I read DVD Savant's DVD review of Jigoku at http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=23890 and...

The two reviews here and all the others I've read seem good, I'm just wondering if this is a worthy blind buy?? It seems really interesting and I love the genre. Would anyone care to shed some light on it?

You have to realize that this film is really old and was made at a time when horror films in Japan was neither a huge nor respected genre.

Nevertheless, you may find it interesting of the director's vision of hell by combining aspects of Dante's Inferno along with Buddhist & Christian beliefs.

Throughout the film, and even at the start, there is already a foreboding feeling that the main characters here are bound for eternal damnation.

Well, I love old movies, haha. Thanks for the comments.

i picked this up as a blind buy, and i really, really liked it. It is very surrealist, but i think that's a good thing. I really thought the story was well written, and while some of the deaths seemed a little forced, i thought, overall it was very well done.

That last third of the film, as everyone says, is completely mesmorizing.

I'm a big fan of Japanese cinema, including the horror fare (and I'm also a big fan of Criterion's discs). But I Netflixed "Jigoku", and glad I did. Definitely worth seeing; not so sure it's worth seeing twice (at least for myself).

The film is simply genre fare, a "Japanese horror" by name, but with many more Western conventions than we usually associate with the form. The 'scope cinematography is interesting, with several eye-popping tableaux, but hardly a revelation, and the print used here is far, far from pristine. In terms of intellectual weight or poetic brilliance, let me just say that if you're expecting anything approaching the multivalent brilliance of Mizoguchi, Shinodo or Kobayashi's ventures into the surreal and horrific, look elsewhere. This film is pure B-movie schlock with few of the schlocky payoffs that make such fare occasionally worth seeing.

My expectations going in were for something along the lines of Dante or Faust, and while those elements are certainly present, here they're barely window-dressing. The film is stunningly literal (stupidly literal) in its depictions, not to mention bogus and small-minded in terms of morality and religion. At the same time, its infused with a distastefully heavy-handed moralism, which itself serves only as pretence to usher in the exploitation elements. In the end, this lame parable gives up only a few (a very few) memorable images among a slew of forgettable, laughable ones. At the finale, when the protagonist hoists himself up on the (rickety, wobbly) "wheel of life" to save baby Harumi, I could only smirk. Not even bad enough to be laugh-out-loud funny. Just bad.

As for the extras, the new documentary produced by Criterion was very well done, and seemed to do a good job of contextualizing "Jigoku" and Nakagawa within the overall Japanese film industry. K. Kurosawa's input was welcome, but I couldn't help but wish that Criterion had released one of his films... say, "Pulse" or "Cure" or "Doppelganger" ...instead of (or in addition to) "Jigoku". Also, I loved the poster art for the exploitation films Shintoho was producing at this time. I wish I could remember some of the more hilarious titles - a great extra!

I guess I'm glad I saw it, but even gladder I rented it. For me, not at all worth owning, or even seeing again.

I agree with basically everything Richard said. Quite disappointed in this one, honestly. I enjoyed seeing the Kiyoshi Kurosawa portion of the extras far more than the movie itself, which was quite dull and entirely ham-fisted in its delivery.

Jigoku really feels like it was meant to be part of their m.i.a. Eclipse line, and in lieu of that, should've been released under the HVE banner instead of as a Criterion, which essentially no aspect of this disc seems worthy of.

Alright, thanks guys. I might just rent it from Netflix if I get that free month trial I saw around here.