Youth of the Beast, like Suzuki's Branded to Kill and Tokyo Drifter, is first and foremost about its own extravagant style. When we talk about Suzuki, we don't talk about his plots; he tended to amp these up to the extent that Nikkatsu fired him in 1967 on the grounds that his films were 'incomprehensible.' And it's true that faced with the choice of making, say, a clear transition between scenes or a flashy one, Suzuki opted for flash every time. So it is that the plot logistics of Youth of the Beast require some attention. In a nutshell, a rogue bad guy named Jo (played by jowly Suzuki stalwart Jo Shishido) shows up on the streets of Tokyo following a double suicide involving a cop and a call girl. Two rival gangs vie for his loyalty, but Jo, it seems, is too ruthless to stay loyal for too long. Could Jo harbor deeper motives than cash and self-preservation? One wonders. Meanwhile crosses and double-crosses bloom like the bright red flowers that play into the plot (Suzuki shoots these flowers in color even in the film's black-and-white opening scenes), and the cast of underworld villains grows to include a junky whore, a sadist with infallible aim, the mysterious Mistress No. 6, armies of thugs, a quantity of policemen, and a gay pimp who should never, ever be left alone with a woman. It gets to where even M.C. Escher would struggle to correctly graph the plot.
And Suzuki unfurls this whole extravaganza in blinding Technicolor, with a jazzy score and the kind of narrative shorthand that has you doing double takes. The story is there (and it's trickier and more compelling than in later Suzuki), but the ride is the thing, and Suzuki certainly gives you a ride. Pulp this vivid - and this shrewd - can't help but transcend its genre, and Youth of the Beast does; one imagines that the projects Nikkatsu deemed suitable have long since deteriorated into celluloid dust, while this picture spills off the screen today looking brighter and more current than any Tarantino knock-off ever will. It's like film noir on tangerine blotter.
In addition to the Suzuki interview, Criterion's DVD edition of Youth of the Beast includes a recent interview with Shishido. New subtitles make the film easier to follow in English than it ever has been before, and the pristine transfer does full justice to Suzuki's outlandish visuals. Enjoy.
Aka Yaju no seishun.
