House

House (Hausu) (1977)

Runtime: 88 minutes

Directed by: Nobuhiko Obayashi

Starring: Kimiko Ikegami, Miki Jinbo, Kumiko Oba, Ai Matubara

From: Toho

So, I finally watched a movie on Hulu Plus and saw a movie put up by Criterion, which you can buy on DVD and Blu-Ray as it was a release by them last fall. I was looking around for stuff to watch and there’s some titles by them that I wish they would put up on Hulu (mainly some foreign crime dramas) but they haven’t yet. So, I went with this film, which I’ve wanted to see for awhile now, as from clips I’ve seen online it looked like one of the strangest movies of all time, no lie. I know I’ve mentioned it before, but there’s a great videostore in my old college town of Normal, Illinois known as The Movie Fan where you could get an incredible-and liberal-selection of films and I saw some odd ones there, either by myself or with a group of several people in various combinations. In fact, some people and I used to call the strangest movies as “Movie Fan Movies”, something I’ll never forget.

Well, after I saw this film, this is definitely a Movie Fan Movie.

It’s hard to describe this movie as not only is it hard to do, but it’d spoil a lot of just what is so damn strange about this. But, in short, it revolves around a group of seven young Japanese women (with names such as Gorgeous, Kung-Fu, and Melody) who go to the house of the aunt of Gorgeous, due to reasons I won’t get into. It’s a big old mansion and soon after they arrive, strange things start happening…

Well, I’ve seen clips of this before online and it’s total WTF stuff. I then saw the whole movie and really, everything about it is strange! Really, from the very beginning it's so avant-garde and not a minute goes by where you won't see something that is just out of the ordinary.

From the way it was filmed to the sets, the music and the special effects and the rest, it is just bizarre all the way through and it’s definitely watchable, just to see what happens next, as likely you won’t be able to predict most of what happens. I figuratively sat there, mouth a-gape at all the peculiar sights I was seeing. It’s thus rather difficult for me to review but I’ll say that if you want to watch something that will be unlike most movies you’ve ever seen, then it’s worth tracking down, even if to laugh in disbelief at all the deliberately cartoony effects and shots, or wondering why and how this film ever got made by a major Japanese studio. It’s perfect to watch if you do drugs, are on drugs… or want to know what it’s like to ingest something like shrooms or acid. I’ve never done that sort of thing before, so now I know what it’s like to see killer pianos or dangerous bananas.

I’ll be back Thursday night.