Battlefield Baseball
Battlefield Baseball (地獄甲子園 Jigoku Kōshien?, "Hell Stadium") is a 2003 Japanese film directed by Yūdai Yamaguchi. The film is written by Gatarō Man, based on his manga series of the same name, and stars Tak Sakaguchi, Atsushi Itō, and Hideo Sakaki. It was produced by Ryuhei Kitamura.The film is a combination of several genres, mixing martial arts action with the clichs of the sports film-particularly skewering baseball, one of Japan's most popular high school sports-and the violence and brutality of a horror film. The film's bizarre-sometimes almost incoherent-plot, blood and gore, and unique comedy have given it something of a "cult" popularity in the West.Though the film is ostensibly about high school baseball rivalries, the amount of actual baseball in the film is fairly light. There are many scenes involving bats and balls, however.