When the average moviegoer thinks of Japanese horror movies, the first (and possibly only) thing that pops to mind is likely the Godzilla series. If you ask the more Criterion Collection-obsessed fan about the subject, they might bring up the sublimely creepy supernatural thrills of Kwaidan or Ringu. All of these movies have their merits and deserve their places in the horror pantheon. But if you continue to explore the country’s genre efforts, eventually you’ll get to Nobuhiko Obayashi’s delirious 1977 film House. And once you do, you’re never gonna forget it. There are plenty of horror movies but there aren’t a whole lot from any country that are quite like House.
The plot itself is relatively straightforward. A teenage girl (named Gorgeous, your first indication of the broad strokes this movie is painted in) is disappointed to learn that her summer vacation with her film composer dad is going to be crashed by his new fiancée. Still mourning the death of her mother, Gorgeous contacts her estranged aunt, who lives alone in a remote country house. The aunt responds that she’d love a visit, so Gorgeous and her six friends (Sweet, Prof, Mac, Melody, Fantasy and Kung Fu) head off alone for the country, their school-teacher chaperone promising to follow right behind.
It takes a little while for things to get spooky once the girls arrive at the house. At first, the wheelchair-bound aunt is a gracious host, overjoyed to have company after all these years. The girls take turns cleaning up, cooking, and giggling over inside jokes and crushes. But eventually, they start disappearing one by one and as they do, the aunt grows steadily more youthful and invigorated. No points for guessing the source of her new vitality.
Even though it takes a little while to get to the horror parts of House, the movie is pretty unhinged right from the get-go. The cinematography is bathed in lurid colors and composed of wildly disorienting camera angles, disassociating even the most ordinary scene from any sense of realism. There’s already a sense that anything can happen even before the girls’ heads start turning up in wells and pianos start to devour them. And just as you’re thinking, “This movie is bananas,” a character literally transforms into a pile of bananas, as if Obayashi was reading your mind and decided to see your bet and raise it.
This was Obayashi’s feature directing debut and he threw everything up to and including the kitchen sink into it. The result is absolutely exhilarating, a haunted house ride like none other. The only other thing I can compare it to is Takashi Miike’s equally insane The Happiness Of The Katakuris. I could easily see House being an influence on Miike’s most free-wheeling projects. This is the perfect Halloween movie for the jaded horror fan who thinks they’ve seen everything. House is proof that there is always something new under the sun just waiting to be discovered.