Kitamura: Down to Hell

I felt the same for the movies of Jarmusch: I am interested to find the first movies of Kitamura, to understand what he had in mind when he started. At the beginning, when he had no money at all, only enthusiasm, when he had no history behind, no public, no experience to rely on: only his ideas, in brute form.

I found a sample from Down to Hell, his second movie, made in 1997 (actually his third, as Exit was his first movie, made for graduation at the School of Visual Arts in Australia).

Down to Hell: 47 minute long, made with his friends, the action taking place in the woods (as they had no money for sets or renting locations); the budget was $1000!

Down to Hell is what we call a prequel; it would be followed after a number of years by VERSUS; it's VERSUS in embryo. Here's the plot (as told by Yawaya12): a group of four thugs get their kicks by kidnapping people, letting them loose in the forest, and hunting them down for sport; what they don't know is that the forest is kind of charmed and it's only a matter of time till the victim comes back as a zombie.

(video by Yawaya12)

(Ryûhei Kitamura)