Best movies like Escape from Hell

An English slave trader is marooned on a remote tropical island, forced to fend for himself and deal with crushing loneliness.

A pair of down-on-their-luck swordsmen arrive in a dusty, windblown town, where they become involved in a local clan dispute. One, previously a farmer, longs to become a noble samurai. The other, a former samurai haunted by his past, prefers living anonymously with gangsters. But when both men discover the wrongdoings of the nefarious clan leader, they side with a band of rebels who are under siege at a remote mountain cabin.

Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money with tragic results. A man stranded in a blizzard is saved by Yuki the Snow Maiden, but his rescue comes at a cost. Blind musician Hoichi is forced to perform for an audience of ghosts. An author relates the story of a samurai who sees another warrior's reflection in his teacup.

In spring, a girl leaves the island of Hokkaido to attend university in Tokyo. Once there, she is asked to reveal why she wanted to go there in the first place.

A man befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence on a dreadful prison island, which inspires the man to plot his escape.

Seibei Iguchi leads a difficult life as a low ranking samurai at the turn of the nineteenth century. A widower with a meager income, Seibei struggles to take care of his two daughters and senile mother. New prospects seem to open up when the beautiful Tomoe, a childhood friend, comes back into he and his daughters' life, but as the Japanese feudal system unravels, Seibei is still bound by the code of honor of the samurai and by his own sense of social precedence. How can he find a way to do what is best for those he loves?

Set in 19th Century Japan a young samurai who finds himself in love with a farm girl leaves his home to begin a new life. He has to take stock of his new life when he is put to the test and ordered to kill a traitor who just happens to be his dearest friend.

After handing in a report on the treatment of Chinese colonial labor, Kaji is offered the post of labor chief at a large mining operation in Manchuria, which also grants him exemption from military service. He accepts, and moves to Manchuria with his newly-wed wife Michiko, but when he tries to put his ideas of more humane treatment into practice, he finds himself at odds with scheming officials, cruel foremen, and the military police.

In the California apple country, 900 migratory workers rise 'in dubious battle' against the landowners. The group takes on a life of its own—stronger than its individual members, and more frightening. Led by the doomed Jim Nolan, the strike is founded on his tragic idealism—'courage, never submit, or yield'.

The story takes place in feudal Japan, when any commerce with the rest of the world was strictly prohibited. An idealist suddenly appears in an isolated inn (the one that the title refers to), the head-quarters of a group of smugglers, with stolen money intended to ransom his loved one who is forced to work in a brothel.

A look at the relationship between a young blind samurai and his wife, who will make a sacrifice in order to defend her husband's honor.

Japan, 1860. The men of the Mito clan, victims of the Ansei purge, anxiously prowl around the Sakurada Gate of Edo Castle with the intention of assassinating Naosuke Ii of Hikone, tairō of the Tokugawa shogunate and responsible for their misfortune.

The mother of a feudal lord's only heir is kidnapped away from her husband by the lord. The husband and his samurai father must decide whether to accept the unjust decision, or risk death to get her back.

The background to and depiction of a watershed battle in Japanese history, at Sekigahara in 1600, when Tokugawa Ieyasu's Army of the East defeated the Army of the West of Ishida Mitsunari. The story includes the intrigues and shifting loyalties of the various retainers, family members, and samurai.

Legendary swordplay filmmaker Hideo Gosha's Sword of the Beast chronicles the flight of the low-level swordsman Gennosuke, who kills one of his ministers as part of a reform plot. His former comrades then turn on him, and this betrayal so shakes his sense of honor that he decides to live in the wild, like an animal. There he joins up with a motley group who are illegally mining the shogun’s gold, and, with the aid of another swordsman, gets a chance not just at survival but to recover his name and honor.

Kanjuro Nomi is an aging samurai who only has a scabbard. Deserting his lord to wander the land with his daughter Tae, Kanjuro is captured and sentenced to an unusual punishment: he has 30 days to bring a smile to the sad prince who has lost his mother — or else he must die.

Two women are ferried to a small prison colony on the remote and barren prison island, where they and their fellow inmates are forced to perform perilous slave labor along the island’s treacherous cliffs, overseen by both an unforgiving sun and a crew of abusive male wardens. Meanwhile, the arrival of a newcomer among the island’s administrators, a disgraced policeman who is also the son of Nagasaki’s governor, creates dissension between the officials that, along with an untimely outbreak of bubonic plague on the island, ultimately sets the stage for a daring escape attempt on the part of the prisoners.

A young European boy living in San Francisco is reluctant to marry his long-term girlfriend because he wants to travel around the world first. His wealthy uncle agrees to send him on a global expedition aboard his ship, but en route the boy and his travelling companion are shipwrecked on a remote island, populated by countless prehistoric creatures as well as gold-hunting bandits.

