest and so visaguchi is like well i need to get back into the house and uh shinji in an act of heroism is just like here's the key bro we'll be out here yeah all if you need anything uh it's a that mizuguchi goes back through you know scopes out some creepy dolls looking for the the ghost the source of the haunting and uh and finds it

Yeah, he finds the knife. Uh-huh. And then he finds the ghost who tries to kill him with the knife. That's right. Who is full on evil dead. Like... white eyes pale skin although there is that kind of there is still that Japanese trope of the dark long hair like it looks like a Japanese ghost but by way of Evil Dead You know, so it's kind of an interesting blend of those two ideas, you know, the two artistic ideas. And then she says something that every woman I've ever dated has said, which is.

My body is rotten to the core. And give me yours. Hey. Whoa. Hey, that had a turn in it. You know, like, started sad. Then it got glad. Then it got sexy. And so she just stabs Mizuguchi in the chest. And it's revealed that he's stabbing himself. Right. But then... He looks up and he sees kind of the woman that Naoto murdered and she drops the necklace into his mouth. Yep. And this seems to be the thing. Like if you get full on possessed.

That, like, it's the necklace that invades your body. Like, that is the talisman that turns you into a zombie. A ghost zombie. Or a vessel for this spirit.

And so anyway, eventually Shinji and Mika are like, hey, Mizuguchi's really been in there a while. Should we go look for him? And Shinji's like, eh, I mean. I guess. We're running out of energy drinks here. Right. We got to get back to town because pretty soon my vitamin C levels are going to drop below the ideal level. And so they go inside and they find the bloody knife. And they're like, hey, you think something could have happened in here? And then they find Mizuguchi.

Yes. Who is all pale and, you know, bleeding from his chest on account of having been stabbed there. Theoretically by the ghost, but by himself. Yeah. I love when he's like, get out of here before I die. I love that warning. That's so good. Yeah. And so then we get some good old fashioned stop motion. As the necklace that has been dropped into his mouth crawls out of his mouth and goes into his eyeball. And it's rad. It is.

pretty special i love stop motion in a movie especially a movie that can't really afford good stop motion yeah they can't make it look good but they did it and so shinji is like mika i suggest we get out of here and so they're taking off but they can't get out on account of acting mostly uh Oh, the doors won't open and whatnot. And then Mizuguchi resurrects.

and is fast now boy right he's all pale and starts chasing him with a knife uh stabs shinji uh in the hand and i was like oh are they gonna do the evil dead possessed hand thing you're thinking that's what's gonna happen uh but instead uh he then turns his attention to mika and

It says that he's going to eat her. And then in maybe the most effective effect of the movie, Shinji takes the knife. And stabs Mizuguchi in the back of the head, which forces his eyeball out of the right eyeball out of its socket towards Mika.

then pulls the knife out, which sucks the eyeball back into its socket. That's like something out of Braindead. Like something out of Dead Alive. That was pretty freaking cool, dude. Yeah, it's really... I mean, it's not a great special effect, but it is great for this ultra-cheap movie.

yeah and it's and like the thing i like most about this movie is how ambitious it is for being so cheap like it is it is doing the ramey camera work it is doing these gore effects it's doing the stop motions doing all of that stuff for for all of the little tiny tiny amounts of like video effects or like animation they do for all that stuff

there's a hundred times more practical goopy gore, weird shit. And there's stuff in this movie that I've never seen in other movies. There's a couple of moments where I'm like, yeah, they're aping evil dead. But in some ways, they're doing it wrong, quote unquote. And in other ways, they're doing it right by coming up with their own thing. Because we fully have, like later, we just have like freaking supermarket.

hamburger come to life that's outrageously gross to look at yeah so oh man so after they stab mizuguchi

He kind of goes down for a minute and they're like, all right, we got to get out of here. And so then Mizuguchi, of course, gets back up because that's what zombies do or possess. zombies i don't know not quite deadites i don't know people possessed by blood infused necklaces let's say vote people not the general Right, not to unfairly paint everyone with that brush who has ever been possessed by a blood-infused necklace.

