Movies like Idol nawa jigoku (1985)
The best movies like Idol nawa jigoku (1985) are Star of David: Beauty Hunting (1979), Imprint (2006) and Tokyo Decadence (1992). If Idol nawa jigoku hooked you, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedLiving in Oblivion (1995)7.2/10 from 349 votes
- NewestLove Me Love Me (2026)Released 2026
- In JapaneseStar of David: Beauty Hunting (1979)Also in Japanese
Star of David: Beauty Hunting (1979)
The life of Tatsuya, a young man of proper yet mysterious descent, whose outward respectability hides his urges for rape and torture.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisImprint (2006)
An American journalist travels through 19th-century Japan to find the prostitute he fell in love with but instead learns of the physical and existential horror that befell her after he left.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTokyo Decadence (1992)
A submissive hooker goes about her trade, suffering abuse at the hands of Japanese salarymen and Yakuza types. She's unhappy about her work, and is apparently trying to find some sort of appeasement for the fact that her lover has married.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLiving in Oblivion (1995)
Low-budget independent filmmaker Nick Reve tries to keep everything together as his production is plagued with an insecure actress, a megalomaniac star, a pretentious beret-wearing director of photography, and lousy catering.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAntiporno (2017)
Kyôko, a traumatized young Japanese girl, finds herself struggling with her self-confidence in her adult life. Growing up in a family without her mother and her sister, she constantly questions the rationale of sex and the notion of liberty in modern Japanese society.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Transgressor (1974)
18 years after the mysterious death of her mother, Maya takes religious vows to find out what terrible things happened to her mother inside the Sacred Heart Convent. As soon as the door closes to the nunnery, the nuns start torturing her. She also has to deal with a lecherous archbishops and a lesbian mother superior.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFlower & Snake: Zero (2014)
Misaki Amemiya is an assistant inspector for the Metropolitan Police Department's Community Safety Bureau who becomes ensnared in a trap while investigating a mysterious illegal video website called "Babylon". Soon, she's bound and tortured along with Shizuko and an oversexed housewife named Ruri.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGo, Go Second Time Virgin (1969)
Go, Go, Second Time Virgin is the story of two damned and abused teenagers who meet and fall in mutant love on a Tokyo rooftop. Their only hope is to cement their love with an escape into oblivion.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Poker House (2008)
Agnes and her two sisters struggle through a day in a home overrun by gamblers, thieves, and johns.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisShanghaied (1915)
A shipowner intends to scuttle his ship on its last voyage to get the insurance money. Charlie, a tramp in love with the owner's daughter, is grabbed by the captain and promises to help him shanghai some seamen. The daughter stows away to follow Charlie. Charlie assists in the galley and attempts to serve food during a gale.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Chaplin Revue (1959)
Three Chaplin silent comedies "A Dog's Life", "Shoulder Arms", and "The Pilgrim" are strung together to form a single feature length film. Chaplin provides new music, narration, and a small amount of new connecting material. "Shoulder Arms" is now described as taking place in a time before "the atom bomb".
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisOne Million Yen Girl (2008)
A 21-year-old girl is released from prison, only to deal with the neighborhood gossip about her and family conflicts. She decides to save one million yen, move to where no one knows her and keep repeating the process.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPorno (2019)
When a group of naive teens working at a movie theater in a small Christian town discover a mysterious film hidden in its basement, they unleash an alluring succubus who gives them a sex education…written in blood.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Dive (2023)
Two sisters go diving at a beautiful, remote location. One of the sisters is struck by a rock, leaving her trapped 28 meters below. With dangerously low levels of oxygen and cold temperatures, it is up to her sister to fight for her life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Page of Madness (1926)
An elderly man visits his mentally ill wife in a psychiatric hospital. Years earlier, she had tried to drown their child and then take her own life. Crushed by guilt and powerless to change what has happened, he remains at the clinic as a janitor. Soon, their daughter arrives to inform him of her upcoming wedding, and with her arrival come painful memories and tormenting visions.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLove Me Love Me (2026)
After her brother's death, June moves to Milan for a fresh start, finding comfort in Will, the perfect honor student at her new international school. But when his troubled best friend James—hiding a dangerous life in clandestine MMA fights—sparks a rivalry that quickly turns into irresistible attraction, June must choose between safety and a love that upends everything she thought she wanted.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Battered Bastards of Baseball (2014)
Hollywood veteran Bing Russell creates the only independent baseball team in the country—alarming the baseball establishment and sparking the meteoric rise of the 1970s Portland Mavericks.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisVicious (2025)
When Polly receives a mysterious box, it comes with one rule: place inside something she needs, something she hates, and something she loves. If she doesn’t obey, it will consume everything—and everyone—she’s ever known.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPetals on the Wind (2014)
This sequel to Flowers in the Attic picks up 10 years after Cathy, Chris and Carrie managed to escape Foxworth Hall.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIron Jawed Angels (2004)
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisChikan densha: Oshiri o futte onedari (1988)
A section chief is unable to get it up with his wife, and even worse, is dying. He then learns BDSM, soon joined by a male and female employee (who is a "true masochist").
