Review by Crites | Released by Panik House | Buy from Amazon
Based on the title alone this sounds like a freak-fest of epic proportions – one helmed by no less than “The Godfather of Pinky Violence,” “cult director” Teruo Ishii himself. Granted you may not recognize the name straight away, but the pinky violence genre has a lot to offer so this is most promising. Plus, it’s got a dwarf.
Macabre artwork by Gea backs the opening credits, and then we move through a dark and stormy night to find famed cabaret chanteuse Ranko Mizuki chastising a blind man for caressing a sculpture for which she was the model. She goes onstage, and afterwards another of her admirers experiences a bit of the local nightlife outside. Which, aside from hookers and transvestites includes a dwarf – carrying a bundle from which falls a human hand. Engrossed, our patron, Mr. Monzo Kobayashi, a “writer of cheap detective fiction,” follows the little man into the night, eventually losing him near a temple.
The following day Kobayashi tries again without luck to pick up the dwarf’s trail. He does meet up with a former neighbor, Miss Yurie Yamano, who asks for an introduction to Monzo’s "famous detective friend" Kokoro Akechi. Yurie wants his help in finding her missing stepdaughter Michiko, but hopes fall when Michiko’s hand is found being used as a prop at a haunted house. Hopes fall further still when Michiko’s other hand is delivered to the Yamano family household in a gift box. The viewer immediately suspects the dwarf, who was seen lurking and cackling around the site of the haunted house, but it is soon revealed that Yurie and the dwarf are somehow cohorts, Yurie finding herself in the unfortunate position of accomplice and sexual servant.
The preceding evening Ms. Mizuki had been lured to some strange location by another anonymous fan, and after being led through a funhouse revolving mirror-door she found herself in a grotto of poorly-crafted artificial body parts. Kept literally in the dark for some time, it now becomes apparent that her abductor is none other than the “blind beast” from before. He begs the singer to marry him, and when she is less than consenting he stalks her through his shoddily surreal art gallery until he catches her and strips her, at which point the two fight each other to the point of exhaustion.
Soon however they seem to have reached a perverted equilibrium, as she drinks wine and lets it drip down her nude body into the eager mouth of the beast. All of a sudden she’s a big fan of his: “This is a whole new world that people with sight will never know.” Okay. Ranko continues with her inner monologue as the blind beast squirms between her legs, and when finished he gives her a beating. Eventually the cozy scene reaches a violent climax, in what now resembles some sort of Barbarella chamber of death, and another ‘art’ form is added to the beast’s grisly gallery.
Returning to the living, in questioning Akechi Kobayashi learns a bit about the Yamano family’s sexual intrigue. At the same time the dwarf confides in his brother, experiencing an unhappy flashback to the cruelties of circus life. Meanwhile, a group of boys spies a cluster of balloons drifting over a field, and chasing after them the youngsters find that they carry a human leg. There is a pair of incidents involving human arms, and the beast finds work at a spa as a masseur, allowing him to get bolder with his BUCKET OF BLOOD sculptures of society women.
Akechi is well on the case now, tracking down bribed chauffeurs, housekeepers, even the dwarf’s brother, a mannequin-maker named Yasukawa. The dwarf lives next door to him, and Akechi and Kobayashi break into his apartment just as the dwarf is getting started on another session with Yurie. A ridiculous (and ridiculously lighted) rooftop chase follows, with the predictable results calling to mind the demise of THE SINFUL DWARF.
With the dwarf out of the way, it is now time for private detective Akechi’s big scene. In Yasukawa’s workshop, wearing his finest mauve silk brocade, Akechi not only ties the dwarf and the blind beast together, but unveils the disappearance of Michiko, her body, and the tainted family politics that led to the girl’s demise and the subsequent cover-up of her murder. Or the murder of the woman believed to be Michiko Yamano... As tangled as it is, it’s somewhat difficult to care very much at this point given the ridiculous plot twists that are supposed to substitute for the sexually violent groundwork of what was billed as a “disturbing masterpiece.” Even given the tacked-on horror-show end scenes; as “the greatest art critic” Tetsuzo Tange says of the beast’s final work, “This is not art!” And I’m comfortable saying that he speaks for the rest of us.
Filmed in digital video, BLIND BEAST... has the claustrophobically cheap look expected of shot-on-video productions. As do the tepid acting and "action" sequences, this does little to help the production, which on the whole is really fairly boring for such a sensationalistic title. A shame, really, because the story, based on the work of Edogawa Rampo, has a violent freakshow private eye quality that in its singularity could have made for an incredible feature. Instead it plays out weakly, like an Agatha Christie tale or the extended chapter of some Japanese soap opera (albeit a rather offbeat one), coming off as arty and pretentious in its failed attempt to combine classic pulp detective work with the traditional Japanese fondness for deviancy.
Special features consist of segments such as “Behind-the-Scenes: The Making of Blood Beast vs. Killer Dwarf,” trailers, “Geaphiles: A Gallery of Conceptual Art Illustrations by New York’s Underground Artist Gea,” poster and still galleries, production notes and bios, those of director Ishii and his inspiration Rampo being particularly impressive. Also not to be neglected is “Obituary for a Killer Dwarf,” that of Japanese wrestling legend Little Frankie.
