Blind Beast: Masumura's Chamber-Piece Obsession

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 12:00:00 +0000

Yasuzō Masumura made Blind Beast in 1969 for Daiei, and it remains one of the most single-minded films I know: three actors, essentially one set, and an idea pursued with the patience of a man who intends to reach the very bottom of it. Adapted from a novel by Edogawa Rampo — the pen name of Tarō Hirai, chosen as a Japanese echo of Edgar Allan Poe, and the founding voice of the country’s ero-guro tradition of erotic-grotesque fiction — it is a horror film with almost no violence in the ordinary sense and almost no plot in the conventional sense. It is a film about touch, and about what happens to two people sealed inside a single obsession.

Ero-Guro - vo.rs

Blind Beast: Masumura's Chamber-Piece Obsession