SYNOPSIS: When Japanese New Wave bad boy Seijun Suzuki delivered this brutal, hilarious, and visually inspired masterpiece to the executives at his studio, he was promptly fired. Branded to Kill tells the ecstatically bent story of a yakuza assassin with a fetish for sniffing steamed rice (the chipmunk-cheeked superstar Joe Shishido) who botches a job and ends up a target himself. This is Suzuki at his most extreme—the flabbergasting pinnacle of his sixties pop-art aesthetic.
| Goro Hanada | Joe Shishido |
| Number One | Koji Nanbara |
| Michihiko Nakajo | Isao Tamagawa |
| Misako Nakajo | Annu Mari |
| Mami Hanada | Mariko Ogawa |
| Gihei Kasuga | Hiroshi Minami |
| Director | Seijun Suzuki |
| Producer | Kaneo Iwai |
| Assistant director | Masami Kuzuu |
| Screenplay | Hachiro Guru |
| Cinematography | Kazue Nagatsuka |
| Editing | Matsuo Tanji |
| Production design | Sukezo Kawahara |
| Music | Naozumi Yamamoto |
By December 13, 2011
Branded to Kill has passed into legend as the movie that got Suzuki Seijun fired from Nikkatsu. It also has a rep as a delirious, absurdist deconstruction of the crime genre. That’s all more or less true, but the backstory is a little more complicated.
By February 22, 1999
Flipping around the channels of late-night TV in my Tokyo apartment in 1984 I came across what seemed like a B movie from the ’60s. The studio: Nikkatsu. The star: Joe Shishido. The director: Seijun Suzuki Read more »
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