PITFALL (1962)

Cast

Plot

A miner wanders the Japanese countryside with his young son, desperately in search of work, his misery compounded by the presence of a mysterious and murderous white suited stranger. The victims of the unknown killer return as wraiths, invisible to the now fearful and suspicious living, but no wiser as to the reason for their misfortune. Pitfall was Hiroshi Teshigahara's first feature, a dark, ghostly drama with its roots set firmly in the impoverished reality of a post-war Japan. This "documentary fantasy" as Teshigahara described it, was the precursor to his most famous film ‘Woman Of The Dunes' two years later. An existentialist masterpiece and a fascinating observation of the melding of cultures.