Jigoku (The Sinners of Hell) poster & wallpaper
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Shigeru Amachi, Utako Mitsuya, Akiko Yamashita, Fumiko Miyata, Hiroshi Hayashi ... see more see more... , Jun Otomo , Kimie Tokudaiji , Torahiko Nakamura

When a young college student had his sadistic friend leave a respected yakuza to die after inadvertently running him down on a lonely stretch of road, their fate is sealed in director Nobuo Nakagawa's... read more read more... Japanese horror classic Jigoku. Shiro's life seems to be going well; he's in love with pretty Yukiko and just received her parent's permission to take her hand in marriage. When his roommate, Tamura, runs down a drunken yakuza and refuses Shiro's plea to return to the scene of the crime and help the man, Shiro's conscience burns, and he soon admits his crime to Yukiko. As the two rush to Yukiko's father for advice, their taxi crashes and Yukiko dies in Shiro's arms. Overwhelmed by the tragedy that surrounds him, Shiro's life descends into a haze of alcohol and loose women until he receives word that his mother is gravely ill. Though he makes it to the senior citizens community in time to see her before she dies, Shiro is followed to the community by both Tamura and Yoko, a prostitute out to avenge the death of her yakuza boss. As Shiro is sent screaming into hell, his horrifying journey into darkness has only begun. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

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48% want to see it

1,058 ratings

Unrated, 1 hr. 40 min.

Directed by: Nobuo Nakagawa

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DVD Release Date: September 19, 2006

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Flixster Reviews (131)

  • sanjurosamurai
    June 7, 2009
    sanjurosamurai
    while being an incredibly flawed film in many ways, jigoku is also utterly profound in its message and entirely effective in its execution. a film about a "good" man who through a series of poor choices finds himself in hell, this film builds well in its first two acts until a f... read moreinal act that enthralls completely. while ones world view may get in the way of their ability to be effected by the portraits of hell in the film, one cant escape the empty feeling that the film provides of a godless existence. a great and creative horror film the likes of which is rarely seen in this genre anymore.
  • DrBenway
    October 30, 2008
    DrBenway
    Jigoku is supposed to be the first picture that used gore as a serious special effect, making it the grandfather of movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Hellraiser and such. Of course, you can't watch the end of the movie without the beginning, so you really have to make the... read more choice of suffering through the first half of tedious exposition so you can enjoy the last half before giving up on it, entirely.

    I can't tell you not to see Jigoku, just that it's no longer the terrifying journey it apparently was back in the sixties. The first hour is long enough that I feel confident saying I don't really think I'll ever feel compelled to sit through it again. Western cinema such as Hellraiser owes a great debt to the stylization of the torture sequences, but they are tame in comparison to Clive Barker's far more sexual and visual depiction's two decades later. It is more interesting from cultural and religious perspectives than from a horror angle, but not very.
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  • mjgildea
    May 21, 2008
    mjgildea
    If Mario Bava was Japanese instead of Italian this is what you just might have ended up with--astonishing visuals (namely the last third) and great shoestring special effects. Oh, and some great gore. Unfortunately you'd also end up with a godawful story (or poor cultural transla... read moretion) that just may be the very definition of weak. Aside from the gorgeous freakshow at the end my faith in the folks at Criterion is indeed shaken.
  • Stinger839
    February 2, 2008
    Stinger839
    the most visually astonishing vision of hell to ever be rendered on screen
  • DragonEyeMorrison
    May 15, 2007
    DragonEyeMorrison
    Surreal and very ahead of it's time, a mix of drama and horror. All the scenes that take place in hell are like if a painting came to life. Worth a check for any fan of Japanese cinema.
  • fb208103125
    October 11, 2011
    fb208103125
    A disturbing film with some truly terrifying visuals and themes. Shocking and thought provoking in equal doses, Jigoku is literally a haunting look at hell and all the suffering involved for those destined for it. Depressing and terrifying especially in the third act.
  • jimbotender
    July 8, 2009
    jimbotender
    When Jigoku came out,it was like a thunderstruck for a new wave of J-Horror diamonds to appear in the 60's,something which as an unofficial movement,has stood the test of time till today.Nakagawa might not be the most smart film-maker but by all means,he absolutely knows how to g... read moreive us creepy realism!The inferno parts are not the only highlight,one must see it as a tragedy of errors in spite of the "thriller" hype.And Numata is such a bad-ass evil dude!
  • kingmob6
    January 10, 2012
    kingmob6
    The stage-y visuals of this one are a huge selling point, capturing the nightmarish qualities of a trip to hell amazingly well.

    Happy to have finally given this one a look from the To-Watch Pile, it's been hanging around for too long.

    Rental?
  • amechanicaldisaster
    August 10, 2008
    amechanicaldisaster
    Incredibly good 1960 Japanese movie. You spend the first hour watching a lot of people dying, and then the rest of the movie watching them all be tortured in one of the best interpretations of Hell ever. Splendid.
  • jes25924
    July 21, 2008
    jes25924
    Horror film about the "Buddhist Hells"(an important distinction from Christian Hell. 1. You don't go to Buddhist Hell because of any kind of God, you go because of past Karma, and you stay just as long as is necessary, for the pound of flesh to be re...(read more) ndered so to sp... read moreeak. "Naraka" the Buddhist word for Hell, we are told when the film opens means roughly "abdonimal" or "excrusiating", and though it's concept is more abstract than the Wests, it's torture's are much more specific, and would make Eli Roth blush.

    The story, begins with young man, who get's in the wrong car with the wrong guy(Tamura, who just appears out of nowhere, and then usually just to cause trouble or point out others sins), who has a hit and run, with a drunken Yakuza. The two drive off, though our hero wants to go back, and from them on, everything in his life goes wrong. Girlfreind dies, mother becomes terminally ill, father revealed as an unrepentent adulterer and reprobate, a doppleganger of his girlfreind re-apears, and the girlfreind and mother of the man he killed are on his tail too, which all come together in one hellish night of murder, revenge, and accidental death that takes them all.

    The next half hour to fourty minutes takes place in Hell. We watch a series of spectacles from the outer depths of purgatory to the inner rings of the vortext of torment, where our Hero after meeting his wife again (who may have been his sister, it's revealed, at least one of the dopplegangers was), goes on a quest to find the soul of his brother/son, who is shown on screen as a baby riding a leaf down a river of blood.

    Severed heads, flailings, a field of faces half burried (images I recognize from "What Dreams May Come" Hell sequence), and much, much, more.

    Jigoku, is one of the few horror movies I've seen, that has no pre-cursors, nothing has ever looked this, though plenty have tried since. There's elements of theater, b-movie conventions, theology, sharp editing and directing, and some of the best set design Ive ever seen.

    Though over 60 years old, it feels suprisingly not too dated, and though bleak as any film about "Hell" could be, it's important to note that Buddhist Hell is more like a place for shedding psychic skin, than an eternal prison, as the last frame of our hero and his child on opposite ends of the wheel of torment, followed by a distant light shimmering in the darkness, would suggest.

    So...not to scary, but Brilliant. One of the best horror movies ever.

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Jigoku (The Sinners of Hell) Trivia

  • This Japanese horror film directed by Nobuo Nakagawa translates 'Hell' or 'The Sinners of Hell'.  Answer »
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