Blind Beast

Blind Beast is a Japanese drama-thriller about Michio, a sculptor who has lost his sight and lives shut away with his mother, Shino, surrounded by sculptures of women's bodies. Driven to create what he considers his greatest work, he abducts Aki, a model, and holds her in a warehouse studio outside the city. There he wants her to pose for him, since touch has taken the place of sight in his art. Aki first resists, then pretends to go along with him while looking for a way to escape, and the relationship between captor and captive gradually changes.

Yasuzō Masumura directed the film, from a screenplay by Yoshio Shirasaka, with Kazumasa Nakano and Masaichi Nagata producing for Daiei Film. It runs 84 minutes and stars Eiji Funakoshi as Michio, Mako Midori as Aki and Noriko Sengoku as Shino. It was released in January 1969 and stands fifteenth among the seventeen features Masumura directed in chronological order, between Vixen and Play It Cool.

On IMDb, the film holds a rating of 7 out of 10 from roughly 4,400 votes, while on TMDB it rates 6.5 out of 10 from about 105 votes. A critics' rating of 8.1 out of 10 from eight reviews places it above both audience scores.