Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: House (1977)
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Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema Rewind. This is Rob Lamb. And this is Joe McCormick. And today we're bringing you an older episode of Weird House Cinema. This was our feature on the 1977 horror film House. Oh boy, what a good time this was. Oh, this is one of the towering giants of weird cinema. I don't think there's anything else to say. Let's listen to House. ♪

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is Rob Lamb. And I am Joe McCormick. Today on Weird House Cinema, we're tackling what might be, by many measures, I think by my measure, the ultimate haunted house movie.

In another haunted house property, 1971's Hell House, a novel by Richard Matheson, this was later made into The Legend of Hell House in 73, there's a description of the Belasco House, this haunted house that's key to the plot. And it's described as, quote, the Mount Everest of haunted houses due to the intense sanity warping powers that it holds over anyone who attempts to make it through the night there to complete the journey.

Now, there are various great haunted house films out there, and I feel like the best of them excel in connecting with something very ancient in the human psyche, right? The essence of the damned place, a location that is so just fundamentally physically or spiritually polluted that to venture into it, to be there, to take place there is to just absolutely warp your identity and connection to reality.

So there are haunted house movies that tackle this in a very serious fashion, and you might argue that they tackle it more seriously than the movie we're talking about here today, 1977's House. But when the chips are down and House is firing on all cylinders, I think it absolutely delivers on all the goods. It absolutely checks off all the boxes. For my money right now, I'm going to say that House is the Mount Everest of haunted house movies.

It's got to be up there. And like Mount Everest, it may cause a kind of altitude sickness, maybe a sense of dizziness, visions of other figures climbing up the mountain with you that may or may not be there. It is a weird, bad,

life-changing experience. House is one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen, but that's not an observation unique to me. It is widely regarded as like one of the great weird movies of all time. And yeah, I think it also qualifies in the sub-genre of weirdest and most interesting haunted house movies. Though it's different than a lot of haunted house movies because a lot of haunted house movies, like you're pointing out, are about a house that's been put

polluted, a house that has been sort of like made into a place of evil because of something evil that happened there. You know, like a person, an evil person does something wicked inside the house and then that evil infects the house and so forth. But the difference I would point out is that the evil in those cases seems to be spurred by human wrongdoing.

And in House 1977, I don't know if I'd say that's the case. Instead, it's hard to say where the evil comes from. The person who occupies the evil haunted house doesn't seem to have initially been an evil or bad person, but someone who suffers a kind of unfortunate fate and is transformed by forces unnamed into a type of monster and invulnerable.

in that transformation it's like the house comes with her you know like she and the house merge into one being that is fully just an expression of monstrousness and magical predation yeah it's like tragedy plus time equals house that's basically what it's like like you know like you're saying she's not an evil person she had she went through a great tragedy but it's like over time that has like

spiritually fermented into this new shape. And that shape is hungry and in many respects evil. Maybe it's tragedy plus time plus cat equals house because the cat, what is the role of the cat in this movie? We last October did an episode or a series of episodes about monster cats of Japan. That was October, wasn't it? I believe it was, yes. Yeah, like the Bakuneko and stuff. There are a number of different

sort of cat ghosts or evil cat monster entities, cat yokai, in Japanese lore. And we talked about a few of them, shape-shifting cats, cats that might lurk out in the wilderness and be some kind of monster. I don't know if the cat in this movie is exactly supposed to be

supposed to correspond to one of these cat monster archetypes. But what a presence it is. It feels kind of like maybe all of the evil in the movie comes from the cat and it's not clear where the cat comes from. Yeah, the cat is somehow key to it. It's like a nexus point or a physical incarnation. It's uncertain. I mean, as people

as I feel like, you know, scary supernatural things should be, they're difficult for us mortals to fathom. But we, yeah, we have this fabulous cat at the center of everything here. And I think it also, this is what serves to make House not only a great haunted house movie, but also a great cat movie. Like all the cat stuff is completely on point. And very cute, very cute cat, very cute floof here. This movie got me thinking about what it means

What it is meant to say about a character when a character often has a cat in their lap. So this is a thing actually I mostly associate with villains in films like Blofeld and the James Bond movies is this villain who in the early James Bond movies, I think you don't even ever see his face. You just see the lower half of his body. He's a man who's presiding over this evil shadowy criminal empire known as space.

