Jigoku

Jigoku

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.

Jigoku
  • Jigoku

    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 ...

Extras

  • Building the Inferno

    This documentary features interviews conducted in New York and Tokyo in 2005, with JIGOKU screenwriter Ichiro Miyagawa and actor Yoichi Numata, who would pass away in April 2006; filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa; and Nobuo Nakagawa collaborators and friends Chiho Katsura and Kensuke Suzuki.