Branded to Kill  /  Youth of the Beast

Koroshi no Rakuin

This fractured film noir is the final provocation that got director Seijun Suzuki fired from Nikkatsu Studios, simultaneously making him a counterculture hero and putting him out of work for a decade.  An anarchic send-up of B-movie clichés, it stars Jo Shishido as an assassin who gets turned on by the smell of cooking rice, and whose failed attempt to kill a victim (a butterfly lands on his gun) turns him into a target himself.  Perhaps Suzuki’s most famous film, it has been cited as an influence by filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch, Park Chan-wook and John Woo, as well as the composer John Zorn, who called it, “a cinematic masterpiece that transcends its genre.”

DCP, b/w, in Japanese with English subtitles, 91 min.  Production: Nakkatsu.  Producer: Kaneo Iwai.  Director: Seijun Suzuki.  Screenwriter: Hachiro Guryu.  Cinematographer:Kazue Nagatsuka.  Editor: Mutsuo Tanji.  Music: Naozumi Yamamoto.  With: Jo Shishido, Mariko Ogawa, Annu Mari, Isao Tamagawa, Kôji Nanbara.