specter. And he has all these henchmen going out and doing things for him. But when you see the lower half of his body, he has a floofy, very floofy white cat in his lap and he pets the cat while, you know, demanding updates from his assassins. And then later in the James Bond movies, you do actually see the face of Blofeld. And so and he's played by various different actors. But

In one movie, for example, he's played by Donald Pleasance. And so, you know, we were sharing before coming in here, like images of Donald Pleasance holding a white cat, much like Blanche the cat in house. What does the cat mean? Why is the cat in the villain's lap? And what what associations are we supposed to make from seeing that image? I mean, in the case of Blofeld, I guess kind of, you know, it's the idea of like a regal sort of lap creature.

But also maybe a commentary on the nature of the cat. You know, the cat has its own air about it. Though it's weird that owning the cat is villainous in these Bond movies. And yet James Bond kicks a cat. I would think that that is... That's mean. And also, I forget which one this was.

This may be the one that actually takes place in Japan part of the time anyway. But there's the whole bit where it's like, oh, Blofeld has a double. Which one's a real Blofeld? Better kick the cat to find out which master it scurries to. And it's like, I don't even know if that would work. Like, is that really going to be the cat's number one move? It's like to go back to a safe lap. I think the cat may just go hide under something.

I think there is something to be signaled about the villain with the cat that it makes them seem more threatening and sinister. The fact that they are ordering up murder of humans at the same time that they're being very gentle and stroking a cat. It's like that contrast of delicate gentleness and friendliness with one creature but cruelty to another. Yeah, I think that probably sums it up. Now we've talked about House as a

widely reputed ultimate weird movie. We've talked about it as the Mount Everest of haunted house movies. But there's another thing that we haven't really mentioned about it yet, which I think is key to understanding what it is, which is the

childlike logic that operates in house. It is different from a lot of horror movies. And I somehow connect this to the fact that, uh, say the house doesn't have a standard backstory of like human evil drawing in demons and wicked spirits. Instead, it feels like the, the evil that infects the house is just sort of totally unexplainable and random. Something that comes in and strikes and infects the house and the occupant of the house

from outside, that seems much more in line with the way that children imagine evil spirits. You know, you don't need that like backstory of it being caused by someone's human wicked choices. Instead, it's just it comes out of nowhere and it's scary and it doesn't even need to be explained.

Yeah, this is a very important aspect of House. And we're going to be talking about Nobuhiko Obayashi, the director, who is also an actor in it and a producer and director of special effects. But famously, the key aspects of this film were inspired by conversations he had with his daughter, who I believe was 10 at the age.

Chigumi Obayashi, where he would come to her and like, well, what do you find scary? Tell me what frightens you or what would be, I think he also said like, hey, if daddy were to make a movie, what kind of things would you want to be in it? And so she came up with these various ideas that were all based on this child's eye view of the world. Like for instance, one particular thing, we'll probably run through most of them, but there's a scary clock.

in the movie. And according to her on the Criterion Collection website,

disc of this film there's an interview with her and her father from uh from several years back and she says that there is this uh there's this point where they were staying at this house in the country you know family house and there's a big clock in the hallway and she would have to cross by it in the night in order to go to the bathroom and she was frightened by the clock you know and so it's the kind of thing like humans are generally not frightened by by

big dusty clocks in houses, but children can be. And so the beauty of this film, one of the beautiful things about this film is that he took these ideas from his daughter and then, you know, added a little more traditional ghost story structure to it and handed it off to the screenwriter. And, but yet it still retains these very childlike views of family

fear and threat and then sort of translates them to a certain extent into a wider understanding for any viewer that may watch it. You don't have to be a child to feel the fear of this clock.

there is a young person's creativity in the way some of the, the scary images in the movie are conjured. So like making connections that an adult might not normally make, but then also a kind of a young person's fearlessness in deciding what is scary. So there is a scene in the movie where a character is fatally attacked by pillows and mattresses that fall from the ceiling and,

I think that is an image that if an adult were to come up with it, they might think, no, that's silly. That's not scary. That doesn't work. It just doesn't fit the language of what is a threat in horror movies. But I think I read this idea also came from from the director's daughter. You know, she was afraid of like being attacked by mattresses from the sky. And in the movie, it they just they just do it. That's a scene.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think she mentioned in the interview that it came from, or maybe her father did, that it came in part from going out to the countryside and having to sleep on futons and then fold them up during the day. And as a child, like the futon is so big and it's kind of heavy and it's kind of falling on you. Oh.

