The blind beast
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The blind beast |
| Original title | 盲 獣 , Mōjū |
| Country of production | Japan |
| original language | Japanese |
| Publishing year | 1969 |
| length | 84 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Masumura Yasuzo |
| script | Yoshio Shirasaka |
| production | Kazumasa Nakano |
| music | Hikaru Hayashi |
| camera | Setsuo Kobayashi |
| cut | Tatsuji Nakashizu |
| occupation | |
| |
Blind Beast , also Blind Beast ( jap. 盲獣 , Moju ) is a Japanese erotic - thriller from 1969, with elements of drama and horror film of Yasuzo Masumura , one of the well-known scandal directors of classic Japanese cinema of the 1960s. The film is based on a short story published in 1931 by Hirai Tarō, better known under the pseudonym Edogawa Rampo, and is about a model who is kidnapped and imprisoned, gradually giving up her thirst for freedom in favor of sadomasochistic games and ultimately finding death.
The exploitation film produced by Daiei Studios - which went bankrupt in 1971 - is part of the Japanese erotic film called pinku eiga , an aesthetic soft porn variant that combined sex and violence with extraordinary female characters and was made around the same time as modern European auteur films .
On April 26, 2007, the feature film was broadcast in a television premiere on the German / French cultural channel ARTE in the original language with German subtitles. About five months later, the Cologne film distributor Rapid Eye Movies (in the “Nippon Classics” series) carried out the video evaluation for the German-speaking market.
action
The young model Aki Shima regularly poses for erotic, aesthetic shots from her favorite photographer Yamana. She always makes sure that her photographs have a certain artistic quality, such as a series of nudes that she shows hanging with steel chains, which speaks for a certain preference for fetishism . One day the young woman visits a gallery which, in addition to a photo show, also exhibits a revealing sculpture of the model. The work of art of her reproduced body arouses great interest from the blind amateur sculptor Michio, who is fascinated by her virgin female body and becomes an obsessed admirer. Michio's secret passion is to feel women in order to subsequently model a clay statue based purely on the sense of touch .
Disguised as a masseur, the complex man, with the help of his dominant mother, who supports her son's artistic ambitions, gains access to Aki's apartment and takes the beautiful woman to a surrealistic, secluded warehouse - his studio. In the studio, which not only houses the artist but also his mother, there are numerous oversized replicas of every imaginable part of the feminine body. Here the sculptor holds his victim and forces him to help him realize his lifelong dream, the creation of a statue of the perfect "goddess". The hostage's behavior towards her tormentor initially follows the usual conventions. The fearful and at the same time cunning beauty feels uncomfortable in the presence of the disturbed kidnapper, refuses to cooperate and tries to escape from her forced situation. After initial resistance, the stubborn Aki willingly surrenders to the blind man's groping fingers and notices that an escape seems almost hopeless, as she repeatedly fails due to Michio's watchful mother.
From then on, the shrewd tactician tries to use all tricks to win the trust of the artist, who has never had a relationship with a woman, in order to destroy the strange mother-son bond. In her escape strategy, she plays affection for the sculptor and apparently succumbs to Stockholm Syndrome . Her plan works and the blind man falls in love with the model. She so successfully divides the son, for whom she develops compassion, from the jealous mother. The resulting conflict escalates immediately. Humiliated and vindictive, the old woman tries to strangle the hostage, who is insulted as a "beast". Aki asks Michio for help, who intervenes in the opaque scuffle when suddenly there is a tragic accident with the old woman's death. The bereaved bereaved now realizes that Aki was only abusing him as a means to an end. In extreme excitement and anger, he suddenly changes his nature.
Initial manic approaches give way to a hardly thought possible use of force. The angry and confused man rapes his masochistically inclined hostage several times until the victim emotionally approaches the "blind beast" and returns the bizarre "affection". Aki falls in love with Michio. In this isolated togetherness, the two discover consensual sex and its sadomasochistic ways of increasing pleasure. At the end of the film, their passionate bond, which began with harmless biting and hitting, leads to a desire for bloody self-destruction. Aki begs her lover to forcibly mutilate her so that she can live out her sexuality until she dies. She finally dies ecstatically of her injuries, while the emaciated Michio chooses to commit suicide .
Reviews
The lexicon of international films wrote that the film "initially obeyed the rules of an erotic thriller" , but was "gradually getting closer to the sick psyche of its protagonist" . In order to achieve this, the work also makes use of “surreal images” , “psychedelic settings” and an “alienated narrative structure” in order to make “the 'crazy' perception of the characters evident” .
Web links
- Blind Beast in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The blind beast in the online film database