Friday | May 20, 2016 9:00 pm

The Sleeping Beast Within AKA The Sleep of the Beast
(Kemono no nemuri)

Screening on Film

Directed by Seijun Suzuki.
With Hiroyuki Nagato, Shinsuke Ashida, Hisano Yamaoka.
Japan, 1960, 35mm, black & white, 86 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.
Print source: Japan Foundation

A businessman vanishes upon his return from an overseas trip, and his daughter hires a reporter to help find him. When the father reappears, the reporter becomes suspicious and starts digging deeper, uncovering a secret world of heroin smuggling and murder—all tied up with a mysterious Sun God cult. This proto-Breaking Bad moves to an energetic pulp fiction beat all the way to its spectacular conflagration of an ending.