Jigoku (1960)

Until Criterion announced their forthcoming release of this obscure horror film back in August, I had never heard anything about it. Reading the synopsis of the film I became quite intrigued. Employing a conventional narrative for the first half, the last 40 minutes find our immoral cast of characters plunged straight into the depths of the inferno in a giddily gory finale. Characters sawed in half, dismembered, flayed, tortured, etc – needless to say I felt understandably intimidated about this particular entry into my chronicle of horror. But now that I’ve finally viewed it, I’m left wondering what all the fuss was about.

Sure, it’s violent and unusual, but certainly not the disturbing masterpiece it was touted as. To be fair, I’m judging it by today’s standards of gore and violence. For the record, a film like Event Horizon presented a far more graphic and disturbing image of Hell (or whatever it was supposed to be). With Jigoku I simply felt unfazed. At the same time, weighing it against something like Event Horizon, for instance, which goes for torture on the most visceral level, I was pleased that Jigoku broached its subject matter in a surprisingly tasteful and artistic manner. It doesn’t prevent the film from falling into mediocrity, but it does at least save it from being an exploitative or gratuitous affair.

The film comes out of the gates strong, with a perplexing but brilliant opening credit sequence that combines screams of torture, scantily clad women and a Keystone Cops musical number. From there, the film loosens its pace as we travel a tediously dull and predictable path that feels more like filler meant to build up to the eventual fall from grace rather than a natural and satisfying progression toward that sadistic climax.

The story sounds more interesting than it actually plays out. A theology student, burdened by the guilt of his involvement in a hit and run accident, becomes the victim of a series of baffling tragedies. Tailed by a mysterious friend and a uncanny look-alike of his recently deceased fiancé, his sorrows lead him to his father’s retirement community where he finds most of the residents engaged in various lewd and immoral activities. Eventually, all the characters die in one way or another and for various (and at times questionable) reasons find themselves plunged into hell.

At this point, I leaned forward in anticipation, expecting a depiction of hell similar to the images harnessed by Dante in The Inferno. Instead I was treated to a sub par descent into the abyss that didn’t utilize its color scheme and set design nearly as much as it should have. As I said, the scenes of violence and torture are pretty tame. Not that I typically look forward to violence of this caliber, but at the very least, I expected the film to deliver on its promise of a terrifying image of the afterlife, but its vision of hell doesn’t even succeed on the most essential level – something that’s integral to the film if I’ve successfully identified its purpose.

But let us discuss the film’s overall goal, because I hoped it wouldn’t position itself as some sort of morality play. Thinking back to the plot structure, however, how couldn’t that be the case? Taking on a painfully sententious tone, the film wants to argue a moral outlook in which even the most venial of sins are met with the most horrendous of torments. Is the director’s intent to steer us toward a path of righteousness or is he reacting against the rigid dogma of eye-for-an-eye justice? I ask because he appears to reverse his verdict with a disastrous final scene that I shall not reveal here. But whatever his intention, it remains clear that with the present material he falls short of either goal. Considering the film doesn’t even work for shock value, I’m left to contemplate its indoctrination into the Criterion Collection catalogue. I realize that it was a precursor to modern horror films, and, to an extent, the grind house cinema, but without the poetry of images it so desperately needed to succeed, I cannot acknowledge its cult status.