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Jigoku aka Hell (1960)
Nobuo Nakagawa's Jigoku is a purely an unwanted but inevitable experience that the central character Shiro endured even in life. It's a lyrical and poetic work of film making that explains hell is something we carry with us throughout life, complete with inescapable personal demons that haunt us every step of the way. Director Nakagawa explores a man's guilt, fate, regret, and even redemption on the road to hell.
The film's most effective and infamous sequence involves the visceral punishment waiting for various sinners. Bodies are dissected, flayed, made to wander in a 'vortex of sin,' and cast into a lake of fire, the needle lake & among other things. And through these torments of Hell, Jigoku reveals just how ahead of its time it was, as the violence is stark and disturbing which made it still even by today's standards very much graphic indeed. Surely it must be one of the earliest gore and shock films in world cinema, as it's like all the remorseless sequences cuts right to the heart of why we're told that we should be afraid of hell in the first place. Nakahawa emphasized horrors on psychological turmoil where ultimately the body will endure endless suffering for sin. I’m not sure how many films out there that portrayed 'Hell' so abstract way & effectively like Jigoku, where going to hell may never been so satisfying!
As I downloaded & watched the Criterion DVD release so got the chance to checked out the documentary on director Nobuo Nakagawa and the making of the film (Building the Inferno), where they mention some of Nakagawa's early horror or kaidan (ghost) films, like The Ghost of Kasane (Kaidan Kasanegafuchi, 1957), Black Cat Mansion (Borei Kaibyo Yashiki, 1958) and The Ghost Story of Yotsuya / Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan, 1959)...and by some clips & screen shots they all looked pretty creepy & fascinating also. I’ll definitely love to see these movies in future but not sure whether the dvds of the films are available or not.
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