Jigoku: The 1960 Film That Filmed Hell

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 08:00:00 +0000

There is a moment about two thirds of the way through Jigoku when the film stops pretending to be a story and simply becomes a place. The plot, such as it is, has been ticking along — guilt, a hit-and-run, a widening stain of consequence — and then a bridge collapses, everyone dies at once, and Nobuo Nakagawa marches his entire cast down into the eight great hells of Buddhist cosmology. From that point the film is a guided tour of the underworld, and it was made in 1960, which is the detail that keeps me coming back to it. Herschell Gordon Lewis would not open Blood Feast for another three years. The word “splatter” did not yet describe a genre. And here is a bankrupt Japanese studio filming skin being peeled off in strips.

Nobuo Nakagawa - vo.rs

Jigoku: The 1960 Film That Filmed Hell