Branded to Kill
(Koroshi no rakuin)

Directed by Seijun Suzuki.
With Jo Shishido, Mariko Ogawa, Annu Mari.
Japan, 1967, DCP, black & white, 91 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.
DCP source: Janus Films

This fractured film noir is the final provocation that got Suzuki fired from Nikkatsu Studios, simultaneously making him a counterculture hero and putting him out of work for a decade. An anarchic send-up of B movie clichés, it stars Jo Shishido as an assassin who gets turned on by the smell of cooking rice, and whose failed attempt to kill a victim (a butterfly lands on his gun) turns him into a target himself. Perhaps Suzuki’s most famous film, it has been cited as an influence by filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch, Park Chan-wook, and John Woo, as well as the composer John Zorn, who called it “a cinematic masterpiece that transcends its genre.”

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