FILM REVIEW – BATTLEFIELD STADIUM.
Also
released under the title Battlefield Baseball, this very funny, shamelessly
daft martial arts spoof is a true original, in the spirit of Shaolin Soccer
& Kung Fu Hustle. The premise is simply that of a mediocre Japanese
High-school baseball team finding itself in a tournament against a team of
zombie like killer players from a rival school in a tournament without rules,
where players attack each other and fight to the death.
The
good guys have one good baseball player, known as Gorilla, as he is a man of
pure rage and impatient fury who intimidates his own teammates for their
inefficiency. Their other leading player is a spectacle wearing nervous nerd
called ‘Four Eyes’; who is scared of just about everyone and everything and
clearly a lousy baseball player too. Four
Eyes runs away when the bad players slaughter all of his teammates, including
Gorilla. He finds himself in the company of a young punkish tearaway who saves
him from a group of bullies by fighting their leader who wields a baseball bat.
The punk throws himself at the bat as if he was a ball, and forces the attacker
to strike out three times. The attacker then resorts to ordinary fighting, and
the punk easily thrashes him. Later the attacker returns, having had a face lift
(he is in fact replaced by another actor for this and he will later be replaced
again when he comes back as a girl). He is now a friend to the punk who beat
him up so neatly.
The
punk is clearly an ace baseball player, and Four Eyes, along with the school
headmaster, and self-appointed coach (who is fanatical about winning the game)
try to talk him into joining the surviving team – The punk can’t, as
he vowed never to play again after accidentally killing his father with a
baseball (hitting it hard enough to punch it clean through his dad’s chest and
out the other side). We are given this
story in song.
Four Eyes also has a secret – his battle-axe of a Mother hates baseball and threatens to kill him if he ever so much as watches the game. Eventually fining out that he is practicing and after approaching the punk, she puts her son in a cage. The punk fights the mother for his freedom, winning a very tough fight, and learning that she is in fact his own mother too – and that she didn’t want her other son to die or run away from home over the game as her husband and the punk did.
The
punk now runs into the bad guys who seem to kill him, but in Heaven, his father
forgives him for his own death and sends him back to play. The punk comes back
to life. He and Four Eyes now face the bad guys but they are only two against a
team of nine. At this point, others join the team, the mother of both boys,
Gorilla, who has been rebuilt as robo-gorilla, a cheer-leader who has a crush
on Gorilla, the third, now female incarnation of the school bully, - the second
having been killed by the evil players, and a few others. They win the farcical
battle against the villains, killing all but two, though the leader of the bad
guys, looking rather like Jim Carrey’s The Mask, repents evil, and vows to turn
good. The other surviving bad guy however is unrepentant and machine guns down
everyone in sight, players and spectators alike, leaving only the punk and a
few shocked spectators alive.
The
punk cries and his falling tears perform a miracle, resurrecting everyone for a
happy ending – all except one spectator, a man who has been seen watching and
laughing all along from the stadium stands, drinking alcohol with his dog by
his side. His alcoholism has killed him. The dog, which we now discover to be
the narrator of the whole film, expresses no regret at his passing after a full
and happy life watching baseball, and the film ends.
Highly inventive, eccentric and very funny with some great
make up effects on the bad guys from Hell.
Arthur Chappell
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