Until a few years later, when Bergman would deliver his near unwatchable masterpiece "Cries and Whispers", Blind Beast could easily stand as the most nauseating kammerspiel ever. The multi-layered and, frankly, quite pretentious story is still effective in exploiting phobias and revelling in twisted and obscure fetishes. A delight.

Masumura brings such great youthful energy to many of his films, they almost feel enthusiastic. In Blind Beast he takes this and mixes it with all sorts of things; elements of horror, Oedipal interests, artistic obsession, and in particular psychosexual madness. The end mixture is one that is engaging, fascinating, bizarre and constantly shifting and changing, an experience that is at once both fun and somewhat offputting (in a good way) to watch.

"A potentially interesting concept and movie but the ideas are crudely hammered into you until you lose interest and the sudden decline into twisted masochism is forced and unconvincing. A pioneering and unusual pinku with strange obsessions and bizarre set designs."

A brutal, obsessive film. The ending is so cute.

Unique and creepy, but I was slightly put off by its silliness (it begins with a man fondling a clay statute and only intensifies from there) and by how bluntly it explores its psychosexual themes.

A brutal, obsessive film. The ending is so cute.

This is a weird movie that's hard to fully understand, but it's very rich and intriguing. It touches on sexual repression, the intersection of pain and pleasure, the Oedipal struggle, the importance of the sense of touch, and of course... blindness. I think blindness is a pretty interesting topic in general, and my favorite scene in the film was the one where the sculptor Aki deftly chased the model Michio around his surreal studio at high speeds, despite being blind.

This is like Cronenberg and Miike teaming up to direct Psycho meets In the Realm of the Senses. Quite intense (but not terribly graphic) for 1969. It covers a lot of themes: artistic obsession, sexual power plays, Oedipal relationships, and sadomasochism. Its handling of these topics is a bit simplistic, but what it lacks in depth it makes up for in freakiness. Michio's studio features some of the most delightfully bizarro set design I've ever seen.

This shit is crazy!

I want more.

Astoundingly twisted!