Deadball (2011) Poster

(2011)

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4/10
Deddobôru: Disorganized chaos
Platypuschow3 January 2019
This Sushi Typhoon movie has everything you'd expect, hyper violence, over the top gore and zany Japanese antics.

It tells the story of a teenager with a killer pitch, he's vowed never to play baseball again after accidentally killing his father (As you do). Now he's in prison, will he be able to stick to his vow?

As you can imagine the plot is pretty irrelevant, the entire 100 minutes are simply violent and chaotic. Bouncing from one over the top kill to the next and that can only take a movie so far.

If you want an actual "Movie" in the traditional sense you'll likely not enjoy it. It's silly gory fun and that's all.

There is enjoyment to be had, but it's very niche.

The Good:

Some laughs to be had

A few great kills

The Bad:

Wafer thin plot

Most of the comedy falls flat

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Squeaky toys are highly desirable in prison

I don't know what those jeans of his were, but I want some!

Baldness is a disability, which I also have! Am I entitled to anything?

Baseball is a combat technique
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6/10
Screwball.
BA_Harrison22 January 2012
Warning: Spoilers
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.
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6/10
Tighten up your grip and get ready for a game of Dead Ball
rgblakey1 April 2013
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.
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Not for everyone, but it was good fun for me!
knifebat23 May 2018
You don't need to be a pro with Japanese humor to appreciate this film. However Deadball is really one of those films that is not for everyone. If you enjoy extreme comedy films like Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie then this one is up your alley.

I saw a Japanese review of this movie on Youtube just to gather some more info and apparently this film is the 4th one of the Typhoon Festival series of splatter films for the world market. Yes this is a comedy movie with splatter mixed together, it's not meant to be taken seriously in anyway.

The baseball aspect is quite small. Far less baseball compared to the Major League films. And the appeal of this film is that the story doesn't really make sense, it's a baseball film where they don't really play baseball, but instead they kill each other.

Probably the best part of this film occurs after viewing, when your trying to tell your friend all about the insanity that is this film!

Dead Ball is the sequel to Battlefield Baseball. However if you jump right in with Dead Ball you will be fine, you won't be lost. Between the two I recommend Dead Ball over Battlefield Baseball because the budget is bigger.
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1/10
Could have been very cool but failed
robfather_876 August 2013
This is one of my hardest reviews so far in a way this movie is cool or the ideas are cool but everything is done bad. I like these kind of hilarious Asian movies that does everything crazy in them but this one failed in many ways. It is about a guy who have killed with his baseball killing move and will not do this move ever again. He is sent to prison for his actions and is forced to play on a baseball team of inmates. They have to play against another prison team of all female inmates. It is a game of bloody death. I would not call this a horror movie actually. It is just a comedy gore fest.

I never like CGI in modern movies it's becoming very bad cinema for in my opinion but on these kind of Asian movies it is just cool sometimes. In this movie it did not work at all. It is a shame they did not focus more on the other inmates personalities because that would have made this movie very cool. They have hilarious personalities but you never get to know any of them. The acting is over the top bad but I don't think anyone who ever want to watch this and hoping for good acting or good story.

As I said I like these kind of movies from Asia with gore and liters of blood in them but usually they are interesting to watch but this did nothing to get me interested or having much fun. Some scenes are very funny in a silly way though. Like one with a guy getting the baseball in his eye and it is stuck there for the rest of the movie. If this is the first movie you want to see from this kind of genre stay away I would recommend many others to begin with. Like Tokyo gore police (2008) starring the girl from Audition, Or maybe it is best to start with the legendary Battle Royal movie. This movie is in my opinion not worth watching but I guess if you seek these kind of movies like me I watch everything that looks interesting and a bit out of the normal cinema joy, you may like this one.
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6/10
Guy with a blazing fastball vs. Elsa's ugly stepsister.
Someguysomwhere26 January 2012
A young man, Jubeh Yakyu, swears off baseball after his literally blazing fastball offs his old man. Later, as a young adult with the fashion sense of a biker and a Sergio Leone western, he is arrested for a 2 week spree of 54 crimes ("inluding dropping televisions on people"). With a promise of freedom, the governor sends him to "Pteradactyl Hall", a juvenile detention center run by a headmistress called Ishihara who has a thing for the Nazi period in her dress and manner. She is also the chairperson for a baseball tournament called "Juvie League". The governor suspects she's up to something and he wants Jubeh to find out what.