So it kind of feeds into this idea. I never would have thought of that, but yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's really the beauty of it. These are all things that grown-ups would not have thought of. They come from the mind of children. And the child's mind is capable of such wonders and such horrors. It's one of the joys of parenthood is getting to...

to be on the receiving end of so many wild and creative ideas that they just come up with on their own, you know, because they have this innate creativity. Yeah, to see the wild mental leaps and the strange connections that a young brain makes that you just

You're seeing into something that your brain may once have been capable of but is no longer. The pruning has cut you off from that kind of connection across mental distance. So this, again, this is a huge part of the film. We'll keep coming back to this as we discuss the making of the film and also get into the plot. But yeah, I'm glad that we're finally covering House. It's a film that has been on the Weird House Cinema list.

uh, list for, I mean, really since the beginning. I mean, that's just, if when you think of weird films and you get into, you know, listings of weird films, it's always up there. Uh,

There's a poster or a recreation of the poster for this film in the front window of Videodrome, the movie rental place here in Atlanta. So, you know, it's always been on the list. And today we're finally talking about it. I guess I'm going to stick with the Mount Everest of haunted house films for my elevator pitch. Do you have anything to add to that, Joe? Worst summer vacation ever? Yeah.

Seven high school friends go out for a leisurely visit to a countryside manor somewhere in Japan and get eaten by various household appliances. All right. Well, let's go ahead and listen to at least part of the trailer audio here. I'm not sure it necessarily makes sense to listen to the whole thing, but we definitely want to get just a little taste of that music, a little taste especially of the title. So let's have a listen. House. House.

House.

All right. Now, if you want to run out and watch House before we get into any further discussion here, well, lucky for you, House is widely available in pretty much any format you might desire. Here in the States, you can currently stream it on Max, unless it's, I think it's still there. It's also available on Blu-ray and DVD from the Criterion Collection, and that's how I watched it. I rented it from Videodrome and watched it on Blu-ray, and I'll refer back to some of the special features as we proceed.

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All right. Well, let's get into the people who made this film, starting once more at the top with Nobuhiko Obayashi. Again, director. He also plays husband in this. Producer, director of special effects. He lived 1938 through 2020.

He was a Japanese director, screenwriter, and editor known for his work in experimental cinema of the 1960s, TV commercials reportedly by the thousands, and often involving the sort of Western celebrity appearances that were parodied in 2003's Lost in Translation. Okay. So where you might have like a...

a celebrity famous in English language movies and TV come in and kind of deliver some strange out of context lines for a soda commercial in Japan or something. Exactly. And if you look up images of him, you'll find a lot of old images of him like standing around with various celebrities from the West.

Now, this film, 1977's House, was his first feature film, an intentionally off-kilter, highly weird, experimental horror comedy, I guess you might call it, but you can describe it many other ways as well. Initially, it didn't land all that well, especially with Japanese critics.

and in the industry, but it subsequently developed a cult following in Japan and abroad. And today it's celebrated as just a complete cinematic freakout and stands tall amid the pantheon of global psychotronic cinema. As long as you're sticking to coherent narrative films, it is one of the weirdest ever made. Yeah, and I do want to stress that it does have a plot that you can follow. It's not one of these...

you can definitely describe it as, as art house to a certain extent. Um, uh, Ty West, the, uh, the horror director has a little bit on the criterion collection disc where he talks about it being an art horror film, um, which, uh, he says, you see little love these days in part because studios want to bring ironically someone in from the commercial world to direct a very cookie cutter, um, horror film that kind of matches up with the style of everything else and doesn't stand out. Uh,

Um, but you do still see some art horror films like slip through and, uh, and there's some great examples of that for sure. But, but yeah, this is a very artistic vision here. Well, yeah, I think horror films are often thought of as a cash grab. And in many cases they are because horror films are for the most part, relatively cheap to make, and they tend to gross a lot more, uh, than their, than their budgets. But, you know, something that might be true of a lot of entries in a genre is of course never true of all. Right, right.

