Slideshow
JIGOKU
地獄
Japan, 1960
Directed by Nobuo Nakagawa
Starring Shigeru Amachi, Yoichi Numata, Utako Mitsuya
Approx. 100 min. 35mm print courtesy Japan Foundation.
Two male college students, the quiet but indecisive Shiro (Amachi) and the sadistic Tamura (Numata) find themselves on the path to hell after committing a hit-and-run. “Born from some unholy union of Goethe’s Faust and Genshin’s Ojoyoshu, a tenth-century Buddhist treatise on the various torments of the lower realms… Overflowing with brackish ponds of bubbling pus, brain-rattling disjunctions of sound and image, and at times almost dauntingly incomprehensible plot twists and eye-assaulting bouts of brutish montage, JIGOKU is more than merely a boundary-pummeling classic of the horror genre — it’s as lurid a study of sin without salvation as the silver screen has ever seen.” – Chuck Stephens