"Branded to Kill" first reached international audiences in the 1980s, featuring in various film festivals and retrospectives dedicated wholly or partially to Suzuki, which was followed by home video releases in the late 1990s. It garnered a reputation as one of his most unconventional, revered Nikkatsu films and an international cult classic. It has been declared a masterpiece by the likes of film critic Chuck Stephens, writer and musician Chris D., composer John Zorn and film director Quentin Tarantino. 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." Modified comparisons to the films of a "gonzo Sam Fuller", or Jean-Luc Godard, assuming one "factorout Godard's politics and self-consciousness", are not uncommon. 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." 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."