Eight Hours of Terror is a 1957 film from Japan by Seijun Suzuki.
A landslide caused by heavy rain leaves a group of travelers stranded when their train is canceled. The travelers, left with little choice, elect to take a rickety bus to a station where they can catch the train to Tokyo. The motley group includes: Seikichi, an obnoxious lingerie salesman; an even more obnoxious upper-class married couple; Natsuko, a prostitute; a young would-be actress headed to an audition; a single mom and her infant daughter; and two idealistic young Communist youth. Also on the bus is Mori, a middle-aged man who is sticking oddly close to another man. It turns out that Mori is a murderer, a doctor who came home from ten years imprisonment after the war, found his wife married to another man, and killed them both. The second man sticking close to Mori is a policeman, and they are handcuffed together.
Everyone on the bus is on edge, due to the dilapidated condition of the bus itself, and the narrow, vertiginous mountain trails the bus must travel. They are also bothered by a news report of two bank robbers who are at large in the area after stealing twenty million yen. Naturally, the two bank robbers hijack the bus.
Tropes:
- Briefcase Full of Money: The bank robbers' duffel bag, which is holding 20 million yen. At one point when the people on the bus manage to separate themselves from the two bank robbers, they start talking about dividing up the money.
- Chekhov's Gun: At one point the bus barrels past a sign indicating a walking path that is a shortcut to Hashinoto, where the bus riders want to catch the train. The second bank robber, left behind by the bus, later takes this trail, which is how he catches up to the bus despite being on foot.
- Coincidental Broadcast: A silent transistor radio erupts into life to broadcast a bulletin about how the police know the bank robbers are on the mountain trail. This makes the second bank robber, the only one left, more frantic to escape.
- Extremely Short Timespan: It seems like more than eight hours actually, as the story opens in the evening as the stranded passengers get on the bus, and continues throughout the next night and into the next day when the bus is hijacked by two bank robbers. But in any case, it's less than 24 hours.
- Happily Failed Suicide: Happily failed murder/suicide. The young mother, left alone with an infant, leaves the bus when it stops and tries to drown herself in a river, leaving her baby to die. The doctor is uncuffed from his police escort and saves both the mother and, later, the baby which seems on the verge of dying of exposure.
- He Knows Too Much: Sabu, the younger of the two gangsters, gets caught in a bear trap (thanks to Natsuko). The older gangster decides to abandon him, leading an angry Sabu to say he'll tell the cops everything. The older gangster then shoots him.
- Horny Sailors: Horny American military personnel. Natsuko laments the end of the American military occupation, which is making it harder to be a hooker. She says "The US bases are closing down. There's no work."
- Leg Focus: There are some long, lingering shots on the legs of Natsuko the hooker as she hikes up her skirt and adjusts her stockings.
- Maligned Mixed Marriage: The obnoxious lingerie salesman grabs Natsuko's wallet and shows the others the picture of a black American soldier inside. Ugly comments are made about the mixture of yellow and black blood, and indeed the entire bus seems taken aback. An angry Natsuko says that the others have no right to judge her.
- The Mistress: One of the passengers on the bus is a young woman who is the mistress of a Sugar Daddy. She's traveling with her boyfriend, who does not like this at all.
- No Name Given: Many of the characters aren't named, like the pretty young girl who's hoping to make it in the movie business, or the older of the two bank robbers, or either of the married couple.
- Off-into-the-Distance Ending: Ends with the characters spotting the train that they will catch, as it trundles off in the valley below toward Hashinoto station.
- The Remake: This film is actually a loose remake of 1939 American film Stagecoach, which had all the passengers on a stagecoach (duh), and had some similar characters like a bandit and a prostitute.
