Their train is delayed so a handful of strangers decide to take a bus across a dangerous mountain route. Director Seijun Suzuki squeezes every drop of tension possible from this premise in 1957's Eight Hours of Terror (８時間の恐怖).
Suzuki's instincts for cutting fat from every scene are always admirable. The film begins with the chaotic situation at the train station as people swarm the station master with various complaints about the delay. One man must get to a board of directors meeting, one is a student who assures everyone the meeting he needs to get to is important to the future of Japan. One young woman needs to get to an acting audition.
There are two young Communists, a man and a woman. The man is revealed later to be wearing women's underwear, something that's never explained but may say quite enough about Suzuki's thoughts on Communism. One woman with a child is looking to find a suitable means of suicide.
Everyone's motives and commonplace delusions are established efficiently. There's also a detective transporting a handcuffed murderer and a world-weary prostitute called Natsuko (Harue Tone), who turns out to be the film's heroine.
As if the mountain roads aren't dangerous enough, there are also two dangerous bank robbers on the loose. So much is going wrong, so many improbable things are coming together, it might have all been too much to establish credible tension. But Suzuki manages to make it a kind of rapid opera of editing, framing, and bizarre vignettes.
Eight Hours of Terror is available on The Criterion Channel.
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