House (1977) review

I had heard about this film for at least a year. I remember being curious and watching the trailer on youtube. The plot doesn't really matter but this is a synopsis of the film I found on Rotten Tomatoes: a schoolgirl travels with six classmates to her ailing aunt's creaky country home and comes face-to-face with evil spirits, a demonic house cat, a bloodthirsty piano, and other ghoulish visions.

"House" is so much more than that though and if were just another haunted house film it would probably have been forgotten. It doesn't fall neatly into one genre either. What makes the movie special is how unique and creative it is. The story is basically a showcase for director Obayashi's dazzling film wizardry. His background was experimental films and over-the-top, bravura television advertisements. He uses fake backgrounds, animation, stop-motion techniques, early digital effects and other camera tricks that make the movie unlike anything I've ever seen.

This definitely is not for everyones tastes. I was not expecting to like it because I'd heard it's very weird, which it is, and I thought it would be similar to "Suspiria", a film I only admire for its brilliant technicolor visuals. "House" takes a similar approach to "Suspiria" with hallucinatory visuals and a storyline that involves young girls, one by one, being executed but adds charm, humor, action and kitsch to the mix. All these qualities make the film, in my opinion, an accessible art film.

The film could easily have been terrible and usually walks a line between stupid and clever. In one infamous scene a girls disembodied head bites another girl on the butt. Then later there is an eerie moment where another girl is stuck inside a grandfather clock as the clock gears saw into her body. There's moments of cartoonish bloodiness but overall the movie has a amusing tone and in my opinion is more of a comedy than horror. In spite of all the wackiness the film maintains, inexplicably, a tremendous amount of artistic value and is ultimately wonderfully brilliant. 

Two characters who really stand out are "Kung Fu" and "Auntie". Every scene with the aunt cracks me up and the Kung Fu character is possibly the coolest girl of the bunch. My favorite scene is her death scene, where her upper body is swallowed by a chandelier but in one last blaze of glory, the bottom half of her body deliver a flying kick to the demonic cat painting on the wall. 

This has now become one of my favorite films. It has also been a gateway film, along with the erotic film "In the Realm of the Senses", to other great Japanese films like "Onibaba" and "Ugetsu" - I never thought I would be a big fan of Japanese cinema but now I am.