Cheap Youth of the Beast - Criterion Collection (DVD) (Seijun Suzuki) Price

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Customer Reviews of Youth of the Beast - Criterion Collection

Knock-out 60's crime thriller!
This is one of the best Japanese crime films of the 1960's, to have seen release in the United States! It is also, arguably, one of the best films by the amazing "outlaw" director, Suzuki Seijun. This was Suzuki-sensei's "breakthrough" film; in as much as it was the first film where he truly let his flamboyant, dizzying, artistic sense come forward. Full of intense, innovative, eye-popping visuals, the film never loses its solid, pulp fiction narrative flow. This is thanks, in part, to a great script based on the novel by Japanese "hard-boiled" master, Oyabu Haruhiko. A great story (though somewhat typical in the Japanese "gangster" tradition), brilliant direction, and wonderful performances (especially by the always great, Shishido Jo)-- all help to make this an outstanding example of the Japanese thriller!

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Another Seijun Master Piece
I must dissagree with Sean's analysis. While Branded to Kill is certainly a stylistic masterpiece. This film makes Tokyo Drifter seem like a game of Candyland. Ever tongue in cheek, Seijun once again takes a brilliant jab at the Japanese psyche, and wounds once again. With all the camp of a B movie, the cinematic brilliance of an Orson Welles in Hong Kong, Seijun takes on, once again, the crippled self-image of postwar Japan. Replete with a visceral display of corruption, and the seedier underbelly of power that has held sway through out Japan's last several centuries.