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Extracurricular Activity: Rape! (1989)
Three bad high school students who are preparing for the graduation ceremony are caught up in a battle with Yakuza after encountering a Korean in Japan and Yuki Yappa who has been married to him. A youth adventure drama with a powerful depiction of "Japan" and "Asia" that emerges from various nationalities.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
No Man's Land (1991)
Parisian Rita Kato follows a letter from her friend Masao Sato to Tokyo, but discovers that a new tenant is already living at the sender's address, the slacker Takeshi, called Golgo after the contract killer protagonist from Takao Saitō's long-lived manga series Golgo 13. Apathetically, the two squats on each other for a few days until Rita sets off again and is bagged on the way back by the petty criminal Kiyomi in a stolen car. In the Tokyo swampland, the two meet Golgo again...
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Amazon Garden: Uniform Lesbians (1992)
A lesbian teacher (Kanako Kishi) comes to Tokyo in search of her student (Ichiko Kamata), who has dropped out of high school and started living with a bomb-making terrorist (Takeshi Ito).
Why it matches: Similar story and style
The Monk Farted (1993)
The story is about Nagatoshi, a handsome and sexy monk played by Kazuhiro Sano, who is struggling for the widow he loves. Foreshadowing the prophecy of the Great Kanto Earthquake, the film is a highly entertaining theatrical spectacle that depicts the human condition of a downtown area undergoing development and the efforts of men and women who rebel against it.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Angel in September (1994)
One day, Hitomi observes her classmate Eriko stealing lipstick in a drugstore and follows her home. The two young women get to know and love each other. While the withdrawn Hitomi believes herself and Eriko to be reincarnations of angel warriors who once fought demon armies, her emancipated and apathetic friend wanders through life between sex contacts with older men and fear of falling into a boring bourgeois existence. The different futures of the two soon lead to tensions.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
End of the World (1995)
A fugitive man and woman (Kawase, Kawana) come to an island to retrieve their son (Iwasaki), who the woman has given to a foster family, but the son's foster parents are policemen (Ito)... The suspense surrounding the retrieval of the son is made unusual by the location shooting on the vast and desolate Miyakejima Island and leads to an allegorical drama about the essential desires of human beings. This was Kawase Yota's first appearance in a Zeze film, and he has since become a regular actor. The title of the film at the time of its first release was Sukebe Tenkomori.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
No Good Men (1995)
No Good Men follows Kumiko, a young and attractive woman that works at a travel agency, and moonlights as an insatiable, sex-hungry mistress.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Sex Angel: From the Underground Videos, with Love (1988)
A fantasy erotic work in which a woman who appears in an adult video actually appears in front of various people who watch the video and fulfills their desires. Omori stops by a video rental store on his way home from work and casually picks up a video in a black package. When he plays it at home, it's just boring. Disappointed, Omori tries to turn off the video, but a woman calls out to him from inside the TV, saying, "Don't turn it off. I love you."
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Pachinko Battle (2004)
Sara arrives in a deserted town and hears that a pachinko tournament is being held there. There are 100 participants and a total prize pool of 100 million yen. Sara ends up participating in the tournament by chance, but it is a nefarious plot by Jinno, who controls the town, and all the prize money is rigged up for him to keep.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Like Idol nawa jigoku and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Idol nawa jigoku?
The closest matches to Idol nawa jigoku are Star of David: Beauty Hunting (1979), Imprint (2006) and Tokyo Decadence (1992). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Idol nawa jigoku?
Start with Star of David: Beauty Hunting (1979), the closest match to Idol nawa jigoku.
What is the highest-rated movie like Idol nawa jigoku?
Living in Oblivion (1995), rated 7.2/10 by 349 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Idol nawa jigoku?
Love Me Love Me (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Japanese movies like Idol nawa jigoku?
Yes: Star of David: Beauty Hunting (1979), Imprint (2006) and Tokyo Decadence (1992).
How are movies similar to Idol nawa jigoku chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Idol nawa jigoku, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.