Ohno plays the role of Tarui Shotaro, an ordinary guy who dreamed of becoming a hero when he was a child, but now gets by as a part-time worker. The unexpected story unfolds when one day, the daughter of a yakuza boss asks him to plan a make-believe kidnapping. Sato Ryuta plays Shotaro's co-worker who helps him with the kidnapping. Kanjiya Shihori plays Satsuki, the eldest daughter of the Hanazono yakuza clan, while Narimiya Hiroki plays Satsuki's college senpai who joined the Hanazono clan after graduation. Takahashi Katsumi plays the head of a rival organization who has fallen in love with Satsuki. Kitaoji Kinya plays Satsuki's father and the head of the Hanazono clan.

A secretary sends a coded plea for help in her monthly report; two detectives investigate and find out that men are jailed on phony charges, forced to work in oil fields and then murdered if they try to escape.

A young woman begins murdering all those responsible for her ailing father's condition. Because the girl is so outwardly sweet and innocent, the detective looking into the deaths does not suspect her.

This is a film about a real person. Sanada Yukimura fought a war against Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Warlord Oda Nobunaga seeks to unite a fractured Japan. A young man trained in the arts of ninjitsu is manipulated by a ninja master into attempting to assassinate the warlord before he completes his task.

As the great military commander Nobunaga Oda was consolidating his power across Japan, one of his actions was to wipe out a clan of assassins, killing every man, woman and child he found in the village. Years later, one of the survivors has hired a young but skilled assassin to avenge the deaths of his friends and family. His mission: to sneak into the most heavily guarded castle in Japan, and kill the supreme ruler of the country.

After a covert mission goes wrong, Mobile Suit pilot Amuro Ray and his comrades are stranded on a remote island. The battalion was sent to a land called the Island of No Return to clear off any enemy forces, only to find a group of children and an enemy mecha attack. Now Amuro must find a way for them all to escape this mysterious land, but not before meeting a strange man—Cucuruz Doan.

Yataro Tanigawa, a one-eyed hired assassin, impresses yakuza boss Gomyo Kiyoemon with his skill. Gomyo hires Tanigawa as his bodyguard, or yojimbo, to protect him during an inter-clan conflict. Tanigawa quickly rises in stature in the clan, but finds his boss's enemies almost overwhelming.

Kumokiri Nizaemon, a former samurai warrior, has abandoned his class to become the leader of a gang of thieves. He leads his outlaws in an attempt to rob the castle of his former clan.

From the pen of Yoshikawa Eiji comes this exciting story. The Naruto Strait separates Tokushima from the islands of Awaji and Honshu. On Tokushima the mad lord dreams of conquest and forges a bloody revolt against the Tokugawa shogunate. A mysterious swordsman named Noriyuki Gennojo has crossed Naruto’s waters to uncover the Awa clan’s secrets. He puts his life on the line after finding a testament of Awa’s secrets, written in blood by a dying man. Joining Noriyuki are a female ninja who loves him, and the beautiful daughter of an enemy who’s sworn to kill him. Awa’s defenders willl stop at nothing to prevent the blood-soaked letter from reaching the shogun.

In the Tokugawa Era, the clan of Lord Yagyu has hidden away three scrolls containing clan secrets which, if revealed, would cause revolution and disaster for the clan. The information is divided among the three scrolls, all of which must be possessed for the secrets to be understood. When Princess Yuhime steals the scrolls, Tasaburo, a samurai with magical powers, and his brother Senshiro are sent to retrieve them.

Following a stint in reform school, Ryu (Shinsuke Shimada) returns to his home, the Minami area of Osaka, accompanied by his new friend Ko (Takeshi Masu). He's greeted by his friends, Chabo (Ryusuke Matsumoto) and Ken (Bang-ho Cho). They seek to forge their own path through a multitude of rival gangs in Kita and Minami, including the Hokushin Alliance, backed by the yakuza, the Hope Association, and various other minor factions, including Zainichi Korean groups. What follows is a wild, fast-paced story of violence, revenge, betrayal, and discrimination, that never loses its sense of humor.

Monjiro, reunited with his long lost sister, is pursued by a yakuza gang because he killed their boss. He also meets a fellow gambler who idolizes Monjiro. The gambler and Monjiro's sister are pulled into a conspiracy to get to Monjiro, but do things go as planned?

After spending eight years in prison for murder, Hiroshi leaves his yakuza family to start a new life as a labor racketeer.

Kogarashi Monjiro is a lone samurai who agrees to take responsibility for a murder that his friend committed so that he can stay with his dying mother, with the expectation that his friend will confess and get him pardoned once she dies. Monjiro is sentenced to an island for prisoners. When he discovers that his friend's mother has died over a year ago, Monjiro seeks to escape with a group of prisoners in order to get his revenge.

Late in the 1500s, an aging tea master teaches the way of tea to a headstrong Shogun. Through force of will and courageous fighting, Hideyoshi becomes Japan’s most powerful warlord, unifying the country.

A juvenile delinquent gets out of the pen and immediately embarks on a rampage of untethered anger, most of it directed at the girlfriend of the journalist who helped send him up.

A homeless man meets a medical school student who pays him to volunteer for a surgical procedure known as trepanation, drilling a hole in his skull, which ends up giving him the ability to communicate with the dark side of people’s subconscious minds.

