Branded to Kill

Seijun Suzuki

 
Branded to Kill (Criterion Blu-Ray)

13 Dec 2011

Blu-Ray

1 Disc

SRP: $39.95

Criterion Store price:$31.96

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  • Japan
  • 1967
  • 91 minutes
  • Black and White
  • 2.35:1
  • Japanese
  •  
  • Spine #38

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.

Cast & CreditsOpen

Cast

Goro HanadaJoe Shishido
Number OneKoji Nanbara
Michihiko NakajoIsao Tamagawa
Misako NakajoAnnu Mari
Mami HanadaMariko Ogawa
Gihei KasugaHiroshi Minami

Credits

DirectorSeijun Suzuki
ProducerKaneo Iwai
Assistant directorMasami Kuzuu
ScreenplayHachiro Guru
CinematographyKazue Nagatsuka
EditingMatsuo Tanji
Production designSukezo Kawahara
MusicNaozumi Yamamoto

Disc Features

  • New high-definition digital restoration (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
  • Video piece featuring new interviews with director Seijun Suzuki and assistant director Masami Kuzuu
  • Interview with Suzuki from 1997
  • New interview with actor Joe Shishido
  • Trailer
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic and historian Tony Rayns

From the CurrentView the Current »

Film Essays

Branded to Kill: Reductio Ad Absurdum

By Tony RaynsDecember 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.

Branded to Kill

By John ZornFebruary 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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Branded to Kill (Criterion DVD)

13 Dec 2011

DVD

1 Disc

SRP: $29.95

Criterion Store price:$23.96

+ Add to Cart
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