In a previous life, when a leather-jacketed version of my younger self hosted Film 4's Extreme Cinema strand, this delightfully deranged Japanese thriller from 1967 became a firm favourite among audiences tuning in for uncut horror fare and cult midnight movies. Made for next to no money for the Nikkatsu corporation, Branded to Kill found director Seijun Suzuki following his own absurdist instincts to the dismay of his financiers, for whom he had churned out a staggering 40 features in just 12 years. Initially envisaged as a fairly straightforward Yakuza story about a hitman who goes on the run after botching a murderous assignment, Suzuki's deranged masterpiece proceeds to bend everything out of shape; narratively, visually, conceptually.

The result so appalled Nikkatsu that they fired Suzuki, claiming that his movies made "no sense, and no money". He didn't direct another for 10 years, although he would later be hailed an influential auteur by everyone from John Woo to Park Chan-wook and (inevitably) Quentin Tarantino. Several decades after its conception, Branded to Kill remains an arresting cocktail of sex, violence and surrealism, shot in monochrome hues which accentuate the perversity of the entire twisted venture.