Keiho

Something of a companion piece to the more explicitly genre thrills of The Black House (completed the same year), Keiho is a spellbinding synthesis of the courtroom drama and the psychological thriller that finds Morita diving headlong into the cinematic analysis of pathology and violence. A young actor (Shinichi Tsutsumi) stands trial for a particularly gruesome double murder, but his strange behavior in custody leads the police and criminal psychologists alike to suspect that there’s more to this story than meets the eye. A gripping film with no shortage of twists and turns, Keiho, like much of Morita’s work, also carries a profound political charge, examining abuses of the Japanese penal code’s articles concerning the sentencing of violent criminals who have been subjectively deemed “insane.”