a.k.a. HELL / THE SINNERS OF HELL
Shintoho Co. Ltd [1960] 98′
country: Japan
director: NOBUO NAKAGAWA
cast: SHIGERU AMACHI, YOICHI NUMATA,
cast: UTAKO MITSUYA, KANJURO ARASHI
Contradictory to what a plethora of Chick Tracts and so-called “Hell Houses” (haunted houses featuring abortions instead of ax murders) may lead you to believe, the belief in hell by the various peoples of the world is in decline. A lot of that undoubtedly has to do with the dwindling popularity of a place of eternal damnation since the 18th century Enlightenment and the fact that people are, largely, becoming more tolerant of beliefs alternative to their own. Still, fictional representations of hell are quite popular in film and have been since the inception of the medium (George Melies offered early viewers a variety of amusing shorts on the subject, including 1903′s THE INFERNAL CAKE-WALK).
Produced in 1960 by the failing Shintoho Studios (it would rise again shortly thereafter as a producer predominantly of pink films), Nakagawa’s JIGOKU presents viewers with one of the most stylishly disturbing visages of the underbelly of the afterlife ever committed to film.
Shiro Shimizu (Amachi) seems to have a happy life ahead of him – he’s doing well in college and has just become engaged to one of his professor’s daughters. All of that changes after his supposed-friend Tamura (Numata) hits and kills a young yakuza while driving Shimizu’s car. Against his better judgment he says nothing of the accident to the police, but his guilt leads to a series of unfortunate incidents. First his fiance Yukiko is killed when her taxi, which Shimizu demanded she take, hits a tree. Her family is destroyed by the incident, which drives the mother mad and Shimizu to drink, leading to a fling with a stripper who just happens to be the lover of the yakuza killed in the earlier hit-and-run . . .
