So, I knew the 1977 Japanese horror movie House by its reputation, and it’s a weird one. Having nothing in common with the American movie of the same name aside from being set in a haunted house, I knew it was a weird movie with a lot of odd images involving a group of Japanese schoolgirls dying one at a time in a haunted house they can’t get out of. I knew it was nothing all that realistic, and it probably wasn’t even all that scary in the grand scheme of things.
I knew all that, and it was still really freakin’ weird.
Japanese schoolgirl Gorgeous is looking forward to her summer vacation until her father brings home a woman he intends to marry. Gorgeous’s mother died years ago, but she isn’t pleased with the idea of having a stepmother. She opts to write a letter to her mother’s sister, an aunt she doesn’t know very well, asking if she can stay with her over the summer. The aunt says yes and even says Gorgeous can bring some friends. She brings six of her school friends: Fantasy, who daydreams; Prof, who is the smart one; Melody, who loves music; Mac, a glutton; Sweet, the nice one; and Kung Fu, a martial arts enthusiast. If you think these names all sound a little on-the-nose, well, that’s how this movie rolls.
However, once the seven girls get out to the aunt’s house, things start to get really weird. The aunt had an unrequited love for a fiance who went off to fight in the second World War and never returned as promised, and she soon disappears, but not before Mac does when she decides to eat the watermelon the girls brought with them rather than share it. Fantasy later finds Mac’s head in a well, and the head comes to life only to bite Fantasy on the ass before disappearing again. And that is more or less how the rest of the movie goes. Each of the girls meets a somewhat ironic death given their individual passions while Gorgeous is possessed by something while admiring herself in a mirror. The aunt’s cat seems to be involved, and it doesn’t look like the girls can even get outside again when everything in the house seems out to get them. Will any of them survive by sunrise?
OK, so, this one is weird. The girls all die one by one, and while some of the deaths seem a bit much, there seems to be a disconnect to the violence. Melody’s death is one of the more, shall we say, extravagant. She takes to playing a piano that bites off her fingers. She doesn’t seem too upset about all that. When the piano then eats her alive, she starts off screaming, but the screams soon turn to laughter. Her disembodied parts, stripped of all clothing, are spotted popping in an out of frame, and she seems to be enjoying her violent death more than trying to avoid it. She’s not the only one to have a sexual side to her eventual demise, and the movie might be playing with the idea that it’s not death so much as a transition to adulthood for these girls. When one dies by being crushed by mattresses, another rolls around naked while floating in some deadly fluids, and yes, Mac’s disembodied head takes a bite out of another’s backside, then it’s not a far jump to that particular assumption.
But this is such a weird movie. The deaths aren’t exactly played realistically, and I get the impression that the more dreamlike way of telling its truly bizarre story is more about the effect than anything else. This is a movie where a man is turned into a bunch of bananas while trying to find the house, and kicking a painting causes a fountain of blood to shoot out of the mouth of the cat in the picture. Oh, and the leg that kicked was all that remained of one of the girls. Now, normally, I might not have said as much about the plot of a movie as I had here, but this movie was so freakin’ weird, that I don’t think it matters much going in if you know much about the plot. It’s just something you need to experience for yourself if you like really weird stuff.
As it is, I generally do.
Grade: B+
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