(1969)
4
Tom Vick
Japanese cult director Yasuzo Masumura's feverish adaptation of Edogawa Rampo's novel bears a passing resemblance to The Collector and other portraits of obsessed perverts kidnapping women, but its outrageousness sets it apart. Throwing all seriousness to the wind in the very first scene, it begins with the blind sculptor Michio (Eiji Funakoshi) lasciviously groping a sculpture of a nude woman in a gallery. Becoming obsessed with Aki (Mako Midori), the model who posed for it, he masquerades as a masseur in order to give her a real-life groping in her apartment. He then drags her back to an abandoned warehouse with the help of his sinister mother. (Like everything else in this film, the oedipal themes are anything but subtle). His warehouse lair alone is worth the price of admission. The walls are covered with sculpted oversized female body parts, and in the middle of the room recline two huge nude sculptures. What begins as a standard psycho kidnapping becomes more and more outrageous as Michio and Aki descend into a world of mutual madness, becoming, against all laws of medical science, almost completely subhuman in the course of maybe a couple of weeks. Masumura, a master of dark humor and macabre psychodrama, strikes an odd balance between silliness and horror throughout the film. One of the nuttier entries in his oeuvre, Blind Beast is a delicious guilty pleasure.
cast-crew for Blind Beast on AllMovie
Blind Beast (1969)
