Moju / Fruits of Passion

[wlt4 at mindspring.com]

>It was directed in 1969 by Yasuzo Masumura, a director that I know >absolutely nothing about. A blind sculptor captures a girl and 

Thanks to some relatively high profile screenings in the US, it looked for a while like Masumura might be "discovered" in the way that Seijun Suzuki was.  (Jonathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago Reader wrote, "It was like discovering Sam Fuller or Frank Tashlin for the first time, and it proved yet again that there are more important and interesting movies out there in the netherworld than we imagine.")  Masumura was an assistant of some kind to Mizoguchi before directing his own films that sound a lot like deliberately lurid, quasi-political, pop-art-ish B-movies.  Unfortunately, the only one that I know for sure that's been released in the US is "Razor 2: The Snare" which is a minor work by any standard.  

If anybody's got decent tapes of "Red Angel" or "Giants and Toys" or "Hoodlum Soldier" etc please let me know.

 LT