mevmijaumau Director Yasuzo Masumura's colorful career saw a bunch of genres, and from time to time he also dipped his toe into the pinku genre. Blind Beast, many years later gifted with a crossover with Dwarf Killer by Teruo Ishii, belongs to the ero-guro (erotic grotesque) subgenre of films which were inspired by the literary current of famed Japanese mystery writer Rampo Edogawa, who saw his influence in Poe. In fact, Blind Beast is an adaptation of Edogawa's homonymous book.The film has only three characters; a psychotic blind sculptor obsessed with physical touch, his semi-approving mother and a model they kidnap to make her his muse. It's a slow descent into utter sadomasochistic depravity, crossed with Oedipal Complex and Stockholm Syndrome. But it's not really a serious character study. In true ero-guro fashion, the story is absurd and the characters' actions are at turns totally bonkers. The film culminates in an absolutely insane bondage routine which has to be seen to be believed. There is little to no blood shown, but it's still highly disturbing. It ends somewhat on a cautionary note, as if the movie is trying to explore the darkest possible side of obsession and addiction to sexuality.One thing you may find odd is that there is almost no nudity. This seems really out of place in the final 20 minutes, but still, you have to understand the limitations of light pinku films. Another thing I found to be really strange is the beginning which shows the sculptor fondling a statue of the model and thus giving her phantom caresses, voodoo- style. This strange ability of his is never mentioned again, aside maybe from the very final scene, but it's still unclear how it fits into the initial scene, or if it does fit at all.The music is mostly composed of creepy ambiental sounds and a cool short jingle which plays 2-3 times, but the sets are another thing. This movie has one of the craziest sets I've ever seen. A claustrophobic warehouse with free-form artificial lighting. This hideout of the titular character has two huge sculptures of naked female bodies in the middle of the main room, and giant body parts made out of clay hanging on walls (eyes, noses, arms, boobs, legs...). It's pretty crazy. I wonder what went through the heads of those who were in charge of producing these setpieces.

Roman James Hoffman The career of Japanese director Yasuzo Masumura is littered with provocative and disturbing gems which plunge the viewer into the shadow of civilisation to explore the darkest, most twisted, aspects of the human condition. 'Manji' (1964) tells the story of a lesbian love-triangle, dark wartime romance 'Red Angel' ('Akai Tenshi', 1966) is epically bleak, and 'Irezumi' (1966) is a story of bitter vengeance wrecking a woman's soul. However, even among such subversive company 'Moju' ('Blind Beast', 1969) is not only the most bizarre and freakish in his oeuvre, but one of the most psychologically disconcerting films in cinema. An adaptation of the story of the same name by famed Japanese mystery writer Edogawa Rampo, whose stories were known for what became known as "eroguronansensu", ("eroticism, grotesque, nonsense"), 'Blind Beast' begins with a young model called Aki (Mako Midori) who is soon abducted by Michio (Eiji Funakoshi), a blind sculptor with an obsessive fetish with exploring the female form through the sense of touch. He takes her to his warehouse, which has been grotesquely adorned with various sculptures of over-sized female body parts (lips, eyes, breasts) and a centre-piece of a giant nude, where a bizarre sado-masochistic exploration of their respective psyches is undertaken.It is surprising and refreshing that, in a cultural landscape that has made torture porn a mainstream genre, a film like 'Moju' still manages to unnerve, and indeed does so in a deeper, more penetrating way, than any gore-laden splatter flick. What makes the film so unsettling for me is that the psychology of the characters is so rich with different layers of perversity that the boundaries that define each of them shift throughout the film before finally merging in an infernal, transcendent symbiosis which collapses the distinction between Michio and Aki, captive and captor, as well as pleasure and pain.However, while the grotesque eroticism of the film's bizarre premise is by itself discomforting, the cinematography and music are equally haunting and evoke a surreal, nightmare ambiance which captures the claustrophobic internal landscape of the characters perfectly. All told, the film is a compelling hallucinogenic journey through a realm of taboo and, while it may not appeal to all tastes, is certainly recommended for those with a fascination with the darker aspects of the human heart as well as those that enjoy films with genuine artistic aspirations rather than films that merely wish to entertain.

lastliberal Yasuzo Masumura's story of obsession and pride is definitely one worth watching.Just three characters, with Eiji Funakoshi as the blind man, but there is enough to keep your interest. Michio (Funakoshi) relies on touch as his primary means of pleasure. He is a sculptor that has created a warehouse of body parts that will blow you away, But, he wants the perfect form to sculpt and he sets his sights on the model Aki, whom he only knows by touching a sculpture of her.Aki is Mako Midori, an exotic beauty, who is best known to Japanese art-house fans in this country. She is kidnapped by Michio and enters into a bizarre S&M trip to his warehouse. Her attempts to flee result in the eventual death of Michio's mother - the third character in this film. Finally, we see love blossom into a bizarre ending that is both gory and surreal.

