REVIEW: JIGOKU
REVIEW: THE SINNERS OF HELL
REVIEW: NOBUO NAKAGAWA [ 1960 ] 98'
REVIEW: SHINTOHO CO. LTD
CAST: SHIGERU AMACHI, YOICHI NUMATA
CAST: UTAKO MITSUYA, KANJURO ARASHI
WTFFILM RATING:

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 . . .

Seeking a respite from his streak of hard luck in Tokyo, Shimizu takes to living with his family at the retirement home his father is operating. But the situation there is no better than in Tokyo - his mother is dying and his father is having an affair with a young woman who begins pestering Shimizu to marry her and take her to the city with him. One glimmer of hope exists in Sachiko, who seems to be the physical and spiritual double of Yukiko. But her life is on the rocks too - with her father being a nearly insane alcoholic and painter and the local detective trying to pay his way into a marriage with her. Making matters worse are the subsequent untimely arrivals of Tamura, Yukiko's parents, and the lover and mother of the hit-and-run victim.

The lover of the dead yakuza convinces Shimizu to meet up with her on a local rope bridge in hopes of shooting the unsuspecting young man. Things don't go quite as planned, however, as the young woman accidentally takes a plunge from the bridge into the rocky chasm below, quickly followed by the malicious Tamura. Shimizu, more disturbed than ever by the recent events, takes to drinking as soon as he returns to the retirement home, which is in the midst of its 10th anniversary celebration. It seems that one more catastrophe is in the works, however, as the party goers are being fed rancid fish supplied by a greedy local fisherman. When 9pm rolls around, the clocks stop, and all hell literally breaks loose . . .

JIGOKU's vision of hell is a miracle of budget-conscious design - set almost entirely on a seemingly endless black stage, its many locations are all beautifully rendered with little more than careful camera placement, dry ice, and colored lights (the success of these sequences can be attributed to production designer Haruyasu Kurosawa, who would work with Nakagawa on three other films). Once here our unsuspecting but deserving cast is treated to a variety of gruesome torments - a scheming doctor is sawed into pieces while Shimizu's cheating father is flayed until no flesh or muscle remains on his body. Others suffer thirst, are forced to wade through bubbling rivers of excrement, or are burned and boiled outright.

It is here that Shimizu rediscovers Yukiko and learns that she was pregnant when she died - Shimizu must brave all the horrors of hell in order to save the child, named Harumi by her mother, from suffering eternally as a result of her parents' actions in life.

The final 35 or so minutes of JIGOKU abandon the more linear nature of the narrative preceding them in lieu of a more dream like progression. From a critical perspective, the vision of hell presented in the film can best be understood as a dream manifestation of Shimizu's own guilt and belief in his need for punishment, as well as the need for punishment for others closely involved with the miseries in his life (it can be no mistake that the most gruesome torments are reserved for the doctor who mis-diagnosed his mother, his cheating father, and Tamura). Shimizu sees himself as fully deserving of the many torments he receives and faces them in a brave manner, managing to save his child (and Yukiko and Sachiko possibly as well, as the vague ending may indicate) from a similar fate.

The entire sequence, as is hinted by the film, appears to occur during the moment of Shimizu's death - which, in the film's universe, also happens to be the moment of death for most, if not all, of the rest of the characters. This further supports the "hell as a dream manifestation" understanding of the film in my mind, as does the very nature of the hell to which the characters are sent - that the hell presented by the film is largely Buddhist has less to do with the film's country of origin than with the fact that it is the idea of hell that Shimizu and his counterparts are most familiar with. Indeed, Shimizu is listening to a lecture on just that subject when the film opens.

I suppose it's only natural that the fantastic elements of JIGOKU would overshadow its more traditional opening acts - but Nakagawa still manages to imbue them with the same kind of magic that makes the latter part of the film so effective. The focus throughout the first hour of the film is definitely on Shimizu and his unusual relationship with Tamura. The nature of Tamura, himself, is a mystery throughout, with the film indicating that he may be something of a cruel doppelganger to Shimizu. This goes a long way towards explaining Tamura's presence, particularly towards the latter half of the film when he seems to appear and disappear at will, as well as his knowing so much privileged information about the rest of the characters. This dark side of Shimizu is what causes much of his troubles, so its understandable that Tamura, in the end, would receive the harshest retribution in Shimizu's dream hell. Tamura can also be read as a Mephistopheles-esque character, sent to torment the living both before and after death.

JIGOKU was an impoverished effort to say the least - one amusing anecdote posits that the actors were made to bury themselves during one part of the proceedings - but it hardly shows. The cinemascope cinematography is spot on from start to finish, with clever visuals permeating the entire production. Aside from being an immensely satisfying visual experience, the sound design of the film is entirely unique as well. The bluesy opening theme is interspersed with moments of shear chaos during the opening credits and is an excellent example of the odd sound design, and the constant shifting from subtle ambient effects to the roar of passing freight trains keeps viewers on the edge of their seats throughout.

Given the fantastic visual nature of the much of JIGOKU, it's easy to neglect the importance of the cast chosen to portray the extensive list of characters. Shigeru Amachi was a favorite actor of director Nakagawa, having played the lead in his previous film THE GHOST OF YOTSUYA [1959] along with having parts of varying importance in many of the director's earlier works. Here he plays Shiro Shimizu, a contemporary Faust, who is led to and through a life of sin by an equally contemporary Mephistopheles (Tamura, played with unforgettable zeal by Yoshio Numata, who had worked with Nakagawa on his 1956 ghost film THE CEILING AT UTSUNOMIYA). Tamura is likely what Fonzie would have turned out like had he been born a demon as opposed to a baby - Numata's absurd performance veritably drips a disturbing sort of cool, as the ever-suave all-knowing Tamura wanders about the country side being hip and ruining people's lives.

Equally important to the proceedings is the young Utako Mitsuya, who plays both Yukiko and Sachiko. Though minor parts in terms of screen time, they are both necessary to the development of the complex storyline of the first hour of the film and are largely responsible for character Shimizu's transformation into a more traditionally heroic figure in the film's climax. Mitsuya, who's only other major credits were for a recurring role in Shintoho's SUPER GIANTS film series, was apparently doomed to go down with the studio she worked for and appeared in no other films following JIGOKU. WTFFILM considers that a real shame.

It's difficult to gage just how important JIGOKU is to the history of film - it was certainly pioneering in terms of the horror genre and presented scenes of (very) graphic violence at a time when the terms "splatter" and "gore" were relatively alien to the film going public (the ridiculous Herschell Gordon Lewis gore romp BLOOD FEAST would officially kickstart the splatter subgenre some three years after JIGOKU's release). Relatively obscure in the west for nigh on 40 years, JIGOKU is seen as something of a classic in its native Japan and has been remade twice as of this writing, once in 1979 and again in 1999, while inspiring a multitude of genre directors along the way. The Criterion Collection has recently recognized the importance of the film (along with the likes of EYES WITHOUT A FACE and others), releasing the film to DVD in the United States in 2006.

Though marketed and, I'm sure, produced under the guise of exploitation (Shintoho was producing little else by this time in its career), JIGOKU goes well beyond others of its ilk and remains an entirely unique cinematic experience. This is classic stuff all the way - intelligent, remarkably designed, and quite unlike anything produced before it. JIGOKU is highly recommended.