But he chases after him. There's a pretty good gag with a nail on the wall where they like Shinji flips him around and it stabs him through the hand. And like. He tries to get him through the room. They finally put up a blockade after punching him in the face and jamming his fingers in the door.

And Shinji, there's a great moment here because, again, Shinji is a terrible protagonist. And he's not quite as hapless as... ash where he's just constantly being battered you know it's not the physical gags he just doesn't want any part of this and seems real put upon That he has to be dealing with it. Because at one point Mika is like. What are we going to do? And he's like. I don't know. This all stinks. We're dead. He's not a great hero. No. He's barely.

not even the it's not even a lowercase h no it he's just like what do you think we ought to do he asked mika that and she's like i don't know and then finally they get some help from beyond as Naoto the father shows up to be like son you are muscly well done

looking looking ripped son right uh that polo that polo is doing nothing for you i you know i love the analog so dad dad's on a little tv warning him and that's like like the tape player the the the little uh cassette player from evil dead but yeah so we're stepping up with the technology here and he basically says Hey, did you see the beginning of the movie? No? Well, here's what happened. Oh boy.

There was this lady I was having an affair with, and then one thing led to another, and bada bing, bada boom, I killed her. And so your friend Mizuguchi...

And she's like, he's not my friend. He's just a weird guy that I drove here with. He's like, whatever. This guy is now possessed by the spirit of this woman I killed. And she's... nuts and worse she enjoys inflicting pain because of all the pain that she's been living with all this time which again very japanese idea like when they talk about grudges and stuff like that in this movie i just start slapping my flip burst together because i'm like oh it's a japanese horror movie now and but now

Much like Shinji, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree because he's like, don't worry about this, son. It's not your fault. It's that psychic you brought up with you. It's his fault because his psychic cares you. yeah thanks for giving her powers asshole like bringing this guy bringing this joker along like you couldn't have brought somebody with no talents you know yeah yeah and she's like i knew it wasn't my fault and they're like high-fiving through the tv

and he says so what you've got to do uh again much like the the tape from evil dead the real the real um he's like you have to dismember mizuguchi And also to defeat this, you have to go to the basement because what you need to defeat the evil in this house is in the basement.

keep that in mind ladies and gentlemen uh-huh that's in mind that's important it's what we call foreshadowing and so sure enough they've got to you know take care of Mizuguchi who you know busts in on them as soon as they try to get out of this room he comes in and grabs Mika

And is like, I'm going to strangle her and you're going to watch. LOL. Yeah. But Shinji... grabs the shovel that has been laying around and ends up battling Mizuguchi with said shovel uh until he finally gets him against the wall and like gives the shove to the neck and decapitates Mizuguchi. And there is a papier-mâché head. Oh man, I feel for this because I made a paper mache head of my head for a horror movie we made one time.

It ended up looking like not even the bizarro version of me. It looked like a child's interpretation of the bizarro. It did not look like a man in his late 20s, early 30s made it in any known universe. So this one's better than mine. I'll concede to that this time. That's one for you bloody muscle bodybuilder in hell. one for you guy who made a movie people will actually watch but it's but it's a yeah like is it a fakey head yes but what's hilarious is after

He goes to revive Mika, who has been choked out by Mizuguchi. He comes back in, and the head is still sitting on top of...

the shovel, which is embedded in the wall, but the body is gone. And he's like, Hey, that's curious. And sure enough, the body, you know, attacks and. Oh yeah. Then Mika is the one who grabs the axe and there is a full on, you know, throw the axe to Shinji in slow motion. And it is like, because again, this movie is done on the cheap.

You don't see the whole axe for some of the shot. So it's just somebody like holding it and moving it in front of the camera. And then when you do see the camera flying, it's clearly somebody that just kind of gave it a toss.