tehck My response to this movie is a little different than others I've read. Many point to themes like sadomasochism, the cruelty of art, and addiction. However, no one seems to have noted the rather obvious moral. In fact, the movie constantly tells viewers how to interpret its symbolism. Far from subtle, it bludgeons us with the desired interpretation with the same force Michio uses to drive his sculptor's knife through his model's limbs. It is a cautionary coming-of-age tale that enacts a distinctly Japanese version of the Oedipal myth in which the son must overcome his mother rather than his father (there are no fathers here).The blind Michio is incomplete. As the model Aki tells him, he is not a real man but a momma's boy, a child who still sleeps with his mother (which he does). His mother has done everything in her power to preserve Michio's infantile dependence. She helped him build the cavernous warehouse and fill it with the grotesquely bizarre sculptures of female body parts. The model Aki quickly realizes these are just more symbols of Michio's infantilism. Michio reacts with stunned recognition when Aki points out to him that he has made the figures so large because they represent his childish perspective. To a certain extent, Aki lessens Michio's blindness by repeatedly opening his eyes to the reality of his situation.Aki's mother, on the other hand, will go to any lengths to preserve Michio's blind reliance on her. She is more than willing to participate in kidnapping and perhaps worse to provide him a new plaything. Indeed, without this accomplice, Michio could never have captured or held Aki. After Michio has chloroformed Aki, his mother leads the way back to the den and guards the door to prevent Aki's escape. However, when Aki starts to become more than a toy to Michio by awakening his romantic and sexual desires, she threatens the mother's dominance.Again, Aki offers the interpretation of what must follow. She promises to have sex with Michio, even marry him, but only if he will break totally with his mother. In effect, she tells him that to become a man he must reject his mother and assert his mature sexuality with her. She adds that any good (Japanese?) mother would welcome such a change in her son. This sets up a literal tug of war between Aki and the mother for Michio's affection. The seductive Aki stands on one side of Michio exhorting him to choose her in return for her sexual favors, and the mother pulls at him from the other side, warning Michio that Aki is a lying slut who will betray him. The symbolic psychological triangle was so explicitly rendered that I couldn't help but laugh out loud as Michio repeatedly knocks his mother to the floor during this struggle. Then the mother pulls out the big guns, reminding Michio of all her sacrifices in bearing, birthing, and raising him. But Michio fires back with the ultimate guilt trip, accusing his mother of being the cause of his blindness. With one final shove, Michio ends his psychological struggle by knocking his mother against a pillar, after which she dies from the blow to her head.Michio has literally and figuratively broken the triangle and started on the path to manhood by choosing Aki and an adult sexual relationship. But he doesn't stop there. With the mother no longer blocking the door, Aki believes she can now escape her blind captor. She bolts, but Michio intercepts her. No longer needing his mother to control Aki's feminine assertiveness, Michio drags Aki back into the sculpture gallery and rapes her on top of the gigantic nude sculpture. Earlier, Michio had asked Aki why she agreed to pose nude for a photographer but refused to allow him to feel her body so he could sculpt it. She replied that the photographer was a famous and respected artist who presented her in a way she wanted to be viewed, as the image of the "new woman." In fact, the photographs depicted her in various states of naked bondage. Michio now explicitly forces Aki to accept the traditional role of women in Japanese culture that the photographer only symbolically portrayed -- as an utterly submissive sex object.Interestingly, it is only when Michio begins to physically abuse Aki that the director Masumura allows the viewer to enjoy Aki's full sexuality, exposing her breasts for the first time in live action (they were also visible at the beginning of the movie in the portraits exhibited by the photographer, another "real" man). Once violently subjugated, the formerly willful Aki not only accepts the submissive role but embraces it to such an extreme that she adopts Michio's disability, becoming blind herself and symbolically accepting his view of the world. She encourages him to beat and mutilate her, and she ultimately allows him to objectify her totally by dismembering her. She becomes like the sculpted body parts that adorn Michio's world, another product of his artistic vision.With Aki dead, Michio also commits suicide and validates his mother's warning. The mother had cautioned that Michio did not know the real world. Once Michio leaves the safety of her symbolic womb for the path to manhood, his end is inevitable. Maturity ultimately means death. So we're left with a very transparent rendering of a basic maturation myth with some peculiarly Japanese elements. To become a man, a boy must reject his umbilical dependence on women and take on the dominant role. Independent women, on the other hand, are seductive charlatans (except for you, Mom). To be proper members of society, they must submit totally to the desires of men. And of course, sex, as always, equals death for both, but neither has any choice but to accept it as an inevitable consequence of growing up. Obviously, Blind Beast is a feminist's allegorical nightmare. Nevertheless, it is a fascinating rendering of an archetypal story.