Some critics of Seijun Suzuki tend to bifurcate his career into two largely disparate chapters, downplaying his mid-1950s Nikkatsu assignments in favor of his later transcendental visions. Still, "Eight Hours of Fear" is an exceptional work inspired by John Ford's "Stagecoach" with a Hitchcockian flavor, especially the dazzling opening sequence in a train station where a crowd of hapless travelers are stranded. Some opt for a harrowing detour in a sketchy bus through treacherous backroads that would make a unit production manager blanche. Given the movie's relatively short running time and some coverage holes, I suspect filming must have been a challenge. Suzuki and cinematographer Kazue Nagatsuka capture the ruggedness of mountain exteriors, decrepit bridges, and crumbling dirt roads, casting geography as an uncredited villain.

There are other bad guys aboard; a convicted double-murderer, and a pair of fleeing bank robbers with seriously venomous traits, though seemingly immune from random police. Here, Suzuki foretells the more extreme criminal nastiness and violence that would bloom across a decade of his later gangster classics. The rest of the cast is a ragbag of road trip characters, some with cheeky comedic overtones, others revealing a wealth of empathy and compelling backstories. Suzuki brings out the best in each. Millions in stolen loot, an assortment of ladies lingerie, and an ailing baby on board are among their carry-on luggage. His bumpy ride is never complacent, won't stop shifting gears, shot after shot. Takio Niki scores with fresh incidental and main title music, some featuring a well-orchestrated theremin. Enjoy the ride!

Recently getting a Blu-Ray player,I've been wanting to finally dig into some epic box sets. Learning of a director's viewing challenge taking place on ICM, I got set to go back to the early days of Seijun Suzuki.

View on the film:

For a title which was not given any special treatment by the studio, Arrow present an impressive transfer, where spots only appear a handful of times, on a otherwise pristine picture,with the audio remaining clean for the whole journey.

On the fifth title he made being credited under his real name and working with regular cinematographer Kazue Nagatsuka for the third time, directing auteur Seijun Suzuki takes an early surf on the Japanese New Wave (JNW) with his distinctive, hip and quirky ultra-stylisation,listening to the conversations the passengers have before they set off behind the long leg of a woman placed at the centre of the screen.

Getting on the bus with a excellent ensemble cast,Suzuki displays a wonderful early ease of twisting the looming shadows of a Film Noir atmosphere with his unique off-beat comedic asides, rolling the bus down in stark strands of light turning the tension among the passengers to boiling point, and rolling it up with panning shots towards a couple trying to keep their words under breath, not only due to being worried about a trench coat-wearing baddie, but also afraid their partners will catch them red handed having a affair.

Cheekily having a passenger say she is travelling to attend a "New Faces" contest being held by a major studio, (Nikkatsu used New Faces contest to find the next upcoming stars) the screenplay by Goro Tanada,Rokuro Tsukiji & Koichi Saito (who later directed the magnificent The Rendezvous (1972-also reviewed) ticket the shuttle bus takeover by two hard-nose Noir gangsters, with a thrilling Road Movie microcosm of post-war Japanese society.

Igniting a row on the bus from a passenger telling others to stop singing "Red Songs", the writers listen in on sharp JNW- flavoured dialogue and situations, openly dropping Westerns references in exchanges,a baby being held at gunpoint (!) and a bickering old timer telling a younger passenger that he should not be unemployed, due to the man (wrongly) believing the same chances he had still exists on the eight hour ride of terror.

After a typhoon causes a landslide which blocks the railroad tracks and prevent the passenger train from going any further, a few people decide to take their chances aboard an old bus even though they realize that the roads are quite hazardous. To make matters even worse they are informed by a radio broadcast that two extremely dangerous bank robbers are somewhere in between where they are now and their destination. But since these passengers are in a hurry they decide to proceed on bad roads into the pitch black night and take their chances. Unfortunately, the thugs they were warned about do indeed intercept the bus and from their point on their lives are in great jeopardy. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film didn't resonate with me all that much due in large part to the exaggerated drama displayed by some of the characters. Of course, it is also possible that the director was attempting to use these characters as symbols of the current society in post-war Japan but even so I still wasn't that impressed. That's not to say that this was a bad film by any means but again I just couldn't get that interested in it and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Average.