So again, there's a great interview with Obayashi and his daughter on the Criterion Collection disc. And I highly recommend folks check that out because it also has a lot of interesting stills, behind-the-scenes photos, and so forth. And they run through several aspects of the making of and the reception of the film. And I just want to go through a few things that really stood out to me and I think are important for understanding how this film came together and then how it was interpreted.

So he says that at the time, so we would be dealing with, I think at the time, like mid-70s Japan. He said that cinema was pretty much in decline in that young people did not go to the movies. TV was what was really in. And even his daughter, who would apparently go with him to the theater all the time, would comment that Japanese films were boring. Like when he asked her, what kind of film should daddy make? She would be like, oh, don't make a movie, daddy. Japanese films are boring.

So a lot of what he's doing is definitely trying to create something different, something new. Bummer. Shut down by your child. But he says that a lot of aspiring filmmakers at the time, like himself, didn't want to do commercials.

But he thought differently. He seems to have thought differently about a lot of things. He points out that the big thing is there was money in commercials. And the key here is not that you would make a lot of money, and I think that may have also been true, but more to the point, you could actually work with a budget.

So, again, like the Japanese cinematic world, according to him, was sort of shrinking at the time. You couldn't get these big budgets, but you could go into doing these commercials and there was money there. You could, he says that ultimately the content might be meaningless, but you could experiment. You could chase the visual expression of the thing. Yeah. And you see a lot of directors who eventually end up making movies and in all cultures, it's an American cinema, too, that they're.

You know, they start in commercials and also music videos. That used to be a big thing because it was a place to just like work on techniques, you know, whatever the actual content is. You're just experimenting with ways of showing things and and learning learning the craft that way. Yeah, yeah.

He speaks in the interview of turning experimentation into expression. And that really seems to have been a big part of his MO at the time, certainly in the production of House, which didn't even have any storyboards. Intentionally, they did not do storyboards for it. They would just try things out and just throw everything against the wall and see what they could get. I believe it's Ty West in the extra that points out that

Like they use just basically every in-camera technique imaginable in the film. That makes sense because I would say that the visual style of the finished product is incredibly chaotic. There are just tons of different techniques on display. Sometimes

seemingly at random. I want to talk about this later when we get into discussing the plot, the sometimes the violation of cinematic norms that is that takes place throughout the movie, but also with in terms of special effects, in terms of editing techniques, like it all just is just crazy, different visual stuff happening all the time that does not feel like

part of an attempt to select a particular uh visual texture that like a lot of films do like they just have totally different looking effects and styles happening back to back yeah he mentions like having great admiration for filmmakers like kurosawa but then also wondering what would irritate kurosawa and then pursuing that line of thinking that's great

So, uh, anyway, Toho studios, uh, famously was inspired by jaws for this one. Uh,

Um, this is often just thrown out there. It's like, this was, this was an attempt to cash in on Jaws. Well, sort of kind of, at least from Toho's position, established studio again, realizes they need a, they need to do something fresh and they look over and they see, oh, well, this Steven Spielberg guy just made like this enormously successful shark movie, huge hit from the mind of a young emerging talent. Let's get one of those young emerging talents and get them to make us a Jaws.

And of course, Jaws did lead to numerous ripoffs and copycats in the American market and all around the world. I mean, you can find Italian Jaws ripoffs, American Jaws ripoffs. They're they're popping off all over the place. Jaws made a lot of money and much like when Star Wars made a lot of money, it spawned an endless series of copycats. So did Jaws. So you would get Jaws with a bear. Jaws. Other people would just do shark, you know, shark copycat movies. Jaws with a killer whale. There are so many of these.

Yeah, and Obayashi points out that that's how the grown-up mind works, especially like the corporate mind. It's like, shark attack films are in, let's do a bear attack. Let's do, you know, whatever animal attack. And that's the reason he turned to his 10-year-old daughter for this fresh inspiration. Like, what...

