L’Inferno (1911, dir. Giuseppe de Liguoro)

The hurricane of Hell in perpetual motion                                            

Sweeping the ravaged spirits as it rends,
Twists, and torments them. Driven as if to land,
They reach the ruin: groaning, tears, laments,

And cursing of the power of Heaven. I learned
They suffer here who sinned in carnal things—
Their reason mastered by desire, suborned.

As winter starlings riding on their wings
Form crowded flocks, so spirits dip and veer
Foundering in the wind’s rough buffetings,

Upward or downward, driven here and there
With never ease from pain nor hope of rest.
As chanting cranes will form a line in air,

So I saw souls come uttering cries—wind-tossed,
And lofted by the storm.

-Canto V, The Divine Comedy: Inferno

Chorus girls in Hell in Hellzapoppin’ (1941, dir. H.C. Potter) (via)

Production still from the remarkable 8-minute dream sequence in Dante’s Inferno (1935, dir. Harry Lachman) (via), in which a greedy & unscrupulous businessman (Spencer Tracy) is shown a vision of the hell that awaits him in the afterlife if he doesn’t change his ways.

The scene pictured above dramatizes Dante’s vision of the 7th circle of hell, in which the souls of suicides are entombed in trees & fed on by harpies.

The hell sequence can be seen online here.

“A scared, angry little man who never got a break. Now he has everything he’s ever wanted - and he’s going to have to live with it for eternity… in the Twilight Zone“ 

-Rod Serling, “A Nice Place to Visit”, The Twilight Zone