Toru Kamiya performs a false confession of love to stop his classmates' bullying. The story begins when Maori Hino, a girl in his class (whom Toru has made the false confession to) gives him three strange conditions for going out with him: "Not to talk to her until after school", "To keep communication brief", and "Not to fall in love with each other". Gradually, the promise of "Not to fall in love" falls apart, and Toru finally cannot hold back his feelings and confesses his love to Maori. However, Maori confesses to him that she has anterograde amnesia, which causes her to lose her memory in a day. Her memories and experiences are reset every day, and she writes down the day's events in a diary and wakes up early in the morning to review them in order to keep her memory alive. Toru is devoted to bringing her as many happy days as possible.

While performing in a touring kabuki troupe, leading female impersonator Yukinojo comes across the three men who drove his parents to suicide twenty years earlier, and plans his revenge, firstly by seducing the daughter of one of them, secondly by ruining them.

The tragic story of Gonza, a handsome ladies man, set in the Tokagawa Period, a time in which appearences are very important. Gonza competes with Bannojō for the honor to perform the tea ceremony to celebrate the birth of an heir to the lord of their clan. To see the sacred tea scrolls Gonza promises to marry the daughter of the family which possesses them, even though he is unofficially engaged to another. When studying the scrolls with Osai, the mother of the house, Bannojō sneaks into the house and steals their obis and runs through the town proclaiming the two as adulterers.

Millie Stope lives with her grandfather on a remote island. Man-child Nicholas, a fugitive from justice, also lives there and is terrorizing them - and he's interested in Millie. One day widower John Woolfolk, sailing on his yacht, happens upon the island. Soon he and Millie fall in love. Will jealous Nicholas stand for this?

Chacha, the woman of the blood of Nobunaga, who loved with Hideyoshi, and feared Tokugawa.

Death-row inmate Sudo (Pierre Taki) sends a letter to magazine reporter Fujii (Takayuki Yamada). In his letter, he states that a man named Kimura (Lily Franky), also known as "teacher," committed numerous murders for insurance money. While checking out the story, based on Sudo's tip, Fuji becomes convinced that the letter is correct. But, a lot of time has passed from the incidents and Sudo's testimony isn't clear. Due to the persistance of Sudo, who is a former yakuza, and Fuji, the police begin to move.

In prison for 50 years after massacring his corrupt workmates with a samurai sword in 1945, Ginji Sonesaki (Riki Takeuchi) is given the nickname of Ginji the Slasher. On his release he finds himself on the streets living with the homeless hiding from a man whose life he tried to end. His former boss and the object of Ginji's hatred is now a highly-regarded figure in politics but Ginji plans to remind him of his past transgressions and make him pay for ruining his life.

Samonji, a reporter, receives a message on his answering machine from his friend Takada that says "stop it... zero plan! February." Learning that Takada is dead, Samonji begins an investigation. He and his younger sister Fumiko investigate major events happening in February but cannot find anything relevant. Meanwhile, Kanzaki, a doctor who works at a clinic on a remote island, is working on a plan to extort two billion yen.

A young samurai stuck at the bottom of the hierarchical order attempts to rescue his childhood sweetheart from an evil clan lord after learning of a plot to kill her and her infant child. Bunshiro Maki is a skilled swordfighter who's lethal with a blade, yet still can't rise through the ranks of the system. After his father is accused of plotting against his clan and forced to commit ritual suicide, his longtime love Fuku is sent to Edo to become the clan lord's concubine. A few years later, Fuku has bore the clan lord a son. When Maki learns that the clan has hatched a plan to kill Fuku and her son to secure succession to the throne, he recruits two childhood friends to help thwart the diabolical plot.

In the last days of the Tokugawa shogunate, there was a cute warrior, Souji Okita, who belonged to the armed police of the shogunate in Kyoto. Very few knew that Souji was not a boy, but a woman. Souji loved the vice-leader of the armed police, Toshizou Hijikata. Souji suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis and coughed up blood during a battle. Toshizou helped her but said that he did not care for the girl with a smell of blood. Souji had a real talent for swordsmanship and no one but Ryouma Sakamoto could compete with her. Ryouma was a liberal intellectual and tried to carry out a revolution without blood. However, the bloody Meiji Restoration broke out and Souji killed Ryouma who lost his dream. Because a friendship had sprung up between Toshizou and Ryouma, Toshizou got angry and slashed at Souji with a sword. Unwillingly, she unsheathed her sword and thought that she might get love if she was killed by the man she loved.

Based on the novel of the same name by Seichō Matsumoto.

Based on the Seichō Matsumoto's story The Woman Who Took the Local Paper.

Historical and political detective. The main characters are drawn into court intrigues, and the investigation of corruption in the administration of the shogun Ienari Tokugawa comes to the fore in the plot. Based on the novel of the same name by Matsumoto Seicho.

Takeshiro Matsuura was a Japanese explorer who was the first person to document the inner reaches of what is now known as Hokkaido. He explored the area extensively during the mid 19th century and created a map of the island that included parts which had been ignored by earlier cartographers. He visited Ainu communities and compiled records of the large numbers of the population who had been conscripted for forced labor far from their homes. Matsuura suggested the name Hokkaido for the area