What does she want me to make a movie about? And so she gives him this list of ideas. He adds this basic ghost story premise because he says you can't have the house eating people for no reason. It's got to be a story reason. And then he hands this off to the screenwriter and they have a script. In a way, it's so beautiful just to imagine taking all of your like your kids weirdest stories.

most messed up ideas and just saying that's going to it's in the movie in the style of the Key and Peele sketch for Gremlins 2 it's just very much it's in the movie yeah so it's impressive that the screenplay was greenlit by Toho they're like alright let's do it

But there was still apparently a long run up to actually shooting the movie. I think it was like a couple of years. And so during this time, they produced and sold the soundtrack. They produced and sold a novelization. There was a radio play of it. I was really surprised by all of this. I'm often not cued into all of the gears of

of getting the film from the screenplay stage to the production and release stage. But it sounds like Obayashi put a lot of effort in just like, all right, let's do all these things sort of to ensure that Toho keeps it greenlit and knows that it's coming. He talks about like printing up

business cards with the movie poster on it and handing them out and saying, Toho is making this movie toes, making this movie and so forth. And I also have to say that like in, in the, the interview and the various photos, it's like, it's very clear that Oashi was a very flashy, very creative, you know, again, experimental and establishment bucking young director, but also one who seemed to be very personable with cast and crew and,

to the point that he shares this story about how the lighting team ends up...

really coming around to him because he addressed them by their names. And this had never happened before in the production of Toho films. They were never addressed by name. So he brought an entirely different vibe to the production. And he also says that he made a point of wearing a different outfit every day in order to sort of keep the vibe up. So there are all these interesting photos of him in various flashy outfits. He's often got sunglasses on. Very hip-looking dude.

I think I read something about how, uh, in order to like get people in the feeling of a scene in the movie, he would like play music while they were shooting. Yeah. Yeah. And would kind of like, I think dance with everyone, that sort of thing. Now, Obayashi was born in Hiroshima and all of his childhood friends, he says, died as a result of the bombing. Uh,

And he often makes a point of pointing out that he incorporates elements of this into this picture as well into the anti-war themes and other movies that he would go on to direct.

Um, so he speaks of the, in this interview, he talks about the, the, the youth in this film, uh, the seven girls, as we'll get into that are, that are key. Uh, so he, he was about 40 at the time and he talks about like the young people being too young to know, really know what war is. And as a result to fully appreciate the joy of peace, uh,

And I thought this was really interesting to hear this after watching the film because, yeah, you think about the tension in this movie that's present in most horror movies, like the space between and leading up to the horrible things. And there is like this arc.

unnatural, almost sickeningly sweet aspect to the sweetness. Like it's artificial sweetener leading up to those moments that you know are coming. And it absolutely works in-house. Like I felt myself, you know, getting chill bumps because I knew something terrible was going to happen.

Which I have to say wasn't what I quite expected from the movie. I was expecting psychotronic weirdness and craziness and all that. And I didn't really expect the scary parts to be scary or to feel the tension leading up to them. Yeah, well, there is a... I would say this movie is almost always in some ways trying to subvert its own tone. So there are scenes that...

are very ominous in what's happening or they're conveying dark or sad or scary information and a lot of these scenes will have things about like the sights and sounds of the scene that are light-hearted and funny like it'll play jolly sort of happy music while something really sad or scary is happening and

And then it'll do the opposite, too. Something very lighthearted is happening on screen, but there will be things about it that make it very ominous and unsettling. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, as mentioned earlier, critics hated it at the time. Many didn't even review it. And those that did often were just very savage about it all.

But as he stressed in the interview, young people loved it. He says like 10 through 13 were the ages of people that were going out and seeing this movie. I might be too young for this movie. I don't know. I don't know. We had an off-mic discussion, like when is the appropriate age to see House? And I have no answers. Hard to say. 10 to 13, I guess, at least in the late 70s in Japan. Yeah.

But anyway, yeah, young people loved it, made it a success in a way kind of to the disappointment of the studio establishment. And then ultimately, some of the people who loved it were future filmmakers. The people who loved it were future film critics. And so it would eventually be held up as one of the great Japanese horror movies and ultimately, like we've been saying, one of the great weird films of global cinema.

