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! Something interesting to note is that there is another film called Battlefield Baseball which was originally a manga titled Jigoku Koushien. Battlefield Baseball was made in 2003, roughly 7 years before Deadball and oddly enough it has the same actor Tak Sakaguchi starring in both films. I don't know if Deadball is an unofficial remake of Battlefield Baseball, it would not surprise me if it were. I own the original manga that Battlefield Baseball was based off of. Deadball reminded me a lot of the manga Jigoku Koshien. I haven't seen Battlefield Baseball so I don't know how similar it is to Deadball but I'm guessing they are gonna be pretty similar.

The Japanese Baseball Riki-oh who dresses like Clint Eastwood in 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' to a prison school is Nazi-Germany-Japan where Juvenile halls have now been indoctrinated as prison schools led by sadistic Nazi commandants who resemble Ilsa from 'Ilsa She-Wolf of the SS'. The inmates are forced to play to the death in a 'Death Race 2000'-esque game of baseball where the winners of the game is released from the prison school. All the while these wacky, weird, lovable, and absolutely insane characters having to deal with amazingly over the top and at times hilarious cheesy gore, American pop culture references, bad puns, absurdist humor and sight gags galore. Its like if someone threw Riki-Oh and The Sandlot into a blender and hit puree. I mean what else can I say about this movie, if it sounds right up your alley chances are you'll dig it. 8/10

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.

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 ! !