And then he grabs it out of the air, but it's so good. I love the fact that you can see the seams here of like, oh, this is how they... had to achieve this effect is they did this shot and then they did this shot and then somebody handed him the axe here and that's how they strung this together to make it look like

this dramatic moment of her throwing the axe. They forgot the fishing line and they didn't want to really throw that axe for fear of hurting someone or probably... clipping a wall clipping a wall or something in Shinji's house but she's like no no no do not throw that axe for real do not I'm trying to get my security deposit back bro I can't you can't be throwing tools around in here

This is a rental. Right. My landlord's going to be here in a week. All right. We got to have all this cleaned up. Oh, that would be a lot of cleanup. Uh-huh. But sure enough, he hacks up.

mizuguchi with with the axe and it's a good like evil dead style here are a bunch of body parts and some of them are kind of wiggling and jiggling and stuff and it looks pretty good yeah yeah and and shinji's like all right let's burn this corpse give me your lighter and she's like dude you you told me like give up smoking so i did and he's like Okay, good for you, but now we can't burn this stupid body. Right. Worth pointing out, Mizuguchi's head is giving him some smack talk at the same time.

Tell him, like, oh, you're all gonna die here. And... Also... Shinji shows Mizuguchi's head... the child's drawing, the child's rendering, and it's like, did you draw this? Is this you? I didn't sign it, but yeah, bro. Right. limited edition um is that it oh is that an nft i love it so all right finally shinji is like okay we gotta do what my

father's head on the tv said which is to go into the basement and get the thing that's going to help us defeat the evil and worth pointing out earlier in the movie he said this is the house i used to uh workout like i've got a bunch of workout equipment in the basement but he looks over in the corner he sees all that and he's like well it can't be that probably it's this shotgun

And so this is where we get the full on quick cuts of him grabbing shotgun shells, put them in his pocket, put them in his breast pocket, his jeans pockets. loading up the shotgun, gives it a pump and does the groovy. And I loved it. Yes. Because of the manga I Am A Hero and some other various manga about guns, how hard it is to own a gun in Japan as well as own the bullets.

to said gun and how you have to register it like you kind of like have to register your gun within an inch of its life yeah like it is one of the most strict countries on earth for gun laws and the thought of this shotgun just being in the basement And then shotgun shells just littered on the floor. I'm like, nah, some government official, as soon as your dad dies, is going to come and collect that shit. Oh, by the way, it's illegal for this to be not stored in a safe. Also...

The bullets have to be stored in a separate safe from the gun. Dude, what follows is the greatest scene in the movie. Boy, howdy.

where and this i think is where you're talking about like the movie gets some of the evil dead stuff wrong but in getting it wrong it really carves out a really unique identity for itself magical so with this shotgun he's like hey we need to go basically shoot the body parts into dust or whatever into a fine paste yeah and they go upstairs and Mika is like hey some of the body parts are missing

And he's like, huh, you don't say. I wonder what happened to that. Then they are attacked, Richard, by not just these random body parts. But the body parts have fused together in new and interesting ways. See, I'm thinking another source of inspiration was Bride of Reanimator. Yeah. Body parts, you know, the hand by the wrist fused to the ankle and the foot and other parts happening. The head is on a hand.

There's the hand foot combo. And this is where it gets like real evil dead to where the foot keeps hitting him in the face as he, I mean, he's really just hitting himself in the face, but it's really pretty fun. And. she is being attacked by mika's being attacked by the head with the hand and they do a couple of different tricks to make that work but it's pretty good

Sometimes it's just like the papier-mâché head on a hand. Sometimes it's like the actor literally resting his head on his hand and kind of cheating the angle. and then there's the one shot where it's like on the ceiling above her and drops onto her where they basically put the hand on the ceiling and then superimpose the head so that when it drops, they just superimpose that, the image of the head growing as it comes closer to her.

and it's super inventive it's really clever you know i'd forgotten about that shot and as soon as you said i can just imagine it in my head that is great oh my god it's so good Yeah, it's such a clever use of no money, of how do you make a horror movie that has all this creative stuff in it.

on no cash. Like it is one of the finest example. I think Doug Tilly actually did this movie on no budget nightmares at some point. And it falls into that category of like, there, there was no money behind this, but it's so. uh like there's a real vision behind it and I have such fondness for that. If a movie tries, there are so many big budget movies that don't try half as hard as this one does to be creative and fun.