So, uh, Obayashi followed up house with a long filmography that ultimately broadened his mainstream appeal, including several less nutty coming of age movies. Uh, but he didn't abandon horror. His subsequent movies also include 1982 is cute devil, 1983 is legend of the cat monster, 1987 is the forbidden classroom and 1988 is the discarnates. Uh,

The same year as House in 77, he also made The Visitor in the Eye. This was a live action manga adaptation. And his 2017 anti-war film Hanagatami was actually 40 years in the making. He was actually working on the script for that film with the screenwriter Katsura right before House. His last film was 2019's Labyrinth of Cinema. And again, he died in 2020.

Now, his daughter is Chigumi Ogashi. She actually appears in the movie. She's the shoe store girl. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's a scene outside like a cobbler's shop, shoemaker's shop. And there is an old man and a girl like hammering on some shoe soles. I think this is where Mr. Togo, the teacher in the movie, gets a bucket stuck on his butt and has to go to the hospital.

Yeah. And one of the goofier, just like Monty Python-esque sequences that occur in the film. Yeah. It's just complete nuttiness, complete slapstick, Charlie Chaplin-esque, and then some, I guess. Yeah. But yeah, keep a lookout for her. And bucket butt scene is, yeah, it's powerful. Almost as good as the banana scene later on. We'll get to that. Okay.

Okay, and then the screenplay proper, I mentioned Katsura. This is Chiho Katsura, who lived 1929 through 2020. So he was a Japanese screenwriter, novelist, translator, and film critic whose work, based on what I could see of his available filmography, included a great deal of Japanese pink or erotic films, but he also worked in other genres, including at least a couple of family films. He worked with Obayashi on several mainstream films, including, again, 2017's

Hanako Tommy. All right. But now we should mention that really on the acting front, we have seven core characters. These are the seven girls. Their names are gorgeous, Kung Fu, fantasy, prof or professor, Mac, which is short for stomach because she likes food. Oh, I didn't I didn't get Mac. It took a while for me to put that together. OK, Mac.

melody, and sweet. And they are all exactly what their names imply. Right. So they're named after their traits. So gorgeous is supposed to be beautiful. Kung Fu is the jock of the group. She can do sports and Kung Fu, and she's very decisive and active. Fantasy is a daydreamer. She's gorgeous's best friend, and she likes to... I don't know. I guess she's often daydreaming. Though most of the things...

In the movie where it's like, is she daydreaming? No, they're actually happening. Prof is very smart and logical, and she often has a book in her hand. Mac is always hungry to a ridiculous extent. Like, I think literally every single line she says in the movie is like, I am eating now. Yummy. You know, I want I want a watermelon.

She just has a great metabolism, though. I have to stress like it's not like she's overweight or depicted as such. Like she just is hungry all the time. Mac loves food and Melody loves music. She plays the guitar. I think we see her with a violin case and she plays the piano.

There's a very unfortunate piano scene where she gets her fingers bitten off. And then there is Sweet, who is, you might think Sweet is the one who is into desserts, but no, that's Max. Sweet is named so because she is friendly and gentle and kind. But yeah, it's still, it's kind of like the seven dwarves, right? Like their names tell you who they are for the most part. Except, what is Doc? Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know what Doc's deal is, but these these gals names all make sense. And and apparently the number seven was was important to Ogashi because like teams of seven are or were common in Japan. Now, in casting the seven girls, they're

He says that he pretty much depended on just casting girls that he'd worked with in his commercial work. So a lot of them were models with very limited acting experience. They're basically gorgeous. I think it's the only one who had an acting career that was already in motion, but it was still very early.

So he but he but he says like this is also an important part of the vibe like the acting from these girls is kind of amateurish and it doesn't feel polished or professional but that like other aspects of the film are intentional like that's part of the intended fabric of the thing.

Yeah, there are scenes in the movie that have an almost sketch comedy kind of feel, if you know what I mean. Like characters kind of like stumbling over each other with their lines, talking over other people's lines. And like sometimes maybe it seems like they're improvising, but it is clearly part of the fabric of the movie. It's what what they're trying to create.

I think somehow it simultaneously makes the movie funnier, but also makes the characters somehow feel more vulnerable when they are threatened by the evil magic of the house. Yeah, absolutely. And in a way that may be comparable to how sometimes your B-horror movies are more terrifying in that they feel more like it's documentary footage, you know, like...

