Amazingly impactful movie from the very first scenes - the photos of the model; the museum where she sees the blind man caressing the sculpture of her. He kidnaps her and the whole movie thereafter takes place mainly in the bizarre warehouse with its walls studded with his sculptures of female body parts and its floor covered by a huge female body that's like a range of hills. After he kills his mother (and collaborator), he rapes the captive continually and she gradually falls for him; she loses her sight, becoming blind like him; they get caught in a world of touch gradually gravitating to masochism; in the end she begs him to cut off her arms and legs, which he does, before stabbing himself. Movies hardly get darker than this - the psychology has a sense of arbitrariness about it, but the characters aren't intellectual or even conscious - the art of the body is inherently festishistic and troubling and provocative and they just succumb to the most extreme implications of that tendency, within an environment that hardly allows them a choice. Masamura's camera is a troublingly precise instrument here; caressing the actors and highlighting every drop of painful eroticism; always psychologically acute even while courting the full symbolic-abstract potential of his amazing set. As it goes on there's a desire almost to laugh at the rapidly escalating excess, but that release never comes. Makes you wonder about the mind of its creator, but a great film.

Yasuzo Masumura made many fascinating films, including my favorite entry in the "Hanzo The Razor" series, "The Snare", easily the most psycho-sexual of the trio. His "Blind Beast", based on a story by Edogawa Rampo, one of Japan's most famous horror writers, is an intense study of obsession, emotional manipulation and the perverse nature of art.

A sculptor, Machio (Eiji Funakoshi), blind since birth, becomes obsessed with a beautiful artists' model, Aki (Mako Midori), and kidnaps her with with the assistance of his devoted mother (Noriko Sengoku). Dedicated to producing a sculpture of the the imprisoned beauty, Machio's plans are initially thwarted by Machio's reluctance to be his model and mother's reluctance to let her boy experience physical love for the first time.

Funakoshi's performance as the blind sculptor is extraordinary and chilling. Scenes of him compulsively raking his hands over Aki's body possess a psychotic, orgasmic intensity. Mako Midori is sensational as the blatantly manipulative model, skilfully portraying both victim and victimizer as the psycho-sexual engines begin to reverse direction.

Machio's studio, a strange cavern of gigantic sculptures, is surreal and bizarre. At one point, Aki argues that the pieces, female body parts, are so large because they are sculpted from the perspective of a baby. The cinematography is elegant and evocative, and the compositions echo some of Antonioni's finest work. Hikaru Hayashi's signature theme music is painfully tender, beautiful and haunting, resonating well beyond the final frames.

William Wyler's film of John Fowles' "The Collector" was clearly a thematic and visual inspiration for this fascinating film.

The final act is powerful and transporting as it provides a perfect but perverse solution to the situation our unlikely lovers find themselves in. Many years later, Pedro Almodovar would expand on it in his wonderful tale of brittle passion, "Matador".

Wasn't sure what to expect with BLIND BEAST as I hadn't heard anything about it when I watched it - but I liked it quite a bit. Strong and interesting storyline, good acting, and an off-the-wall ending made this one an enjoyable "classic" Japanese erotic/horror/drama...

A blind sculptor kidnaps a famous model with the help of his mother, to use as the model for his "perfect" sculpture. The model is uninterested in the sculptors artistic pursuit (as is typically common of kidnapping victims...) and tries to devise ways to escape from the warehouse that she's trapped in. The sculptor is actually a very kind person who was raised solely by his mother, and only wishes to create the perfect replica of the model in clay form as a "tribute" to her. Eventually the model falls for the blind-man, and things get strange. When the mother dies from an accident, the sculptor and sculptee spend all of their time boning. Eventually the model starts to also go blind as a result of the poor lighting, and their sexual escapades become more dark and depraved as they yearn for deeper fulfillment. The ending is somewhat shocking and beautiful in an understated way, which I won't give away here...

BLIND BEAST is a unique film, in that it portrays some "controversial" (for 1969...) material in a straight-faced and serious manner. There is some nudity, but it's "light", and there is almost no blood - yet the ending is pretty violent. An interesting and deep film, that will probably appeal to Japanese-pinky fans or others that dig 60's/70's era Japanese films...8.5/10