The Warped Ones (狂熱の季節, Kyōnetsu no kisetsu) is a 1960 Japanese Sun Tribe film directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara and starring Tamio Kawachi, Eiji Go, Yuko Chishiro and Noriko Matsumoto.

Often compared by critics to Breathless (1960) and Rebel Without a Cause (1955), it is a stylistic departure from studio norms, driven by its jazz score and employing filmic techniques described as being as energetic and frantic as its characters.

It achieved success in Japan and was followed by Black Sun (1964), featuring many of the same cast, crew and characters, with the addition of acclaimed drummer Max Roach to the soundtrack.

[1] The Nikkatsu Company made three popular Sun Tribe films in 1956, a genre based on a contemporary youth subculture whose interests revolved around beach life, jazz music and their progressive attitudes towards sex.

The films met with moral public outcries and a fourth production was shut down at the behest of Eirin (The Motion Picture Code of Ethics Committee).

They reused many elements of Kurahara's earlier Sun Tribe film The Time of Youth (1959), including abortion, a near fatality via an opened gas cock and a criminal act near water, an explosion beside a stream in the former and the rape on the beach in the latter.

[10] Cinematographer Yoshi Mamiya and editor Akira Suzuki employed swish-pans, freeze frames and jump cuts, alternating between carefully composed shots and seemingly recklessly hand-held camera work.

[10][11] The titular youths of the film too move violently and speak in grunts, screams, whistles and sound effects, Akira frequently greeting women with, "Wanna get laid?"

Akira, described as possessing the "face-rubbing mannerisms of [Marlon] Brando and the tortured swagger of James Dean," varies between the sadistic and the indifferent—save when in a jazz-induced fervor—and reaches extremes largely unseen in the contemporaneous cinema of the West.

Lacking education, proper role models and moral codes, critic Bryan Hartzheim posited, crime and base pleasures are their most open recourse.

However, Akira is illustrated as being capable of innocent pleasure, particularly in one fleeting scene in which he and his black friend Gil (Chico Rolands), whom he views as a fellow outcast, frolic in the ocean.

[14] The film was successful in Japan,[4] although not so much so that Tamio Kawachi was ever elevated to major star status and after his "Bad Boy" period he was mainly relegated to second lead and supporting parts.

[18] Schilling originally titled the film Season of Heat—a literal translation of the Japanese title—but it was retitled The Warped Ones for subsequent incarnations of the retrospective, which included runs in Austin and New York.

"[11] For TokyoScope: The Japanese Cult Film Companion, Alvin Lu commended the score as "stunning" and Kawachi's performance as "ferocious, the very incarnation of the kind of social chaos that could be engendered by too much exposure to jazz, Coke, and hot dogs.

"[22] The Boston Globe's Wesley Morris wrote, "[Koreyoshi] Kurahara takes the movie to extremes of behavior and style, merging the two until the form seems as violently unstable as the characters.

[4] This included the follow-up Black Sun (1964) which again featured Tamio Kawachi, who reprised his role from The Warped Ones, as did several of the other actors, and a lot of jazz music.

Finally, the character's regular hangouts, both painted with black walls, the former's adorned with portraits of jazz legends, the latter's with advertisements for "Vellocet" and "Drencrom"—the fictional drugs DeLarge and his gang use to invigorate themselves before their criminal acts.

Records reissued the soundtrack on Compact Disc as a part of its Cine Jazz series, which featured 1960s Nikkatsu Action film scores.

The first disc features American jazz musicians Max Roach on drums, Clifford Jordan on tenor saxophone, Ronnie Mathews on piano, Eddie Kahn on bass and vocals by Abbey Lincoln.