House (1977)

Six teenage girls go to spend a pleasant week at an Aunts remote house. Unknown to them, the Aunt – and the house – have other intentions.

Hallucinogenic horror-comedy from Nobuhiko Obayashi - very much like stepping into a live action Salvador Dali painting with a horror motif. The familiar, simplistic horror plot is just an excuse for an unrelenting assault on the senses as conventional cinematic story telling is shown the door and replaced by every cinematic trick and gimmick imaginable.

Obayashi fills every minute of screen time with weird camera angles, slow motion dreams, fast motion tracks, unconventional sounds, psychedelic animations and colorful backdrops to move things along. It sets a surreal, absurdest tone which pervades every scene.

In fact, each scene is extremely bizarre in its own right - especially as the girls are individually besieged by evil forces. A laughing, decapitated head floats through the air and attacks one of the girls – biting her on the ass, another girl freaks out at dinner as the host secretly watches her with three eyes – the third peering out of her mouth, a gravity defying karate match ensues between the most athletic girl and a demon possessed lamp shade, and in one of the stranger scenes in cinema, a girl playing a piano is literally eaten by the instrument. As her consumed body parts reside within the casing, her floating, disencumbered fingers begin playing a tune on the keyboard - complete with flashing colored lights!

At its core, this is a Carmella-like vampire flick with the old Aunt getting younger each time one of the girls disappears. What sets it apart from similar movies is its whimsical air, nonsensical imagery and unending gimmickry. While some people admire the film's experimental nature, I think more will be turned off rather quickly. I was already annoyed after ten minutes and had a hard time sitting through the whole thing.

Fmovies: Oh my goodness, what at trippy, crazy, cheesy little movie this is. I don't think it has a single scene in it which doesn't have some type of campy, surreal special effect. Early on it seems like part Wes Anderson, part after-school special, part J-pop, part Â… I don't know, just 'out there', and certainly unique. It gets weirder and weirder as it goes. If you love the bizarre and the downright silly, movies which don't take themselves too seriously and are out to throw wild images at you, you'll probably love this film. Director Nobuhiko Obayashi has a real flair, and he's not out to make things look super-realistic, he's out to entertain. If you're looking for a ghost story, real drama, or horror, well, this isn't it. You never feel real tension, even as the cute little girls are attacked by mattresses, devoured by a piano, etc etc. For me I suppose I fell more in the latter camp, wishing the film had some balance in creating a film about the supernatural, but you can easily see why it has a bit of a cult attraction to it, and your mileage may vary.

This film falls into the comedy, fantasy and horror genres according to this site. So let's start from there. Is it funny? No, not really, unless your sense of humor is driven by a stream of wacky non sequiturs. Is it scary? No, not at all. How scary is a dancing skeleton? Or a chest of drawers that opens and closes to dance hall music? Is it fantastical? Yes, definitely. Especially if your idea of fantasy is hallucinatory, akin to an acid trip.

I can say one good thing about this film. The production values were good--most of the time.

It's the story of seven young girls who decide to spend a vacation at the mansion of one girl's aunt. They know next to nothing about the aunt or the mansion or the surrounding environs. Consider it one big slumber party.

The girls, like the seven dwarfs, are caricatures of personality traits. There's Prof and Mac (the "fat girl") and Gorgeous, among others. They are a giggly bunch who chatter non-stop likes girls of that age. Do we really care that much what happens to them? No, because the story is presented in such a way that we take nothing seriously.

There is no cohesive unity in this film. How can there be when it changes styles every second? Resembling a cross between a Monkees episode and the worst music video ever, the action is accompanied by every special effect imaginable. Seriously, it looks like the director was checking off a list of in-camera and extra-camera effects, from the Hitchcock effect, to green screen effects, to changes in film speed.

The music, likewise, is chimerical--changing, without reason or purpose, from classical to disco to nursery rhyme styles.

And the director employs every editorial cut he could think of, too. It is very distracting.

The difference between this film and one of Tim Burton's is cohesion. Burton lives in the whimsical and populates his films with quirky characters and imaginative happenings, but his productions are unified by style and music.

Is there any underlying story in the film? Some opinions about that are posted on this site. I tried to find meaning in the film by considering it to be an allegory about the damage done to Japan during WWII by its military and political missions. But I see no other opinions along those lines and, besides, I don't think that theme works throughout the film.

Watching this film, I think most viewers will feel confused or bored. Afterwards, I think they will wonder what the point was.