Like, how does it, like, does it come from the planning stage? Does it come from, like, they were storyboarding it and let their imaginations run wild and then constructed how to do it later? Or was it like weird? I've been making movies since I was a kid. And all this know-how kind of grew. Like the way Sam Raimi did it. Where they made all this stuff. Or did he have a book?

Like, you know, how to achieve special effects book, you know, like, it's so, it's so fun. I, uh, on a totally dumb side note, like, I'm really glad this was innocent. Like, this is a very, uh, innocent movie. There's no. weird sexy stuff to it like yeah but like imagine like the uh the if the entrails of a virgin that director had made this yeah they wouldn't have wasted that penis because that

That psychic guy probably had one and he could make it into a long tentacle. That psychic guy probably had a penis. Is the other shirt I almost wore tonight. Like sometimes you think back of all the hundreds and thousands of movies you watched and you're like, yeah, I've seen entrails of a version. Yeah. Yeah.

Then that's all. You don't know what else to do with that information, but hopefully you'll be able to work it into a podcast with one Bo Ranstow. I've seen multiple guinea pig movies, and I have no... I know.

I don't understand why that ever happened. And I watch the Japanese ones. I'm not like you kids. You kids got the American ones now. Oh my gosh. Right. You kids with your... you know uh more refined taste you need not the raw stuff i was like it's like when you get the mexican cokes with the pure stuff the pure sugar so all right where are we oh so after this thing the head falls on mika it bites her in the neck

uh and so she collapses because she's bleeding out her neck also not not a bad effect and he's like whoa what am i gonna do i gotta get out of here yet again goes to the door sure enough still trapped

Then realizes that all the blood from Mika and from Mizuguchi, all of it is being absorbed into the floor. And then out comes the real... monster of the movie which looks great i thought yeah yeah i mean it's all kind of primer gray and that's maybe not as great but um it's like this skeleton face in a flannel shirt kind of situation that busts up through the floor and then the sentient ground beef that you mentioned earlier with the necklace on it.

starts crawling to it to kind of reconstitute into this version of the woman who died up to and including like the necklace uh going into it but it like it basically forms this big goomba head version of like it looks like the the woman we saw murdered was about to be scanned like in the movie scanners where her head's about to blow up but it's the moment before the explosion but it's the very second before the explosion yeah she's super tall and she's super grotesque and it's like really they

didn't have the actress back or they had never it had no intention they just wanted her to be more monstrous um i thought about the uh the scene in evil dead when one of the deadites is killed presumably and then the giant monster just climbs out of its back yeah yeah yeah it just it doesn't look like any of the other creatures it looks like its own like fleshy skull monster thing and that's why i'm like

That scene, I think, really stuck with the director when he saw that. Yeah, it's right. That kind of cornflake KY version of just goo. Yeah, and at this point, Mika also gets up. And so it's Shinji versus Mika versus this other creature.

And maybe the least innocent point of the movie is Mika grabbing him by the balls and lifting him up. Yeah. That felt pointed. That felt like a... fuck you to an ex-girlfriend right there well and i like the fact that she calls him pathetic and says you couldn't even save your girlfriend and right it's kind of a nice like hey

you're this is the spirit of evil dead of them like tormenting and taunting you oh yeah um and then he goes tumbling down the stairs into the basement where once again he is like But I thought there was going to be something that would save me down here. Wait a second. Hold up. And there is a shot of these weights.

where there's this bright light shining on them. It might as well have like Handel's Messiah playing as he, as he looks at these weights and he says, that's right. There's only one thing that will save me. My muskles. And then does a straight up Lou Ferrigno out of this shirt. As he just flexes and it starts to rip around his well-toned but not overly bulgy body. Man, he hulks out. He does like a... He does like a...

