Teshigahara slyly invented his own term, "documentary fantasy," to define his feature film debut and first collaboration with Kobo Abe and Toru Takemitsu. Filmed in an abandoned coal-mining town, Pitfall pits a social-realist examination of miner's conditions and class warfare against an eerie ghost story and a pervasive, unsettling aura of the unnatural. An unemployed miner, his son, union leaders, and a lone woman become the victims of a cream-suited mystery assassin working for somebody-or something-far more powerful. Murdered one by one, the workers become frustrated ghosts, unable to alter or deter the brutal reality (and literal "ghost town") that the assassin is slowly, silently, and soullessly creating. Teshigahara's naturalistic photography and keen eye for grit, with Abe's experimental script and Takemitsu's amazingly unnatural score of mechanical drips and synthetic smashes, create a memorably disorienting effect, like watching David Lynch remake Salt of the Earth. Pitfall has the added thrill of seeing the now-legendary director, writer, and composer discover the rules of cinema-and break them.-Jason Sanders