House fmovies. Hausu is basically the most bizarre Haunted House movie I've ever seen. The story follows a group of girlfriends who head to the country for vacation. They go to one of the girl's Aunt's house to spend their time. But beknownst to all of them the Aunt isn't really who she says she is. And there's a cat named Snowflake that obviously has some issues. Girls begin experiencing the supernatural and things don't seem to be slowing up. Reading back what I just wrote kinda makes the movie seem not so interesting. Seems like just another haunted house flick. But if you pop in this flick, almost immediately you will realize you've never seen a film like this. Filmed in a lively, colorful way mixed with a fantastic soundtrack, the flick exceeds on all levels of production. Combine the production values with a children's movie feel, then combine that with some blood, violence and nudity, you get a very different hybrid genre of a flick. Hausu is a flick that all fans of unique horror or cinema for that matter should check out.

This movie is the directing debut for (the great) Nobuhiko Obayashi. He has directed commercials for television before he got into directing movies. This experience helped Obayashi learn many special effects used in TV commercials. It shows in this movie as almost every scene contains some sort of special visual effects.

In the mid '70s Toho studio was looking for fresh ideas for movies that would be a box office success. They've decided to use the then relative unknown Nobuhiko Obayashi to direct a movie with fresh new approach. Many of Toho's experienced staff expressed concerns over this because Obayashi never had experience of being an assistant director. Project manager for this movie then said "Us experienced directors aren't coming up with hit movies, so experience is not the criteria for making a successful movie. Lets allow this young director to make a movie to see if he knows more about what the audience really wants."

The original plot of this movie was written by the then 13 year old daughter of Obayashi himself.

The movie has a strange career as it was rediscovered by an Asian movie affectionado who had connections with Janus films (which is the parent company of the Criterion Collection) after being released in Japan over 30 years ago. It then made limited showings in theaters around the U.S.. Very unusual as not too many film gets a roadshow in another country 30 years after it was made.

Seven girls makes a plan to go on a vacation at one of the girl's aunts house in the country side. They don't suspect that the aunt died long time ago, and what inhabits the house is the apparition of the aunt that can remain young only by devouring the bodies of others.

The movie is a horror comedy with bit of erotic exploitation starring many actors who were teen idols at the time. When it was first released, Miki Jinbo who played the role of Kung Fu gathered the most votes by the young male audiences, as she kicked her way around the house wearing skimpy tank top and shorts.

This movie is very original in almost every way. Visuals are unusual as expressed earlier that Obayashi used many of the special effects he's learned while making TV commercials. Color is also very surreal as is the acting, but the movie has strange charm all its own, and not boring to watch. You can almost say that this is an artistic film that's also geared to entertain the audience.

In the end Toho studio got just what it was hoping to achieve - a box office smash hit. This movie also established the career of Obayashi as a bankable director. Obayashi went on to direct many other successful movies including the original "Girl who leaped through time".

This film is impossible to describe, or review, or assign an arbitrary number out of ten. In fact, calling it a film throws up the very idea of what constitutes a film. It is filmed, yes. As far as I can tell, the actors knew they were being filmed and were probably paid (in drugs maybe), but yet I struggle to define this as a film. It just doesn't seem right.

Hausu is an experience. Quite an experience. You can actually pinpoint the moment where the film-makers got bored and began ingesting large amounts of LSD. It's about the time the floating head appears, followed by the girl-eating piano, and then the malevolent cat spirit that gushes blood, and the carnivorous lamp. This, of course, assumes that the film- makers were clean to begin with. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no doubt in my mind that the film-makers started on some type of cannabis, explaining the nonsensical edits, preeeety colours and crazy scene involving a man and a bucket. Then they moved on to something harder, perhaps skunk. That would explain the talking watermelon (at at least, I think it was a talking watermelon). By the time we get to the 'Hausu' in question, dear readers and viewers, it is clear that we are being directed by hypomanic drug fiends, so tweaked on psychoactive hallucinogens that they've lost all concept of reality, rationality and reason. The orgy of drugs that precipitates throughout the crew eventually spills on to the filmed scenarios, where our hapless (and one can only assume drug-addled) girls are being subjected to a series of criminally insane scenes of violence, comedy and epilepsy-inducing flashes of colours.

The experience eventually ends, rather solemnly I must say, although after at least 20 minutes of non-stop psychotropic hallucinogenia, it acts as a welcome buffer zone as you gravitate back into reality. Hausu is an astonishing experience. I kinda want to watch it on drugs, but I value my life too much. If someone does manage to, and lives, please post a comment describing your experiences. I'm sure many will be fascinated.