Like a stretch Armstrong Hulk out, like real small scale hulking. I love him. Yeah, I mean, again, he's clearly not doing steroids or anything. No, no, no. This is all natural, baby. one eight like 100 kobe beef right here babe yeah look out it's but it's just so silly because when you see him go into this like bodybuilder pose as he's showing off his muscles again you're like you look like you work out but

I would kill for that body. I would kill for that. 100%. Nobody's saying that the man is not in shape. Right, right. I mean, I'd go for, I want Roy Scheider's body from Marathon Man. everyone's like oh yeah oh yeah marathon man dustin hoff i'm like that Look at frickin' string bean, like, scary Bruce Lee rippling muscle Roy Scheider in that movie. He looks dangerous. I would trade a finger to have the body of Lee Van Cleef. Yes! you

Oh, man. Just to have my shirt off in public and not hurt children's feelings. Yeah. Where do I find the Richard Jekyll workout? That's a man in a Speedo. That's a man I want to see. He's in love with sharks. Sharks are his best friends in that movie. He likes grizzlies. God bless him.

Oh, man. I miss Richard Jekyll every day. It's great. Anyway. The one-liners. That's the other thing with Shinji now that he's ready to tackle his foes. The one-liners. Bruce Willis-esque and Bruce Campbell-esque one-liners are almost stepping on top of each other. He's got so many of them. So cute. Dude. I can't tell you how old.

wonderful I found it when he said there is one thing that will save me my muscles yeah And then you get a cutaway from that to Mika and the lumpy-faced demon lady just... eating pieces of Mizuguchi off the ground? Like, up to and including... You know, like the demon lady just grabbing the half of his skull that remains from Mizuguchi and just chomping on it like it's a cantaloupe. And then Shinji appears.

backlit all the hell yes holding like a bar with barbells and starts twirling it around like it's a pair of nunchucks it's it's stunning it's stunning and and again you know aping uh the the the evil dead movies it's just him being like hey assholes come get some And then there's a big fight where he just whacks these things in the skull with barbells and hurls weights at them and stuff. I get the jumping off point, which is Evil Dead.

But the bodybuilder aspect is completely original out of, I mean, unless there's some weird Japanese TV series. We've never heard of where there was this muscle. I mean, this is like how in the world other than is bringing his interests into a movie and making his hobby or his, you know, his lifestyle, you know. fit the plot i don't know work with what you got i guess i mean that's got to be it right that that shinichi fukuzawa just was into bodybuilding

And was like, what can I bring to this movie that doesn't cost anything? Oh, my muscles. My secret power. Right. That I tell everybody about who will listen. Yeah, because I think that the character of Shinji... And Shinichi Fukuzawa, not that different. I think both of them have a real laissez-faire attitude towards life as a whole. But yeah, so he... Pounds the face of this lumpy demon lady and says, don't take it personal. You're just not my type.

And so you think she's down, but, you know, give it a minute because we got to have a pop up at the end. But then Mika stabs him in in the ankle with the knife. And it's very reminiscent of the. pencil in the tendon like it's real similar to that but then he unlike the original evil dead shinji then Goes to the wound on Mika's neck. And sucks out the demon venom like she got bitten by a poisonous demon snake.

unbelievable and just spits it out and then like there's this superimposed image where she goes from evil to okay yep which is also fantastic god the more i talk about this movie the more i love it it is so it it's so bonkers it makes me think like he was bummed out that ash never got the girl Yeah. In my version, he's going to get to keep that sweet old girlfriend to his. Right. Oh, speaking of that wound, you mentioned it earlier, the bite wound where they do, it's like...

all the holes of the teeth that the teeth have made and they're just pumping blood through it. And then later they're just pumping like pus through it. And I'm like, I just, God, it's so cool. It's so fricking cool, man.

So, Mika is passed out, but apparently unpossessed. And the demon lady now comes back, even though she's even pulpier than she was to begin with. And so Shinji takes, in a very tense scene, Richard, he has to use like a Phillips wrench to get the weights off the end of the pole. Which he does. And then fires it like an arrow from the strap on his bag into the face of this demon lady.

I thought he had one of those stretchy springy like tension bar things. Yeah. I thought he was using that as the bow. And then the arrow was, of course, the barbell. without the weights on it but none of that makes a lick of sense yeah not even even trying to like name the things doesn't work it's oh it's so weird and So the demon lady gets impaled through the head, but she starts crawling down the length of it to try to get to her mouth. Yeah. And he's, he's.

trying to get to the shotgun his you know obviously his ankle is all busted um and also the demon lady is shooting intestine out at him yeah which was that was like

The biggest effect, one of the probably the most time-consuming effects in the movie was that shit, getting that to actually work. There was your possibilities for... some hentai right there but no it's just guts just guts and so the the demon lady is trying to make her way to mika and saying like give me your body and At that point, Shinji finally gets hold of the shotgun and shoots this demon lady about 115 times.

