LA GRANDE ILLUSION (1937)

Can you say too much about La Grande Illusion?  When the Nazis invaded France in 1940, it was propaganda minister Josef Goebbels #1 mission to see every copy of this film burnt to ash.  You really have to hand it to the Nazis.  They were fucking evil.  This movie only contains two major German characters, and they are both heavily sympathetic.  Why did the Nazis want it destroyed so badly?  To put it in the kind of simple terms a Nazi could appreciate, this film is humanity, and the Nazis, and all those that would destroy art or knowledge, are inhumanity.

JIGOKU (1960)

The plot concerns a young, weak-willed theology student, Shiro, his amoral doppelganger Tamura, and the web of sin they draw everyone around them into.  Strong enough for two remakes, the movie is sometimes also known as The Sinners of Hell, although the straight-up translation would be simply, Hell.  So you probably won't be surprised where all the main characters end up for the last third of the film.  You'll know whether or not you're hooked when this man appears and proclaims "I am King Enma of Hell, I am Lord of the Eight Hells of Fire, and I am Lord of The Eight Hells of Ice.  Hear me!  You who in life piled sin upon sin will be trapped in Hell forever.  Suffer!  Suffer!  The vortex of torment will whirl for all eternity!"  Don't worry, that vortex ain't a metaphor.

KWAIDAN (1964)

This movie won the Special Jury Prize at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival, so at least some anthology films (sometimes called portmanteau films) used to enjoy more popularity than they do now.  No frame story this time, just four ghost stories; the title means 'ghost story' but it is untranslated in America.  I don't know why they translate some foreign movie titles but other times they don't.  Why isn't Yojimbo just called Bodyguard?  Oh forget it.  This movie is very colorful and theatrical, drawing on rich traditions of the stage, with gigantic sets depicting all sorts of natural and unnatural occurrences in vivid, expressionist bursts of artifice and design.  The stories are all slow-burns, even the abbreviated final story, that rely more on mounting tension and creeping suspense than blood and guts or things jumping out at you suddenly.