Branded to Kill (#38)

When Japanese New Wave bad boy Seijun Suzuki delivered this brutal, hilarious, and visually inspired masterpiece to the executives at his studio, he was promptly fired. Branded to Kill tells the ecstatically bent story of a yakuza assassin with a fetish for sniffing steamed rice (the chipmunk-cheeked superstar Joe Shishido) who botches a job and ends up a target himself. This is Suzuki at his most extreme—the flabbergasting pinnacle of his sixties pop-art aesthetic.

SPECIAL FEATURES

New high-definition digital restoration (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)

Video piece featuring new interviews with director Seijun Suzuki and assistant director Masami Kuzuu

Interview with Suzuki from 1997

New interview with actor Joe Shishido

Trailer

New and improved English subtitle translation

PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by critic and historian Tony Rayns