Yeah, if I'd watch this to my father-in-law, he'd be flipping out. He's a bullet counter. And that shotgun might as well have a big clip on it, like one of those assault shotguns. And he gives it one final, see you in hell, baby. And then shoots her in the head. And then the head explodes and blood goes everywhere. He's covered in it. Mika gets some blood right in the face. And, you know. We have saved the day. Mika is now okay. And they make their way outside as the demon lady melts. And...

you know head outside and they're like everything's okay and then we get one final look at the house and it's got final stinger yeah and you got like a you know a door opens and you see an eyeball so oh man like like i love that's one of my favorite tropes in japanese horror and the first time i've seen that is in one of those 100 yokai movies

There's just a giant ghost. There's just a ghost that happens to be giant. And there's a manga that I've read that I love called Mail, M-A-I-L. And in that, there's a ghost.

girl that's in a house but her whole face just to give you scale her whole face takes up a doorway so the first time you see this ghost leaning over somebody she's the ghost is large enough to eat that person in one bite and i love that they went for that like when they show that window of the house and they superimpose or add that little effect shot of the ghost

it's a huge ghost like like it's like it's not like a little stinger it's a big stinger that's freaking cool man i love that but idea i wish they'd do that in an american one of those uh one of those conjuring movies.

just have a for no reason i mean everything in those movies is for no reason but have a giant ghost like it's like oversized like it's a house who even does it too where the ghost just happens to be bigger than like it because they're their spirit their spirit so they can do anything go ahead and go nuts with it yeah it's man beautiful i like

I really, really adore bloody muscle bodybuilder in hell. Yeah. It's extremely silly. But knowingly so. But the thing that I love about it is just, it's so, it's just so creative, you know? Like, even though it's ripping off a couple of movies, more than that, I think you're right. I think Dead Alive. Or brain dead, depending on where you're from. But I think, you know, Fukuzawa had seen plenty of that too.

and and was borrowing some from that but even for all the stuff he borrowed there is stuff that he does that is just it's silly and fun and goopy and all of that stuff And, you know, for a movie that is, again, like 63, 62 minutes long, like, you pack a lot of living into that hour. Like, if all movies could be so economical. The two scenes that...

two little moments that we, we didn't catch were, uh, one was his hairspray can, uh, Shinji, because he's so in love with himself, he's fixing his hair. And that one thing is the little tiny can of hairspray. which is not an aerosol. It is a spray bottle. So when he uses it to blow up Mizuguchi's corpse earlier in the movie, it like...

It blows up like it was contents under pressure. He throws the can and then shoots it and it explodes. Like it's a red barrel in a video game. I thought you were going to say a Red Bull in a video game.

that gives you wings gives you wings bruh a red barrel full of red bull the other great moment is that mika gets some hits in and i looked away from this movie for a second and lieta's watching this with me and she's like whoa she just rabbit punched freaking that that head that dude's head in the face a bunch of times like i'm like Nice. I don't look away from this movie for a second. Once it gets going for this finale, you will miss something. Yeah.

This is great stuff. This movie is made with love and made with something totally unique. There's so much goopy goopy gore. I love that found footage kind of look to it by accident, you know. And I love the grudge, like the Ringu Juwan kind of curse stuff that's in it. It's so funny because that stuff feels tacked on. in a good way like in a good way but that stuff because none of that's an evil dead you know that's as foreign as it can get from the evil dead but here it is love it

Yeah, it's a terrific movie. I'm glad that it's so widely available. And if you're listening to this and you have Shudder and you want to see something that's just ridiculous, like the first... I mean, it's only an hour long, like the first 15 minutes might have some ramp up as far. But even then, like even that car trip where Shinji is just like.

