Jigoku is a very strange and disturbing 1960 Japanese horror film whose title literally means "Hell". The film opens with student Shiro (Shigeru Amachi) who reluctantly falls in with another student named Tamura (Yoichi Numata), despite Shiro feeling very uncomfortable with this morally void young man. When driving together one night, Tamura runs over a drunken Yakuza and kills him. Shiro, now racked with guilt, starts to see his life spinning out of control as his fiancé' (Utako Mitsuya) is killed in a car accident and his mother takes ill. Even worse, the drunk Yakuza's mother and girlfriend seek revenge and Shiro becomes surrounded with a group of people who, like him, all have sins to hide. Are Shiro and those around him truly on a path to pay for their sins? Director Nobuo Nakagawa boldly answers this question as the final act of the film literally takes place in Hell and eternal punishment is brutally given out to Shiro and the sinful individuals that came to surround him. The film takes a surreal turn as Nobuo gives us a visually haunting portrayal of hell and the diverse punishments suffered by those who find themselves there. Shiro might have been able to avoid this fate had he gone to the authorities and confessed but, now must not only suffer himself but, watch his fiancé' and their unborn child suffer as well. The other characters are also punished according to their sins and Nobuo takes us along for their suffering unflinchingly with some very disturbing sequences, some with unexpected gore. As this is 1960, most of the visuals are done in camera with just a few composite shots thus making this film even more effective. Jigoku may not be for everyone. It is a slow paced film but, that serves the story as we experience Shiro's guilt and the lack of morality by those around him, then are taken to Hell with them to see them receive their punishment. And it is a visually stunning and very unsettling trip if you're up to it. A bold and haunting example of 60s Japanese Horror cinema. 7/10

Wow, is this a weird film and you've got to hand it to the film makers for making something this original! But, even with all its originality you have to wonder who would really enjoy this film or buy a DVD of it? After all, the narrative is confusing and gross---but not so much it isn't worth seeing (if you are curious) once.The film begins with two college students out for a drive. One is obviously evil and with his knowledge of things he should know nothing about, it's pretty obvious he's a demon of some sort. During this drive, they run over a drunk and while it really isn't their fault, they don't stop. The passenger, Shirô, tells his evil friend to stop but being evil, he doesn't stop. And throughout the first portion of the film, Shirô doesn't so much do evil but stands passively by and lets it happen--and ultimately condemns himself to an eternity in Hell. But, before he ultimately is killed, you get to meet his family and friends--who ALL turn out to be selfish and evil people.Once Shirô dies, the film enters a very surreal second portion where he is shown the various levels of this Shinto version of Hell. In each level there are increasingly awful forms of punishment because the sins the people have committed were increasingly bad. There really isn't any narrative--just LOTS and LOTS of bloody and vicious scenes. By today's standards, it's all rather cheesy and funny--but I am sure in 1960 it would have nauseated and horrified audiences. I wasn't really turned off by all this, I was actually bored--as it just seemed to go on and on and on.This is not a particularly pleasant film to watch--but hey, what film about Hell would be?! But on top of that, some cheesy editing and special effects (the car accident scene with the taxi is just badly done) and too much spook house gore make this an interesting but very dull film after about 80 minutes--and it runs 106 minutes. Not great, but VERY different.

Jigoku (1960) ** 1/2 (out of 4) A college student (Shigern Amachi) has his life literally go to Hell after he and a buddy accidentally run down a drunken gangster who jumps out in front of their car. Soon afterwards everyone in the student's life begin to die and his guilt eventually leads him to Hell. This is certainly a very strange and surreal film that has the same structure as the director's previous film Ghost Story of Yotsura as it gives us a lot of backstory before it gets down to the meat of the film. Perhaps because I'm from a different religious background I couldn't get overly involved with the story because I had a hard time believing so much evil and bad would come to our main guy just because of the accident that happened. He didn't do it on purpose, he felt bad about it and all the blame would go to his friend that was driving. For the student to be damned to Hell for what he did and to have to suffer through various deaths just seemed a bit too much for me and this dragged down the first hour of the film for me. After the hour mark when we finally get to Hell is when things begin to pick up with the bizarre visuals and (for the time) graphic death scenes. I've heard a few call this the first gore film and perhaps that's true as we get some rather bloody violence including a man getting cut into pieces, an eye ripped out and hands being ripped off. This stuff certainly isn't as graphic as the stuff of today but I'm sure it caused quite a commotion back in the day. The various stages of Hell were perfectly done and contains a lot of imagination. I loved the various stages that our student has to go through and many of them managed to be quite creepy. The scene where the people of Hell are begging for water was beautifully done. Perhaps a second viewing would change my opinion on the start of the film but as for now I felt it really dragged too slowly.

"Jigoku" begins surrealistically enough, with artfully draped nude women in a chiaroscuro setting, bringing to mind some of the stylish and gritty Yakuza films of the '60s. Expectations of "Jigoku" continuing in that vein are quickly eroded, along with any semblance of logic to the plot. If you're reading a review that contains spoilers, I'll presume that either you've already watched it or have little interest in doing so, so a brief outline is worthwhile: Shiro is a university student who is engaged to a young woman. He's also an acquaintance (seemingly uncomfortably so) of Tamura, a thoroughly unsavory young man who seems to have some hold over Shiro, and be privy to incriminating secrets others hold. Tamura gives Shiro a ride one night, and Shiro asks him to take an alternate route, with unpleasant results: a drunken Yakuza, staggering down the darkened road, is (slowly) struck by Tamura's car, eventually killing him. Despite Shiro's protests that they should stop to help, Tamura drives on. The man's mother sees the accident and notes the license plate number. She vows to the man's widow, that they shall take revenge.Here's where the story takes a sharp turn from realism. Shiro, seized with guilt for his complicity in the drunken Yakuza's death (which consisted entirely of suggesting the route they took), wants to make a clean breast of it, but Tamura refuses, setting in motion what becomes a Buddhist story of guilt and punishment, both here and in the afterlife. Every person they encounter, it seems, has been responsible for the death of another...except, of course, Shiro who bore no such responsibility, having been nothing more than a passenger. And yet, despite his innocence and his mostly ethical impulses, he neither tries to defend himself, nor protest the injustice of his punishment. He's entirely passive; the most energetic thing he does is to shout various people's names at different points. (What is it with the Japanese shouting people's names?! Has it ever helped a character's situation in a film, much less in real life? If so, I've never seen it.) The story slows down to a crawl, with everyone dying and going to hell, whether or not they did anything wrong. And the methods through which they die are so improbable as to be farcical. High up on a suspension bridge, two bad people accidentally fall to their deaths -- despite a clearly visible grid of cables stretching like guardrails on both sides. Someone falls down one flight of stairs onto the tatami mat floor; apparently, a fatal end. A dozen old people die from eating little fish, caught that day, which have supposedly gone rancid. I couldn't help but think of the scene in Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life", where Death kills all of the members of a dinner party through tinned salmon, used in the mousse. The rest of the plodding story is set in the Buddhist conception of hell, and is played essentially straight from that dogma. Physical punishment is graphically meted out, with gratuitous eye-gouging, flaying and other sadistic punishments, shown for their shock value rather than for our edification. Shiro calls out for his daughter, floating off (to what fate?) on a lotus leaf -- as if shouting her name would do either of them any good. Never mind the fact that, in the story, she was only a few month-old fetus. Here, she's at least a month old baby. Go figure."Jigoku" contains some stunning cinematography, bits of a very good jazz score, impressive flourishes of color and other charms, but they are unable to save it from the plodding, illogical cautionary tale it becomes.