Aditya Gokhale There are sometimes films which are depraved for the sake of being depraved. There is some seriously disturbing stuff happening on the screen but the progression of the narrative to reach that extreme stage seems so contrived that you ultimately end up somewhat dissatisfied in the end! Based on Rampo Edogawa's story, Yasuzo Masumura's "Blind Beast" (1969) falls in this category. Michio (Eiji Funakoshi) is a blind sculptor (blind since birth) who has, over the years, developed the "sense of touch" to the fullest to satisfy or please himself. All other senses like sound, smell and sight are of no use to him because they aren't the real deal and "sight" he has never known! He has come to learn a lot about how things may look and has developed his own understanding of the forms of various objects around him. Most notably he has become obsessed with the female body as he finds it the most beautiful creation and feeling up the female body parts gives him the most pleasure(!). He has a studio built out of a warehouse and it contains a lot of sculptures of the female body and the individual parts as he has perceived them using his sense of touch! And now he has made "pioneering the art of touch" his life's mission! "An art form for the blind, by the blind" as he describes it! Enter beautiful model Aki (Mako Midori), stories of whose beautiful body Michio has heard! A desire to feel up Aki's exquisite anatomy and to use her as a model for his latest sculpture drives Michio into kidnapping her with the help of his mother and holding her captive in his studio. Aki tries her best to flee but is overpowered by the blind sculptor and his mother. Amidst the labyrinth of giant female body parts including eyes, lips, nose, breasts, hands, legs, he starts building a sculpture, feeling up a reluctant Aki once in a while and then moulding his clay accordingly!Aki starts thinking up ways to escape and even makes several attempts to trick the mother-son duo into letting her go. But a dramatic change of events turns this kidnap drama into a strange tale of macabre fetishism, as the kidnapped starts identifying with her captor and finds herself embracing his perverse ways….."Blind Beast" surely has the power to grip from its very first frame. The initial few sequences after the kidnapping are very well filmed and give a distinctly eerie and claustrophobic feel as Aki fumbles and stumbles in the surreal studio full of sculpted body parts. It is also commendable that the film doesn't follow the oft-trodden path that kidnap dramas usually take. The final half hour takes an entirely different direction and that's a good thing. What isn't very appealing, however, is the abrupt manner in which that direction is taken! The jump or transition is somewhat half-baked. It is not entirely unusual for kidnap dramas to portray their victims as utterly stupid and clumsy idiots whose repeated attempts to escape always predictably fail, because if the escape really happens, then there is nothing left to film! "Blind Beast"'s Aki is no different, as in spite of some clever tricks she plays to fool the mother-son duo whilst trying to escape, she always manages to bungle up in the end. That's not all, what's more frustrating is how she even gets overpowered by a completely blind man and sometimes even misses some blatantly obvious chances of getting the better of him….all for the sake of movie continuity perhaps? It also doesn't help that the otherwise efficient blind person who is very adept at sensing a presence from their smell, footsteps and breathing sounds, lacks consistency and behaves in the clunkiest manner at times. Towards the third act, as the film gets to its focal point in a bizarre twist to the proceedings, we, the audiences wonder…how did things even get so far? It just doesn't quite cut it.But for all its worth, "Blind Beast" is a watchable film and manages to disturb the viewer in the final act, with terrific performances from the two leads Mako Midori and Eiji Funakoshi. One wonders though, whether this film was an excuse for the filmmaker and the lead actor to simply to feed their nasty appetite of fondling their lead woman, because moments when she ISN'T groped in this film are few and far between! Score: 7/10.