All right, whatever, brother. I'll just be here drinking my energy drinks and you guys talk about ghosts and gobbles and whatever the hell. I don't believe in none of that. I don't know why he's got a southern accent, but, you know. Shinji do what Shinji do. But yeah, once it gets going, it's... You know, it does feel homemade in the best possible way.

you know it's it's kind of how i feel about the movie winter beast like i love i was gonna mention that yeah i love winter beast because it it doesn't make any sense but it's got moments in that movie that i will never ever forget And it's completely done on the cheap, but it's done on the cheap by people who gave a shit. Yeah.

And Fukuzawa gave a shit. And you can tell that in every frame of this movie, he is trying to make something that isn't just a cheap horror movie. Right. And I love it. I love it.

And while I'm at it, I love you. Oh, I love you. I thought of those two movies I referenced earlier. There's two Japanese horror movies that are under an hour. that you can kind of find if you do a little internet sleuthing. And the first one's called Gakidama from 1985. It's 54 minutes, and all I can tell you is it looks... bonkers. I have not watched it yet. It was a very, very gory guy who was infected by a demon and it's just really strange. The monster is really odd and everything.

um another one that came out two years later is called i have it in my files i mean i heard some people have it on their computers yeah uh it's Kanton, C-O-N-T-O-N, but on IMDB it comes up as Jushin Densetsu. And it's claims to be about a boy's nightmares about being stalked by a demon slowly transform into a terrifying reality. And there's nothing but goopy gore in all of the VHS artwork. So great.

And I thought of a third one. Okay. Another one that's, this one's 36 minutes, called Biotherapy. Oh, I like the sound of that. This is 1986. Nasty Japanese Gorefest.

about a group of Japanese scientists being stalked and viciously butchered by a creepy-looking alien who's wearing a trench coat. So yeah, these little movies are out there, and they're not that hard to find if you just... use the googolizer yeah we might have to do a roundup of those of just like let's do a couple of them i need obviously i need an excuse to watch them because i've been hovering around my consciousness or semi-consciousness

Look, semi-consciousness is one of my favorite states of being. As a wise person once said, it's the best of both worlds, alive and unconscious. Give me some... al pastor tacos and i'll i'll see you in the semi-conscious yeah i got an enchilada waiting for me after this and that that's just gonna put me on the couch i

this is unrelated to anything we've talked about, but before we recorded, I took a nap, uh, because that's the kind of life I live and, uh, woke up with like, drool coming out like i nap so hard this wasn't like a delicate little cat nap where i came to like i came to and my girlfriend was like are you okay I was like, why? And she was like, you were really snoring. Like, you were going after it. And not only did I snore that much, like, I drooled at everything. I drooled on the dog.

This is how passed out I was. I don't know if it's the cold weather or if it's just we got a very human-centric kitten. We have a kitten that really loves to sleep with... us like she has to be in bed with us passed out and i don't know how she's sleeping through the night almost the entire night you know i'll forgive her that five in the morning like hey hey

what's up yeah is the day starting now come on guys let's play you know whatever but like man i'm telling you there's just something about waking up and realizing there's a six pound kitten that you could have killed with your big old body like like man like man i hope you can claw me awake because if i roll over on you you're a dead man so In our bed, there are two animals that sleep in the bed with us. And there's some pets as well. Right.

well played but no so there's there's johnson the dog who usually curls up at the foot of the bed so he's mostly okay but uh every now and again he gets needy and just decides that he is going to sleep flush against my body like like a furry lover and the the other one though is a cat named zombie

and zombie is about 18 pounds that's a big that's a big baby is a big cat like she's on she's been on a diet she's lost about three pounds she was bigger before oh shit yeah yeah yeah so she's lost weight but that cat will uh my girlfriend refers to them as the yentas because they like to sleep both between us to keep us, you know, pure chaste. Oh, man. That's great.

so that's keeping you honest i like it yeah so um yeah god forbid we kick both of them out of the room uh but yeah yeah so i i feel it but I, there's something I really love about waking up in the morning. Like when my head pops up, like Johnson said, also pops up. He's like, Oh, time to go. We doing this. You, are you fucking around? I mean, you just, is this just you pissing or are we going?

