Blind Beast (1969) - Yasuzo Masumura
Related: Japanese bondage - amputation in fiction - 1969 - Edogawa Rampo - Japanese cinema - Yasuzo Masumura
Blind Beast (1969) - Yasuzo Masumura [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Blind Beast (1969) - Yasuzo Masumura [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Plot Synopsis: A blind sculptor kidnaps a beautiful young model and takes her back to his home. He and his mother live in a warehouse that he has turned into a surreal tribute to the senses. It is filled with huge sculptures of body parts and the female form. He is obsessed with exploring the senses to the fullest. At first, the model only wants to escape from this bizarre scene, but eventually she succumbs to his strange vision and even surpasses his obsession. [Jul 2006]
The film shares similarities with The Collector by John Fowles, Boxing Helena (1993) and Tattoo (1981).
Description
A blind sculptor kidnaps an artists' model and imprisons her in his warehouse studio--a shadowland of perverse monuments to the female form. Here a deranged passion play of sensual and sexual obsession is acted out in a world where sight is replaced by touch. Japanese New Wave master Yasuzo Masumura's beautiful and terrifying tale of erotic horror, from a short story by Edogawa Rampo, is one of the most dazzlingly stylistic tour de forces in the history of cinema. Fantoma is very proud to present "Blind Beast" uncut and in its original DaieiScope aspect ratio for the first time in the U.S. --Description via amazon.com
One of the most fascinatingly freakish of all the big screen adaptations of the works of Japanese mystery writer Edogawa Rampo is Moju, a.ka.The Blind Beast. This outrageous film from 1969 was directed by the criminally underrated Yasuzo Masumura, director of such powerful melodramas as Kisses (Kuchizuke, 1957), Giants and Toys (Kyojin To Gangu, 1958), the lesbian love-triangle Manji (1964), and Red Angel (Akai Tenshi, 1966). Masumura's early work and essays on film in the late 50s spurred a young Nagisa Oshima and his peers at Shochiku Studios to radically reconfigure the nation's traditional cinema, giving birth to the Japanese New Wave of the 60s in the process.
Though the plot bears some similarity to John Fowles' powerful novel The Collector, published in 1963 and rather listlessly adapted for the big screen by William Wyler in 1965 with Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar as captor and captured, Moju is based on a rather grotesque tale by Rampo first serialised in the Asahi national newspaper between 1931 and 1932. --Jasper Sharp, http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/moju.shtml, accessed May 2004
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