Suzuki’s B-movie was a random pick, one of the joys of living close to your local arts cinema, as they are known. Great title aside, the film is resolutely action driven, with the hard-nosed hero, Jôji, wreaking havoc in the Japanese underworld. I have to confess that there were numerous moments where I lost the plot as it stitched together the rivalries of the Yakuza bands. The gaudy tone and colour feel like the antithesis of those movies loved by the arthouse crowd, the stately oeuvres of Ozu and Mizoguchi. This is unredacted action, and one can imagine a youthful Tarantino adoring the vibrant if senseless tones. Kill Bill is just a few steps away from Youth of the Beast, and then the family line leads to the banalities of those movies which feature on the lists of films that have somehow grossed over a billion dollars. Indeed, Suzuki’s tone feels that it owes as much to the American occupation as it does to anything which might be defined as ‘Japanese’.
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