right and uh but i adore it i love i love having an animal sleep i like i know a lot of people are like i refuse to allow an animal in in my bed because they're filthy disgusting animals But I'm like, eh, aren't we all? I've requested the Leah to crate me at night. Just for her own. For her own pleasure or safety. Nope.

all right well um hey man this was as per usual a delight thank you so much for oh look at that there's a cat yeah that's the big baby yeah this one is three times the weight of the little kitten i showed you earlier but she's scared to death of the new kitten she's totally intimidated she's slinking all over this house like where is it where the fuck is it

Yeah, since me and my girlfriend moved in together, we have between us five cats. Wow. Wow. You know, you only see two or three of them at any given time, because there are a couple that keep to the shadows. Right. But when I go to feed them, sure enough. There they are. Yeah. Yeah. And every now and again, I'm like, wait a second. When did we get sick? Hey, you get out of here. You're a neighbor cat.

But anyway, what I was going to say is I thank you so much for doing this. Always have the absolute best time. i'd love to be here when we we get together and talk about this stuff so uh you were taking a hiatus is there anything you want to pimp other than your relaxation and your peace of mind oh man yeah hello this is the doom show we'll be back in 2024

We got big plans. I just needed a little breather. But yeah, as for other stuff, I'm still doing the Doomed Movie-thon YouTube channel. I'm fairly regular with, you know, just... being regular now fairly regular with my video output there i've been working my way through my giallo collection just showing off all my cool crap that would be a child's college fund

I'm in the process of writing a giallo meltdown too. So my book about watching too many giallo movies is of course on Amazon for people to. help me reap the rewards of my evil self-publishing ways. But yeah, G.L.A. Meltdown Vol. 2, I have actually found more than enough movies to fill a second volume of me torturing myself, watching... like 15 movies in a weekend like a goofball there's nothing instead of like there's no better way to take a break than to write a book yeah

Yeah, I'm saving my brain from podcast editing and then destroying it with book editing like a cool dude. There's nothing more relaxing than reading what you've written and thinking, I'm an idiot. The most grateful I would be to anyone hearing this, I have a music channel that I've been putting a lot of work into. It's called The Slow Wizard.

My friend nicknamed me that. That was my rap name in the 90s. And then one day I was re-watching Big with Tom Hanks. And at the beginning of the movie, he's playing that video game where he's fighting the slow wizard. i was like dude is that where you got that he's like yeah people think i'm really original but i i just steal from movies and i'm like i just love big

Yeah, big is great, whatever. The Slow Wizard is my channel on YouTube, and it's just me making usually ambient, relaxing stuff. I get a little weird sometimes. Sometimes I don't know what relaxing is. If you guys would check that out. It's pretty weird. All right. Excellent, man. Well, everyone will subscribe to The Slow Wizard on YouTube. And if you don't, I will find you and I will kill you. please um with my muscles uh all right thanks richard and uh i'll be right back to close the show

And there you have it. There is the end of our conversation about Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder in Hell. As you can tell, we both really, really liked this movie and had a blast with it.

And as Richard promised, we have been looking at some of the sort of gonzo, short, splatter-fest films from Japan that we discussed on the show. And I think we're probably going to... rejoin to do something about that or maybe the Junji Ito series on Netflix or I mean who knows there are a number of options but we'll have Richard back sooner rather than later and be sure that you're

Uh, checking out his YouTube channel as well. Um, and for next time we will be doing another, uh, found footage full episode. this time on a movie that has been likened to the movie Be My Cat, which if you've never seen that found footage movie, it is at the very least memorable.

So this is supposed to be, along those lines, kind of crazy in that respect. So we'll see. I haven't watched it yet, but that's the next thing we're going to do. I might watch it today, as a matter of fact, after I finish recording this. Uh, but I just want to say again, thanks for sticking around for all the solo shows. I hope you enjoyed them. Um, I'm planning on doing a lot more guest work in the coming months this year. So.

It'll be a little less me by myself and a little more me with other people. And whichever way you prefer it, I appreciate you sticking around to listen. So that is it for this time. I will see you in a week and thank you as always for joining the dark parade. I'll see you next time.