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People warned me that this was a weird and wacky film, but that kind of warning wasn’t enough. This movie is outrageous, and the best part is that it’s actually a good movie worth watching!
There are haunted house movies, like Amityville, and then there are “haunted house” movies where the house is controlled by a twisted witch and her fluffy white psychotic cat who wants to kill a group of schoolgirls just ‘cause.
And this weirdness isn’t the half of it. If you want to watch a movie where the director and the rest of the crew are more interested in trying out every movie technique and special effect available at the time, then you’ve come to the right place.
This movie is a hoot, and is the perfect fodder for SHOCKMANIA.
PLOT
Seven schoolgirls plan to spend the summer at the house of the friend’s aunt who she hasn’t seen in a decade. The eclectic aunt lives with a strange white cat in a large house where seemingly mundane day to day items come to life with a mind of their own.
When one of the girls goes missing after trying to collect a watermelon from a well, the other girls start to encounter very odd and deadly experiences in the house as they try to look for her.
ABOUT THE FILM
Amazingly, for such a short movie - it clocks in at 88 minutes - there is a surprising amount of wacky content to discover. And in typical Japanese fashion, they have no qualms about stripping off their schoolgirls throughout the movie too!
While the bluescreen effects look severely dated by today’s standards, believe it or not they add a charm to the film when held up against the rest of the effects, such as the multicoloured key piano, the floating body parts and the spooky mirror effects.
It’s not just the experimental nature of the film, it’s story and the effects that are the appeal, its the interesting cast of schoolgirls - each with their own unique personality - that adds a cherry on top of the weirdness cake that is this film. There are the two main girls, Angel (or in some version’s called Gorgeous) and Fantasy, who appear to have this homo-erotic style friendship, there is the action loving Kung Fu, the smart girl Professor, the musically inclined Melody, the perfect pure girl Sweet and the chubby girl Mac, who I thought was named after Mac and Cheese, but is actually named after the Mac sound in Stomach. Not subtle at all!
But in the end the movie has stood the test of time because of its uniqueness. In a world full of bland horror movies, the creative ones are always the titles that stand out the most, and this is one of the most creative J-horror films you will ever see.
Even if it barely makes enough sense to follow!
What are my overall thoughts?
If you’ve never seen this film and have an interest in Japanese horror and classic horror films, then this is a must watch. Pure insanity splashed with more creativity than the last 20 years of J-horror combined.
There is a reason why this is a classic that’s fondly talked about in J-horror circles.
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Genre Horror Fantasy Comedy
Director Nobuhiko Obayashi
Starring Kimiko Ikegami, Miki Jinbo, Kumiko Ohba, Ai Matsubara
Original Title ハウス
Alternative Title Hausu
Country of Origin Japan
Release Date 28 August 1977
house hausu haunted house horror movies japanese horror j-horror 1977 classic japanese horror movie review