This movie is an over-the-top, cartoonish, scattershot of the absurd, ridiculous, and the stupid. This means that if one of them doesn't make you grin or laugh outright there's another not far behind that will probably do the job. Jubeh arrives at Pterdactyl Hall and later finds out that is brother, Mushashi, was there earlier and died. Ishihara, with some kind of contraption strapped to her to generate tears, gives him some sob story and tells him that his brother would want him to play baseball. Jubeh decides that he will play again. His team, the Pterdactyl Gauntlets, will play St. Black Dahlia High, an all girl team (Woof!). But it is not the game he and his teammates imagined. This movie is obviously silly, but "good" silly. Enjoy! Love, Boloxxxi.
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6/10
Gunbatte kudasai!
BandSAboutMovies3 October 2019
Warning: Spoilers
The Japanese LOVE baseball, perhaps more than their American counterparts. Their love, however, is filtered through their own lens, which means that their edited American games take out everything between pitches. That means that a game that takes us 3 hours or more to watch can take but minutes. Keep that in mind and you'll understand how a movie like Deddoboru came to be.

The film starts with young Jubeh Yakyu playing a game of catch with his father, who asks him to throw him his best pitch. This is a horrible time for Jubeh to discover he has superpowers, as the resulting throw ignites Earth and blows his dad up real good.

As a result, Jubeh becomes a juvenile delinquent and hero of the teenagers of Japan, doing things like killing fifty people a week and throwing TV sets at people. He's sent to the Pterodactyl Juvenile Reformatory, a place where his adopted brother was once a prisoner before his death.

Chief warden Ishihara - not-so-coincidentally the granddaughter of a Nazi collaborator - is in charge of the prison baseball league and knows that the team will finally have a chance if Jubeh is on their team. Also: her butler looks exactly like Klaus Nomi, a fact that is called out in the film.

Director Yudai Yamaguchi knows of strange baseball. He also directed 2003's Jigoku Koshien (Hell Stadium), or as it's known in the West, Battlefield Baseball. The hero of that film was also named Jubeh, but this is less of a straight sequel than just another movie about deadly baseball.

Tak Sakaguchi, who plays Jubeh, is pretty much acting like the Japanese Man With No Name in this, constantly smoking and looking cool while he does so. Literally, he has the superpower - in addition to being able to throw father-murdering fastballs - to generate a cancer stick whenever he needs it.

Should you watch it? Does the prospect of a giant robot covered with swastikas and evil prisoner women battling a superpowered Asian Clint Eastwood fill you with glee? Because if it not, anata ni wa kokoro ga arimasen, as the Japanese say.
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7/10
An entertaining and original film
vei-7642129 May 2017
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.
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9/10
this is an expansion to Shaolin Soccer !
usa-mike25 September 2012
This movie takes place in the same range like Shaolin Soccer. Deadball is to Baseball, what Shaolin Soccer is to soccer (or Captain Tsubasa why not!). There are plenty situation which contain a lot a blood and humor too ! Even some of them have a few "kind-of-erotic-hentai" scenes... I didn't put a maximal note because the music, specially the score (instrumental music) is really bad, it sounds like a old 70's TV show. At least, in Shaolin soccer, the score was wonderful like a John williams' music. I would add to this movie, that if you liked Battle Royale, then you will loves this movie too ! The Nazi-thing added in the story is a sort of great humor than only European people can get, but i hope other person will understand the comic situations, even the whole body-check ! !
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8/10
Live to die
nogodnomasters9 October 2017
Warning: Spoilers
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.
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