[2] In response, Suzuki successfully sued Nikkatsu, and garnered support from student groups, like-minded filmmakers and the general public, causing a major controversy throughout the Japanese film industry.

Goro Hanada, the Japanese underworld's third-ranked hitman, and his wife, Mami, fly into Tokyo and are met by Kasuga, a former hitman-turned-taxi driver.

Hanada snipes the first from behind a billboard's animatronic cigarette lighter, shoots the second through a pipe drain when he leans over a sink, and blasts his way into the third's office, escaping on an advertising balloon.

Hanada returns to Misako's apartment, where a projected film shows her bound and tortured, and directs him to a breakwater, where he will be killed the following day.

[13] Shortly before filming began, with the release date already set, the script was deemed "inappropriate" by the head office and contract director Seijun Suzuki was brought in to do a rewrite.

Suzuki originally wanted Kiwako Taichi, a new talent from the famous theatre troupe Bungakuza, for the female lead but she took a part in another film.

[20] It was further set apart from its peers, and Seijun Suzuki's previous films, through its gothic sensibilities, unusual atonal score and what artist and academic Philip Brophy called a "heightened otherness".

[21] The result has been alternately ascribed as a work of surrealism,[22] absurdism,[23] the avant garde[21] and included in the Japanese New Wave movement,[24] though not through any stated intention of its director.

Reviewer Rumsey Taylor likened Hanada's boiled rice sniffing fetish to Bond's "shaken, not stirred" martini order.

[25] The film also deviates from the opening killer-for-hire scenario to touch on such varied subgenres as psychosexual romance, American Gothic thriller and Odd Couple slapstick.

Teo cited Number One's sleeping with his eyes open and urinating where he sits, which the character explains as techniques one must master to become a "top professional.

In editing, Suzuki frequently abandoned continuity, favouring abstract jumps in time and space as he found it made the film more interesting.

[2] Critic David Chute suggested that Suzuki's stylistics had intensified—in seeming congruence with the studio's demands that he conform: You can see the director reusing specific effects and pointedly cranking them up a notch.

This "lost at sea" effect is revived in Branded to Kill but there's no sound at all in this version of the scene, except for the gangsters' hushed voices, echoless, plotting some fresh betrayal in a movie-movie isolation chamber.

[30][31] Iijima Kōichi, a critic for the film journal Eiga Geijutsu, wrote that "the woman buys a mink coat and thinks only about having sex.

With support from the Cineclub, similar student groups, fellow filmmakers and the general public—which included the picketing of the company's Hibiya offices and the formation of the Seijun Suzuki Joint Struggle Committee[16][33]—Suzuki sued Nikkatsu for wrongful dismissal.

[3] However, Suzuki was blacklisted by the major studios and did not make another feature film until A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness (1977) ten years after Branded to Kill.

[25][35] Branded to Kill first reached international audiences in the 1980s, featuring in various film festivals and retrospectives dedicated wholly or partially to Suzuki,[23][35][36] which was followed by home video releases in the late 1990s.

[41] Writer and critic Tony Rayns noted, "Suzuki mocks everything from the clichés of yakuza fiction to the conventions of Japanese censorship in this extraordinary thriller, which rivals Orson Welles' Lady from Shanghai in its harsh eroticism, not to mention its visual fireworks.

[22] In a 1992 Rolling Stone magazine article, film director Jim Jarmusch affectionately recommended it as, "Probably the strangest and most perverse 'hit man' story in cinema.

"[42] Jasper Sharp of the Midnight Eye wrote, "It is a bloody marvellous looking film and arguably the pinnacle of the director's strikingly eclectic style.

Sharp digressed, "To be honest it isn't the most accessible of films and for those unfamiliar with Suzuki's unorthodox and seemingly disjointed style it will probably take a couple of viewings before the bare bones of the plot begin to emerge.

[46] The following year, the Tanomi Company produced a limited edition 1/6 scale "Joe the Ace"[47] action figure based on Shishido's character in the film, complete with a miniature rice cooker.

[10][49][50] As one of Seijun Suzuki's most influential films, Branded to Kill has been acknowledged as a source of inspiration by such internationally renowned directors as Hong Kong's John Woo, South Korea's Park Chan-wook and America's Jim Jarmusch and Quentin Tarantino.

The story would have concerned Noda (set to have been played by Shishido), an unranked member of the assassin's guild Hanada belongs to, being tasked by a woman named Ruiko with killing her husband, a formerly-ranked killer who has since disgraced the organization.

[59] In 1973, Nikkatsu released Trapped in Lust [ja], which has been described as a "Roman Porno reimagining" of Branded to Kill, as both tell the story of a contract killer forced to lie low after botching an assignment.

[60] Sharp has described Trapped in Lust as "a brilliant testament to the fact that, rather than mere cheap exploitation, the adult film genre was regarded as liberating, daring and anti-authoritarian, and that interesting and intelligent things could be realised with it".

[61] Thirty-four years after the original release of Branded to Kill, Suzuki directed Pistol Opera (2001), a loose sequel co-produced by Shochiku and filmed at Nikkatsu.

All six titles included audio commentary tracks featuring Suzuki with various collaborators, those being Annu Mari and assistant director Masami Kuzū for Branded to Kill.

[76][77] Yume Pictures released a new DVD on February 26, 2007, as a part of their Suzuki collection, featuring a 36-minute interview with the director, trailers and liner notes by Tony Rayns.