Jigoku DVD review

Hell Ride: A Trip To JIGOKU

A stunning mix of expressionist horror and psychological drama, JIGOKU might be the must-have horror disc of the year.

The Shintoho Studios, an offshoot of the much larger Toho Studios and itself one of the Big Six studios during the Golden Age of Japanese cinema, had fallen on hard times when they began production on JIGOKU in 1960. Despite the company’s track record of producing quality films by renowned directors such as Kon Ichikawa, Mikio Nabuse, and Kenji Mizoguchi, the late fifties found Shintoho churning out genre pictures including war films, sex comedies and ‘Kaidan’ or ghost stories just to pay the bills.

One of their most successful ‘Kaidan’ directors was Nabuo Nakagawa, whose films “Ghost Story of Yotsuya (1959)’ and ‘Lady Vampire’ (1959) became some of the most successful Kaidan films in the history of the genre. Despite his success with ghost stories, Nakagawa himself preferred domestic dramas about families and ordinary people. The impetus to make horror films was provided by Mitsugu Okura, a producer at Shintoho who wanted to create violent proto-horror films for the summer crowds with a big focus on the ‘grotesque’. With JIGOKU, Okura certainly got all of the grotesque he could show and in many ways helped create a commercial shift towards the kind of violent Japanese horror films currently made today by people like Shinya Tsukamoto and Takashi Miike.

The plot of JIGOKU is fairly straight forward: One fateful night, Shiro (Shigeru Amachi) and his malevolent buddy Tamura (Yoichi Numata) run over a drunken Yakuza who stumbles in front of their car. Driving away from the scene of the accident, Shiro is torn up with guilt but decides not to surrender to the authorities. Tamura, meanwhile, relishes in the chaos and Shiro begins having serious doubts about his friend’s moral compass. Things get worse when the family of the dead Yakuza plot revenge against Shiro. Thus begins Nakagawa’s study of the nature of human culpability and Shiro’s eventual journey to the Netherworld.

Perhaps one of the things that makes JIGOKU challenging to Western viewers is its adherence to Buddhist attitudes towards evil, which tend to be more subtle and subjective than the traditional Western perspective of seeing evil as absolute. The crimes punished here are not rape, robbery and murder, but vehicular manslaughter, dishonesty, having two mistresses and other things that aren’t necessarily worse than what’s printed in letters to Dear Abbey, especially when you consider the punishments meted out to these transgressors in Hell. Let’s just say if this film is any indicator of proportional justice in Japan, its no wonder their national crime rate is so low.

The last forty minutes of JIGOKU are entirely dedicated to Shiro’s journey through Hell. And what a Hell it is! King Enma, the ruler of Hell, proves he isn’t shy of spilling a little of the red stuff as he dishes out death by a thousand cuts, dismemberment, spikes through necks and flayings to the multitude of hapless souls in each one of Hell’s Eight Tombs.

In one jaw-dropping tableau after the other, Nakagawa paints scene after scene of torment including one that illustrates in feverish detail a mutilated corpse with its heart still beating. If that seems too strong for your tastes, the film is ultimately more ‘Wizard of Oz’ than ‘Hellraiser’ but its wonderful production design, while psychedelic, is also truly horrific.

JIGOKU is a deeply interesting mix of classical Japanese drama and splatter film. Many of the shots in JIGOKU are highly reminiscent of the formalist style of Mizoguchi. It’s no surprise to learn, in fact, that JIGOKU’s editor is none other than Toshio Goto who also cut Mizoguichi’s masterful The Story Of Oharu, a non-horror film that remains a classic of world cinema.

The acting in JIGOKU is solid, if understated, with a great performance by Amachi who appeared in several of Nagawa’s other features including Ghost Story Of Yotsuya. Amachi captures the anxiety and quiet torment of Shiro perfectly; his handsome visage passively disguising his inner turmoil like a Japanese Special Agent Cooper, while Numata is hysterical as Tamura, a character that evokes another Lynchian creation, the crazed, eyebrow-lite Mystery Man from Lost Highway.

One of the most significant and curious things about JIGOKU was that it was made in 1960. Traditionally speaking, 1960 was a very important year for the horror genre. Two films in particular, Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho psychologically modernized horror by adopting the tropes of monster films and adapting them to material that focused more on crime and pathological deviance than unknown creatures of folklore. The mummy and werewolf were suddenly exchanged for more modern anxieties, specifically the potentiality of violence in those around us.

It would seem now that 1960’s JIGOKU also brought about another development in the modern horror film: the gore genre. Does JIGOKU usurp HG Lewis’ Blood Feast for the dubious title of being the first movie “to show people dying with their eyes open” as Herschell himself once claimed? Blood Feast of course, is a highly debatable, cheaply shot, under-produced film that transcends its own very serious shortcomings to become one of the most mind-blowing films ever made, despite giving gore films a lasting reputation as cheapo sub-par entities which are generally considered as incompetent as they are nasty. Nakagawa however shows that gore can be a legitimate device when used effectively, and JIGOKU is nothing if it is not effective. It’s also stylish and intelligent which are two words that have never been used to describe Blood Feast under any circumstance.

It’s been a long time coming, but it seems JIGOKU has finally secured its place on the mantle alongside the horror genre’s greatest masterpieces. What’s curious now is what will be made of Blood Feast.

Additional Info:

The Criterion Edition of JIGOKU is presented in Japanese with English subtitles. It is letterboxed in a 2:35:1 ratio. In addition to a forty-minute documentary entitled Building The Inferno, the Criterion DVD also includes the original theatrical trailer and poster art from different Nagawa films. It also includes a booklet by Asian film scholar Chuck Stephens. The audio is Dolby 1.0 made from the original mono sources. Uncut. 98 Minutes. Eastmancolor.

Screenshots:

Join our mailing list