With bankruptcy looming, Daiei, the pioneering Japanese film company where Masumura worked for most of his career, was seeking a commercial hit that would turn its fortunes around. With sexploitation in vogue at the time, Masumura was tasked to adapt a scandalous 1931 novel by crime writer Rampo Edogawa. The result was The Blind Beast, an erotic drama now ranked as Masumura’s last masterwork. He delivers a claustrophobic chamber piece centering on a blind sculptor (Eiji Funakoshi) who, with the aid of his mother (Noriko Sengoku), kidnaps an aspiring virginal model (Mako Midori) in order to create the world’s most sensorial sculpture. The Blind Beast is part pink film and part arthouse horror, with references to Baudelaire, the Marquis de Sade, and Hume’s evolutionary ethics.