Blind Beast

Using the pulp novel by Edogawa Rampo, also known as the Japanese Poe, as his point of departure and infusing it with elements from John Fowles’ “The Collector” and Georges Franju’s “Eyes Without a Face”, Yasuzo Masumura thrives on the canvas of a delirious case of the Stockholm syndrome: the erotic, sadomasochistic relationship born between a blind sculptor and the naked model he kidnaps and holds hostage in his studio – with the help of his elderly mother, to boot. The pinnacle of the director’s obsession with violence and sex, as “the two fundamental issues which form the very basis of the human condition”, the most notorious Masumura film almost entirely transpires within the brutal artist’s atelier, which, with its oversized plaster human body parts, looks like it has leapt out of Salvador Dalί’s nightmares. With its unconventional love story, the film tightropes without prejudice between sex and art, pain and pleasure, victimizer and victim.

Original Title: Môjû

Director: Yasuzo Masumura

Screenwriter: Yoshio Shirasaka

DoP: Setsuo Kobayashi

Music: Hikaru Hayashi

Editor: Tatsuji Nakashizu

Principal Cast: Eiji Funakoshi, Mako Midori, Noriko Sengoku

Country: Japan

Year: 1969

Running Time: 84’

Language: Japanese