Slideshow
BLIND BEAST
盲獣
Japan, 1969
Directed by Yasuzo Masumura
With Eiji Funakoshi, Mako Midori, Noriko Sengoku
Based on the novel by Edogawa Ranpo
Approx. 86 min. 35mm print courtesy Japan Foundation.
“I only like it if it hurts!” In Tokyo’s swinging sixties, after a long day posing for an S&M photo-shoot, Aki (Mako Midori) is visited by blind masseur Michio (Eiji Funakoshi), who kidnaps her and keeps her captive in his underground lair. What starts out as a strange case of Stockholm syndrome evolves into a dangerous, never-ending game of desire. BLIND BEAST — uncategorizable by design — plays with the popular pinku eiga (erotic drama) genre, and cuts with the sharp sensibility of a sculptor’s chisel.
Reviews
“In the future, for the cinema to be able to be commercially exploited, we will have to find really crazy, really extraordinary subjects. It may be the end of cinema, but without a doubt, it will also be its most fruitful moment.”
– Yasuzo Masumura
“Surreal and ceaselessly subversive, Masumura Yasuzo’s BLIND BEAST explores the outer limits of eroticism and the human senses. Such notions of the erotic as ineluctably linked to death suggest not only the work of the Marquis de Sade, but also the ‘dissident surrealist’ Georges Bataille, whose transgressive 1928 novella Story of the Eye can be seen as a spiritual precursor of sorts to BLIND BEAST.”
– Slant Magazine