6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
A blind sculptor and his mother kidnap a young model.
Starring: Eiji Funakoshi, Mako Midori, Noriko SengokuForeign | 100% |
Drama | 33% |
Horror | 25% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Japanese: LPCM Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Tony Rayns has an easy answer which in fact may offer a solution to a veritable litany of society's ills, but which in this case is germane to the genesis of the film under review: blame television. In an introduction to Blind Beast included on this disc as a supplementary feature, Rayns provides a bit of context about the Japanese studio Daiei, where director Yasuzo Masumura spent the bulk of his career, something that Rayns says is a bit of an oddity in the Japanese film industry. The entire industry had been beset with problems for some time, but the advent of broadcast television in Japan, which occurred significantly later than in the United States, suddenly sent the entire movie business into a tailspin, much as it had in the United States a decade or more previously. Daiei was particularly hard hit and became desperate to provide some sort of lure to get ticket buying audiences back into theater seats, and with that goal in mind, they evidently approached Masumura and asked him to come up with something titillating, controversial and unabashedly provocative. The result was Blind Beast, a film that often plays like a Japanese cousin to one of the strangest films to ever bear the imprimatur of William Wyler, The Collector, though even Wyler's film offered a semblance of "reality" that Blind Beast pretty much completely eschews.
Blind Beast is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. Arrow's insert booklet contains only the following fairly generic verbiage about the transfer:
Blind Beast is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 [sic] with mono sound. The High Definition master was produced and supplied by Kadokawa, with additional grading by Arrow Films at R3Store Studios, London.This is a relatively soft looking presentation a lot of the time, and as can probably be gleaned from several of the screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review, huge swaths of the film play out in either total darkness or in very dimly lit environments. As a result, detail levels, and fine detail levels in particular, are often dependent upon how close the camera is to the subject and how much light is available in the frame. The palette looked a bit faded to my eyes, with flesh tones skewing toward browns. This was not a hugely budgeted film, and I wonder if perhaps Masumura and director of photography Setsuo Kobayashi encountered some challenges with lenses, since there are some odd moments that look slightly anamorphically wonky and other moments that have a slightly out of focus, hazy quality.
Blind Beast features an LPCM Mono track in the original Japanese. The film's sound design is quite basic, with almost all of the film playing out in the confines of the warehouse art studio, and with dialogue patches frequently offering only the two focal characters. Other elements, like some narration that opens the film, along with all of the other spoken material, sound fine. Optional English subtitles are available.
Arrow has been having a kind of mini-Masumura film festival with a slate of recent releases on Blu-ray, including Irezumi, Black Test Car + The Black Report and Giants and Toys, and my personal advice to newcomers to this particular filmmaker is to probably start with one of those, rather than this peculiar and kind of lurid outing. For the "initiated", however, this is a fascinating if maybe "too weird for its own good" offering that shows Masumura delivering "the goods" (he had been asked to deliver) with a minimal budget. Video encounters some hurdles, but audio is fine, and as usual with Arrow's Blu-ray releases, the supplementary package is outstanding, for those who are considering making a purchase.
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