The student Shirô Shimizu (Shigeru Amachi) is in love with his girlfriend Yukiko (Utako Mitsuya) and they want to get married. While returning home with his evil friend Tamura (Yôichi Numata) driving their car, they hit and run the Yakuza Kyôichi (Hiroshi Izumida). Kyôichi's mother and wife seek them out to revenge the death of Kyôichi. Meanwhile Shirô decides to turn himself in to the police and he takes a taxi with Yukiko but there is a car crash and Yukiko dies, in the beginning of the bizarre journey to hell of Shirô.

"Jigoku" is a weird and insane Japanese horror cult movie from the 60's. The story begins with a great jinx and crisis of conscience of Shirô, but out of the blue the screenplay becomes bizarre and messy. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Inferno" ("Hell")

Sinners find themselves at the gates of Hell. Tokyo theology student Shiro is getting a ride from Tamura who callously runs over drunken pedestrian Kyoichi Shiga. The next day, Shiro reads that the dead Kyoichi was a gang leader and Tamura is remorseless. Kyoichi's mother vows to track down and kill the driver recruiting his girlfriend Yoko. Tamura's nightmare gets darker and darker.

The opening credit has semi-nude ladies posing and I wonder if this is going for erotic artistry. The director is definitely going for a lot of style in this early Japanese horror. Honestly, I can see where the tradition of Japanese horrors comes from. It's art-house poetry and crass sexuality. There are no jump scares but plenty of grotesque especially in Hell. It's a wild atmosphere. It's old school non-slasher horror which is new again. The mannequins thrown off the bridge are laughable while there are some other great artsy moves. It becomes a crazy long party and a gruesome torturous Hell. This is unlike most movies at the time.

Wow, is this a weird film and you've got to hand it to the film makers for making something this original! But, even with all its originality you have to wonder who would really enjoy this film or buy a DVD of it? After all, the narrative is confusing and gross---but not so much it isn't worth seeing (if you are curious) once.

The film begins with two college students out for a drive. One is obviously evil and with his knowledge of things he should know nothing about, it's pretty obvious he's a demon of some sort. During this drive, they run over a drunk and while it really isn't their fault, they don't stop. The passenger, Shirô, tells his evil friend to stop but being evil, he doesn't stop. And throughout the first portion of the film, Shirô doesn't so much do evil but stands passively by and lets it happen--and ultimately condemns himself to an eternity in Hell. But, before he ultimately is killed, you get to meet his family and friends--who ALL turn out to be selfish and evil people.

Once Shirô dies, the film enters a very surreal second portion where he is shown the various levels of this Shinto version of Hell. In each level there are increasingly awful forms of punishment because the sins the people have committed were increasingly bad. There really isn't any narrative--just LOTS and LOTS of bloody and vicious scenes. By today's standards, it's all rather cheesy and funny--but I am sure in 1960 it would have nauseated and horrified audiences. I wasn't really turned off by all this, I was actually bored--as it just seemed to go on and on and on.

This is not a particularly pleasant film to watch--but hey, what film about Hell would be?! But on top of that, some cheesy editing and special effects (the car accident scene with the taxi is just badly done) and too much spook house gore make this an interesting but very dull film after about 80 minutes--and it runs 106 minutes. Not great, but VERY different.