DICK STEEL Since this is partly a blog, if I may indulge in a personal story and experience involving a touchy feely blind man, that while watching this show somewhat reminded me of him. I was with a female friend minding own business at a train station near the West. I left her at the ticketing counter while I answered nature's call. When I returned, there was this blind man talking to her, and out from nowhere, a hand shot out and grabbed her arm. I wondered what the heck was going on of course, only for her to assure me that he was just asking for directions, and needed help.I didn't buy his story naturally, and especially not when his hand started to roam along her arm. Suspicious and not liking this blind dude, I reached out and to my surprise had to exert considerable force to pry his grip on my friend's arm, and he reached out for mine instead. He pleaded that he needed someone to guide him home, and from the address given, it wasn't that far away. So we decided to escort him rather than dumping him there, though along the way he had this iron-vice grip on my arm, as if punishing me for disallowing him the touch of my female friend. To cut it short, we let him be along his way at the foot of his block. I was left with an arm with fingernails dug right in, and a supposed neighbour told us that the blind man is a little crazed, and to ignore him. Who knows what we would have found should we have escorted him to his doorstep, probably find a studio like that in the film! Which was nothing short of amazing, and I think many in the audiences gasped at the audacious sculptures of body parts handing from the walls, like a 3D police photo-fit containing limbs, facial features, and boobs of all shapes and sizes. Eiji Finakoshi plays the blind sculptor Michio, who is looking to transcend his art by seeking a muse with whom he can explore the female body, and together with his acute sense of touch, translate the intricacies and sensual female form to clay. The film opens with his visit to a photography exhibition featuring the model Aki (Mado Midori), and through her narration, there's some strange connection being felt when Michio starts to fondle a sculpture of hers.Almost like Psycho, Michio lives under the confines of his small house cum studio, under the close supervision of his mother (played by Noriko Sengoku), who go to great lengths in order to care for her disabled son, and that included conspiring with him to kidnap his Aki to become his new muse and inspiration to create that perfect artwork. And from that point on, it's the relationship and dynamics between these three main characters within a constricted space that elevates this film with common sensibilities and rivalry that any layman can identify with.As the proverbial "they" always say, trouble will brew when there are two women in the house. Aki's presence is typical of a daughter-in-law who has trouble with both the son and his mother. There's this constant tussle between the two women to vie for the guy's attention, whose blindness is almost like a metaphor that we are always put in no good a position where we sometimes fail apply good sense and judgement, and allow emotions to take control. Here, Michio's lust often gives Aki the advantage, who is constantly seeking some means of escaping her ordeal as a kidnapped victim of art. The actors here all put in top notch performances, especially Mako Midori in her role shifting from victim to perpetrator, from helplessness to the gaining of the upper hand, scheming in applying the divide and conquer strategy to wedge jealousy and suspicion between her captors.The last act was a descent into the strange and weird when the Stockholm Syndrome kicked in and comes full of touchy-feely scenes, with Michio using sexual violence to finally overpower his muse, and of course had plenty to classify the film under gore and horror. In fact, when the last scenes were into their full swing, you can here the yelps of disbelief of the gory obvious that would unfold, especially when director Yasuzo Masumura, who drew upon this Rampo Edogawa story, never failed to remind you of the razor thin line between pleasure and pain. While at times comical with the words of expression used, there's enough here that would make you squirm, and this descent into madness is likely to stick in your mind long after the end credits roll.Nonetheless this film had impressed me with its huge, surreal artistic objects, and won me over with the middle act, which became the make-or-break. The last act seemed to be undoubtedly classifying this as a cult film for its shock value, though it does put out a statement of the lengths that some would go in order to achieve that level of artistic self-actualization, which comes with pain and sacrifice.

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.

FloatingOpera7 "Blind Beast" "Moju" (1969): Eiji Funakoshi, Mako Midori, Noriko Sengoku...Director Yasuzo Masumura, Screenplay/Story ...Rampo Edogawa, Yoshio Shirasaka.The films of 1969 were in many ways a revolution, a bold step forward into the future of cinema. Like the decade of the 60's, liberal attitudes were embraced, as was rebelliousness against convention and shock appeal was big. Graphic adult content, that is to say R rated and X rated material by today's standards, was bombarding the big screen and a new wave of cinema hit America never before seen even by adult audiences in the 40's and 50's whose films were always under the eye of the censors and were at most only mildly shocking or violent. Foreign films paved the way for this new type of shocking film, and other films from this time - coming from South America, Mexico, Europe and Asia, were bold in their excessive shock appeal. "Blind Beast", released in 1969 by Japanese Director Yasuzo Masumura is possibly the most graphic, the most sadistic, twisted, horrifying piece of veiled romantic art-house material. The art-house signature is all over it. Its lead character is a blind sculptor who is sexually frustrated and in pursuit of a life-long, impossible romance, there are many fine moments of cinematography that makes use of interesting camera angles, artsy in themselves, actual sculptures and mood lighting, primarily light colors and clarity at the start of the film and total darkness by the end of it.Though not everyone would call this a romance, the blind hero Michio (Funakoshi) is a blind man who has never known any real love from a woman and who is ostracized and isolated, living a lot like the Phantom of the Opera. Only his mother (Sengoku) cares for him. They quickly determine that he needs a woman, a bride and they kidnap a beautiful artist's model (Midori). At first, she is disgusted and horrified by her situation. Alone in a sunken warehouse, Michio repeatedly rapes her and they are both deprived of real food, clothes and contact with the outside world. This can easily be traced to similar stories like "Beauty and the Beast" and the fore-mentioned "Phantom". Michio quickly trains his kidnapped bride to respond to touch and to rely on her senses. She quickly becomes insane and goes blind. They are both now in a bizarre, sadomasochistic, symbiotic relationship in which he provides her with rough physical dominance which she craves. He tortures her, beats her, whips her, bites her, drinks her blood and eats some of her flesh. Before long, she equates physical pain with love. Surprisingly, Michio can still make sculptures. Before long, we realize that reality has set in. They are both insane and dying of lack of food, social contact and a real life. They descend into degradation and self-destruction. She demands that he chop off her limbs before she dies. This truly horrible story is good only because it is so out-of-this-world for 1969 and so bold and daring in its subject matter. Keep in mind that this is not for younger audiences. The scenes are graphic and intense. A film that is little-known, little appreciated and yet a sort of whispered-about cult classic, a story that may arouse some and disgust others. Nevertheless, being a Japanese foreign film, with much philosophical and Buddhist-like ruminations by the girl's voice-over, it is an art-house film nonetheless. The cinematography as mentioned is really interesting and as much a part of the story as the characters and their evil passion. Notice how seriously it takes itself for a film that could be reduced to mere pornography or "snuff" film. There is a strange sadness to this film, a tragic quality to it that makes it somehow more than just about the shock appeal. The shock element is still there and it's strong but it's a film with a powerful impact nonetheless. It's art-house. Just not to everyone's tastes.