Jigoku (1960)

Director:

Nobuo Nakagawa

Writers:

Ichirô Miyagawa (writer)
Nobuo Nakagawa (writer)

Release Date:

30 July 1960 (Japan)

Genre:

Horror

Plot:

A graduate-school student has a friend who is pure evil. His friend and he are out driving one night...

Plot Keywords:

Fiancee | Surreal | Revenge | Adultery | Poison

Cast

Shigeru Amachi	...	Shiro Shimizu
Yoichi Numata	...	Tamura
Utako Mitsuya	...	Yukiko / Sachiko
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Kanjuro Arashi	...	Enma, King of Hell
Hiroshi Hayashi	...	Gozo Shimizu
Hiroshi Izumida	...	'Tiger' Kyoichi Shiga
Koichi Miya	...	Journalist Akagawa
Fumiko Miyata	...	Mrs. Yajima
Torahiko Nakamura	...	Professor Yajima
Tomohiko Ohtani	...	Dr. Kusama
Akiko Ono	...	Yoko
Jun Otomo	...	Ensai Taniguchi
Hiroshi Shinguji	...	Detective Hariya
Kimie Tokudaiji	...	Ito Shimizu
Sakutaro Yamakawa	...	Fisherman
Akiko Yamashita	...	Kinuko

Also Known As:

Hell (USA) (original subtitled version)
Jigoku (USA) (DVD title)
Story of the Great 8-Tombed Hell
The Sinners of Hell (International: English title)

Runtime:

98 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Company:

Shintoho Company

Trivia:

The first movie which used elements of 'gore' as FX.

Quotes:

Enma, King of Hell: Hear me! You who in life piled up sin upon sin will be trapped in Hell forever. Suffer! Suffer! This vortex of torment will whirl for all eternity.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Building the Inferno: Nobuo Nakagawa and the Making of 'Jigoku' (2006) (V)

Soundtrack:

Comin' through the Rye

With friends like these, who need enemies?

This is one of those movies that just is so damn hard to categorize. It could be horror or fantasy? Obviously, but with elements of such being significant it is still to little to put the film in a specific genre. It opens as a rather absurd melo-drama about a young student engaged with the daughter of his teacher. Unfortunately he is in bad company with a wicked class-mate who at night when driving, ruthlessly runs over a drunk thug who dies and makes his mother and girlfriend seek deadly revenge. The student is laced with guilt, and just to top it all his pregnant girlfriend dies too in a traffic accident! The plot is entirely of a very loose formula and it is often hard to tell if director/writer Nobuo Nakagawa will make sense of it all in the end! Don't worry, stick with the film and you won't be disappointed. The next moment the student travels to a rural nursing home controlled by his parents. Interestingly the nursing home is called "Heaven", only everyone inside is corrupted and treat each other bad. There is also a dead ringer for the late girlfriend, and the diabolic "friend" pops out of nowhere to create trouble again! And the boy is still hunted! And an hour into the movie every character has died or are killed...

... only to go to hell! And so a very new adventure unfolds! It is in this hell scenario that the crew really has gone berserk and created pure fireworks of colors and lighting. Colors of this scale were in Hollywood more commonly used for comedies and musicals and not horror. The style and interesting camera angles, is overall pretty fantastic to behold. I wonder how influential the film has been for other directors, because people like Mario Bava or Jose Josica Marins has done similar uses of colors in their movies. In hell everyone are guarded by brutish demons on their endless trails of misery and punished for their sins in various gory ways! Did I just type gore? Yes, there is gore and it is quite ample in a movie made three years prior to 'Blood Feast'! And it is really effective stuff too, especially a sequence where people in turn get their teeth's knocked out! There is also a bit of nudity in the experimenting credit sequence. Yet fortunately there is a story to tell, and it is full-filled satisfying. Quite a un-discovered mile-stone and very well worth seeking out.