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Walking on swords and daggers
Walking on swords and daggers
Walking on swords and daggers
J I G O K U   -   H E L L
Reviewed by Mark Vallen - October 2001
I was privileged to see the long belated U.S. Premiere of Jigoku (Hell) at Hollywood's famous Egyptian Theater on August 18th, 2000. Nobuo Nakagawa is a name associated with the genre of horror and ghost stories. Nakagawa's late 1950's movies, Ghost of Kasane (Kaidan Kasanegafuchi) and Ghost of Yotsuya (Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan), were retellings of traditional Japanese folktales. Those classics helped to established the director as the king of the horror flic, but he was also producing Western inspired horror films like Vampire Moth (Kyuketsuki Ga) that introduced decidedly non-Japanese fantasy elements into his work. It wasn't until 1960 that Nakagawa created his masterpiece, Jigoku. The widescreen film was Nakagawa's first color movie, but it would also be the first horror film of it's kind produced anywhere in the world.
To be lashed and cut until the end of time
To be lashed and cut until the end of time
Death by a thousand cuts
Alfred Hitchcock would release his infamous thriller, Psycho in the same year... but Jigoku made the American director's outlandish tale seem tame by comparison. Jigoku was a phantasmagoric nightmare of unrelenting morbidity, a glimpse of Hell and it's eternal torments that must have outraged viewers when it first opened. Even by today's standards the film contains scenes that are truly disturbing.

The stunning opening credits of the movie consists of a 1960's Jazz trio pumping out a frenetic soundtrack as the backdrop to an eye popping montage of still photos showing close ups of scantily clad women. The credits serve as a vulgar introduction to the sins of the material world. Immediately following we are introduced to the lead character, Shiro, as he sits in a university classroom listening to a lecture conducted by Professor Yajima.

The subject of the lecture is "concepts of Hell" and Shiro is most interested in learning about the The Eight Great Hells as they are revealed in the Buddhist sutras. But Shiro's curiosity is motivated by guilt... the night before was he involved in a hit and run accident that resulted in the death of a yakuza (gangster). Shiro has convinced himself that he was not actually driving, it was his alter ego... a dark mirror image of himself named Tamura that was at the wheel. That darker self refused to confess guilt to the local police, and so Shiro is tormented by the death on his hands... partly because he's also engaged to Professor Yajima's Daughter, Yukiko.

Roasting forever in the flames of Hell
Roasting forever in the flames of Hell
Roasting forever in Hellfire
Fate is unkind to Shiro when he's involved in a second car accident, this one killing his lovely fiancée Yukiko. The angst of the young man knows no bounds when Yukiko's family turns him away. Shattered and guilt ridden, the forlorn Shiro finds refuge in the pleasure quarters... and he takes a sleazy courtesan named Yoko as his plaything. Little does he know that Yoko was the lover of the yakuza he killed in the car accident!

Compounding his misery, Shiro gets the news that his mother is on her deathbed. He travels to the Tenjoen Senior Citizens Facility to visit her, where he quite unexpectedly encounters Sachiko... a dead-ringer look alike of his deceased fiancée. Sachiko's father is an alcoholic artist who spends his days painting a magnificent image of Hell. The other residents of the senior citizens home are equally eccentric. When Shiro finds his elderly father living there with a very young woman while the old man's wife lies dying in an adjoining room, the fragile Shiro approaches the breaking point. That breakdown comes when the mysterious Tamura arrives, followed soon after by the courtesan, Yoko. Later that evening, the Tenjoen's 10th anniversary celebrations get underway, and they soon deteriorate into drunken revelry as the sake endlessly flows. Suddenly the grim Tamura stops the proceedings as he slowly recounts the past sins of all those present. Time freezes as the hapless merrymakers are then hurled into the gapping maw of Hell.

Beaten by Demons, flayed alive
Beaten by Demons, flayed alive
Beaten and flayed
At this point the film departs from its rather conventional first half, and along with the movie's protagonist, the viewer is thrust into an utterly terrifying abyss. The last half hour of the film is a fast moving collection
of disjointed vignettes whose only relation to each other is that they graphically detail the endless tortures of Hell. Time and reason are suspended as the denizens of the underworld are savagely tormented
by the Lord of the Eight Great Hells and his demonic minions.

Again and again Shiro was punished in unspeakable ways... hung upside down with a huge spike driven through his neck... made to trod over a field of sword blades, but always restored to fitness so that he may suffer boundless torments until the end of time. One devastating torture reunited Shiro with his beloved fiancée Yukiko on the banks of a mist covered river.

The pair could hear the cries of their baby girl, Harumi (conceived only days before Yukiko's tragic death), but they were unable to see her. Finally the girl is spotted floating down the netherworld river on a lotus blossom, but as Harumi's cries became more desperate and the river turned to blood, Shiro was unable to save the child despite all his efforts. The scene was poetic but unimaginably cruel.

Shiro was not the only one to be abused and oppressed by demons, the infernal regions were overflowing with humanity and people were undergoing agonies both individually and in groups. Sachiko's artistic father was there... painting not with brush and ink, but with entrails, blood, and human filth. There were infinite fields of grasping, clutching hands where people were buried for eternity in muck. There were vast and empty dark plains were only the moaning of the dead could be heard. Misshapen ogres crushed the bones of their victims with giant clubs, while others were skinned alive, boiled, or sawn in half. Some poor souls were roasted upon giant flaming wheels.

Eternity in a boiling cauldron
Eternity in a boiling cauldron
Boiling for eternity
For me the most memorable scene of the pit was that of a massive rushing whirlpool made up of screaming, terrified people. The wretches had no control over their own bodies, some unseen force made them run endlessly in the gigantic swirling circle. Like animals off to slaughter, the panicked throng was mad with fear, but unable to escape.

The aesthetics of classic Noh Theater are evident in the film's portrayal of purgatory, from the minimalist but evocative sets to the eerie music. Working with designer Haryasu Kurosawa, an amazing glimpse of the underworld was achieved using little more than lighting effects, film editing, and low budget props and make-up, yet the overall effect was startlingly realistic.

Alive but stripped of flesh
Alive but stripped of flesh
Stripped of flesh, again & again

Nobuo Nakagawa's frightful morality tale was based upon the Buddhist belief of an afterlife where earthly sins are atoned for after death. It took Nakagawa seven months to shoot Jigoku, and much of the production was funded with his own money. The film has been the subject of numerous remakes, including a 1999 production by Teruo Ishii. Yet it's the original director's remarkable vision that helped give rise to a renaissance in the genre of horror movies. Forty years after its making, the film still elicits shock, screams, and praise from its viewers.

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