Directed by Nobuo Nakagawa • 1960 • Japan
Starring Shigeru Amachi, Utako Mitsuya, Yoichi Numata
Shocking, outrageous, and poetic, JIGOKU (HELL, a.k.a. THE SINNERS OF HELL) is the most innovative creation from Nobuo Nakagawa, the father of the Japanese horror film. After a young theology student flees a hit-and-run accident, he is plagued by both his own guilt-ridden conscience and a mysterious, diabolical doppelgänger. But all possible escape routes lead straight to hell, literally. In the gloriously gory final third of the film, Nakagawa offers up his vision of the underworld in a tour de force of torture and degradation. A striking departure from traditional Japanese ghost stories, JIGOKU, with its truly eye-popping (and -gouging) imagery, created aftershocks that are still reverberating in contemporary world horror cinema.
Up Next in Art-House Horror
-
Carnival of Souls
Directed by Herk Harvey • 1962 • United States
Starring Candace Hilligoss, Frances Feist, Sidney BergerA young woman (Candace Hilligoss) in a small Kansas town survives a drag race accident, then agrees to take a job as a church organist in Salt Lake City. En route, she is haunted by a bizarre ...
-
Onibaba
Directed by Kaneto Shindo • 1964 • Japan
Deep within the wind-swept marshes of war-torn medieval Japan, an impoverished mother and her daughter-in-law eke out a lonely, desperate existence. Forced to murder lost samurai and sell their belongings for grain, they dump the corpses down a deep, dark...
-
The Face of Another
Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara • 1966 • Japan
Starring Tatsuya Nakadai, Machiko Kyo, Mikijiro HiraA staggering work of existential science fiction, THE FACE OF ANOTHER dissects identity with the sure hand of a surgeon. Okuyama (YOJIMBO’s Tatsuya Nakadai), after being burned and disfigured in a...
