The Japanese New Wave’s enfant terrible Seijun Suzuki announced his arrival on the scene in thrilling style with his black-and-white breakthrough Underworld Beauty. A recently released thief returns to town to claim the gems he managed to hide before his arrest and support his friend Mihara who was crippled during the robbery. Their former boss wants the score for himself and kills Mihara, but not before he swallows the stones and sets everyone on a race to the city morgue for his now-valuable corpse. Wildly inventive and directed with striking precision, Underworld Beauty is a high watermark for Japanese noir and a non-stop thrill-ride from start to finish.