On September 1, 1923, an unprecedented earthquake hit the Kanto region. The streets are filled with victims, and rumors are circulating around. The military seized the opportunity to round up and kill many socialists, anarchists, and Koreans, culminating in the arrest and murder of Sakae Osugi. His comrades and students are outraged by this atrocity. The young man Furukawa also becomes stronger in his determination to overthrow the military...

A Hitchcockian narrative and noirish atmosphere characterise this effective, taut thriller, made the same year as the director's magnum opus, JIGOKU (Hell). Set in the present day, DEATH ROW WOMAN is at once a prison film, an innocent-man/woman-on-the-run story, a police procedural, and a family melodrama, that is equal parts Hitchcock, Samuel Fuller and Douglas Sirk.
Rich industrialist Imai wishes to marry his elder daughter Kyoko off to Aoki, who he sees as the ideal candidate to take over his business. Kyoko, however, prefers the rugged but poor Soichi to Aoki's goody-two-shoes. That night, Kyoko decides to confront her father, refusing to marry Aoki and dropping the bombshell that she is pregnant with Soichi's child. She is banned from the family, but seconds after she leaves the room, her father drops dead, poisoned. All evidence points toward Kyoko, who is sentenced to death despite her insistent claims that she is innocent. When she goes on the lam after a prison break, she realizes that in order to prove her innocence, she has to team up with the fiancé she rejected.

1957 film by Nobuo Nakagawa

A group of sinners involved in interconnected tales of murder, revenge, deceit and adultery all meet at the Gates of Hell.