Terracotta Distribution has released the first trailer for a low-budget horror-thriller that must be seen to be believed, Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell. This Japanese retro gore fest has been described as a cross between the 1977 Japanese horror classic Hausu (House) and Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead. While fans won't be able to enjoy this bizarre film on the big screen, it will be available on DVD April 24.

Terracotta Distribution debuted this new trailer on their YouTube channel. From the land famous for cursed VHS tapes, comes a forgotten nasty video. 'Discovered' in a dusty second hand store in Tokyo and released for the first time in the UK, the Bloody Muscle Body Builder invites fans of bizarro lo-fi cinema on a far out journey, into hell. After a surprise phone call interrupts his daily workout, brawny bodybuilder Naoto (Shinichi Fukazawa) agrees to meet his photojournalist ex-girlfriend to help with her research on haunted houses.

Accompanied by a professional psychic, they visit an abandoned house once owned by Naoto's father. But inside the house a dark secret lingers and they find themselves trapped and tormented by a relentless ghost with a 30 year grudge. This film has had an arduous journey to completion, with writer-director Shinichi Fukazawa first working on the script in 1995, but he had trouble financing production and post-production, which lead to the film not being completed until 2009. The film did receive a Japanese theatrical release in 2012, followed by an altered version of the film known as the "Complete Edition" released theatrically in 2014, before arriving on home video in Japan later that year.

The supporting cast also includes Masaaki Kai as the psychic Mizuguchi while Asako Nosaka plays Naoto's ex-girlfriend Mika. Shinichi Fukazawa also portrays Naoto's recently-deceased father, whose actions at the now-abandoned house decades earlier help set the plot in motion. The film only has a runtime of 61 minutes long, although it isn't clear if this DVD release comes with any special features or not, but we'll find out for sure next week when this film debuts on DVD.

Aside from The Evil Dead, this movie "borrows" a number of elements from other classic horror films. Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell lifts a device used in Hellraiser, where the flesh and blood of a living human being is used to revive a rotting corpse. Fans will also notice an animated severed hand similar to the one from The Evil Dead II, along with The Thing's spider that is formed from a disembodied head and the flexing muscle/shirt burst effect from Incredible Hulk. Take a look at the trailer for Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell below.