The Sleeping Beast Within

A newspaper reporter, Shotaro Kasai, is set to marry Keiko Ueki. When her father, Junpei Ueki, disappears after a company banquet held in his honour following his return from a posting abroad, the family's attempts to trace him come to nothing. A telephone call from a bar hostess named Akemi, to whom Ueki had quietly handed a ring and his business card, offers the only lead, and Kasai's search carries him into the criminal underworld of Yokohama's Chinatown.

The film was directed by Seijun Suzuki, the fourth of the twenty-six features he made in chronological order, arriving between Smashing the 0-Line and Everything Goes Wrong in 1960. Ichirō Ikeda wrote the screenplay, Takiko Mizunoe produced it for Nikkatsu Corporation, and Hiroyuki Nagato plays Kasai, with Kazuko Yoshiyuki as Keiko, Shinsuke Ashida as Junpei Ueki, Shoichi Ozawa as the reporter Horibe, Hisano Yamaoka as Hisa Ueki and Tsutomu Shimomoto as Nagamine. It runs eighty-six minutes and belongs to the action and crime genres.

Released in April 1960, the film draws modest but favourable responses from viewers: 6.7 out of 10 on IMDb from 244 votes, and 6.8 out of 10 on TMDB from 12 votes. The two averages sit close together, indicating a small audience that rates the film consistently, without wide acclaim or strong disapproval.