Watch at Home 01.31.2025

I, The Executioner

Directed by Tai Kato
Film Movement Classics
1968
90 Minutes
Japan
Japanese
Crime, Thriller, Classics, Asian
Not Rated
  1. Home
  2. In Theaters
  3. I, The Executioner

Police investigators investigate the link between a serial killer's machinations and a young man who committed suicide under murky circumstances.

Director & Cast

  • Director: Tai Kato
  • Starring: Makoto Sato
  • Starring: Chieko Baisho
  • Starring: Sanae Nakahara
  • Starring: Ranfan Ou

Where to Watch

Photos

Reviews

  • "Tai Kato, best known for his yakuza and period films, pulls out all the stops in this visually arresting, nihilistic modern-day tale of a man on a brutal murder and rape spree, using extreme close-ups and unusually low-angle shots to make his rage viscerally palpable. "
    Museum of Modern Art
  • "Surprisingly avant-garde, Kato experiments with blown out negatives, extreme close up, and deep focus mixed with his characteristic low angle composition to add to the sense of noirish dread which paints the modern city as an inescapable hellscape...."
    Hayley Scanlon, Windows on Worlds
  • "It is a movie that pushes film noir so far in both story and photography that other famous examples look positively sunny. [A]lmost impossible to forget once you have seen it."
    Japan On Film
  • "[U]p there with Oshima's Violence at Noon and Imamura's Vengeance Is Mine as one of Japan's most disturbing anatomies of a serial killer."
    Tony Rayns