They're not actors and it can sort of warp your expectations and experience of watching it.

So anyway, I'm not going to list all seven actresses who played the seven girls. A lot of them, again, were new to acting and didn't necessarily stick around for more acting or maybe only have a handful of credits. But the key exception is the actor who plays Gorgeous. This is Kamiko Ikigami, born 1959, American-born Japanese actress. She'd been acting for a few years at this point, having made her TV and film debuts in 75.

Her subsequent films include 1979's The Man Who Stole the Sun, the acclaimed 1983 drama Yokiro, for which she was nominated for a Japanese Academy Award, and 1993's Lone Wolf and Cub, The Final Conflict.

Now, the seven main girls are sort of an ensemble of heroes, but I'd also say there are sort of two main protagonists of the movie, and that is gorgeous, but also her best friend, Fantasy. Fantasy, yeah. Fantasy is very key. Kumiko Oba, born 1960, plays this role. I'm also a huge fan of Kung Fu. Oh, yes. I thought Miki Jinbo, born 1960, was great in this. Yeah.

Kung Fu, you're so cool. Yeah, she is so cool. And she can kick ghosts. She can. In fact, she can kick ghosts even without her head attached to her body. But ultimately, yeah, it's an ensemble and all the girls are great. They're all wonderful. I love their caricatures. It's fabulous. Yeah.

But again, most of them didn't have a lot of acting experience. Really, the most established actor in the whole mix is the actor playing the auntie who they are visiting. Often credited as Auntie Carrie Hausa.

So I guess her last name is House. Anyway, played by Yoko Minamida. She lived 1933 through 2009, a Japanese actress best known for this film, at least internationally, but with credits going back to 1952.

So she was a very established actor, but at the time, according to the director, had trouble getting work in cinema befitting her status and her talent. Again, so like cinema seemed to be down at the time in Japan. So, but it was, it was still, it was a big deal that she took this role, not only because she had such, she was an established star.

But also it was key that she took the role of an older woman, according to Obayashi, because in Japanese cinema, certainly at the time, and maybe still this is still the case, there was no going back for an actor or actress once you took an older person's role. Apparently, it wasn't this wasn't even necessarily like a double standard for women, as men also couldn't keep playing younger characters as they aged.

if like they had taken a role previously in which it was acknowledged they were playing an older character yeah like once you take that uh older lady role it's like that's it now you now you play old ladies there's no sort of like midpoint where you can kind of play both roles but i have to say she's tremendous in this oh she's so good she's she's the best yes uh there's a really great scene where she's

eating some food. I don't remember what she's, she's munching on something and then just kind of like pops her mouth open. And yeah, she has an eyeball that lives in her mouth and she kind of looks around at people with it and then closes her mouth like teehee. Yeah.

Yeah, there are times where she breaks the fourth wall. And I mean, you just kind of expect her to crawl out of the television at you at that point. Yeah, she's great. And really, the only other main actor I would want to mention is the cat or cats. We don't know how many cats play Blanche. You know, often you have multiple cats in a role. But really, for the most part, I was just struck by what a great feline performance this is. Feline actresses.

actors are notoriously difficult to work with. And even in the best of cat related movies often look like they really would prefer to be out of, out of the shot and are more interested in, in like scurrying off screen. Yeah. We were looking at some of those Blofeld shots where the cat looks like it's, it's trying to be somewhere else. Yeah. So it's a lot of that. Working with cats is difficult. Um, but there are plenty of shots in this film where, yeah, it's like Blanche just looks like she's completely at ease here.

Beautiful cat, too. Absolutely beautiful white cat. Very fluffy. Love Blanche. Hey, you didn't mention him, but you also had a credit note for the guy who like operates the ramen stand.

Oh, yeah. The guy credited as Ramen Trucker is Shichou. Ramen Trucker? Trucker, yeah. Okay. So maybe, I don't know if this is the... I'm not sure exactly where he shows up, but this is a guy named Shiochi Hirose who lived 1918 through 1990. Just a bit player and a one-time stuntman, but he played King Kong in 1963's King Kong vs. Godzilla. He's the guy... There's a scene where Mr. Togo, he's supposed to be coming to...

he doesn't know that they're in trouble, but he, they're waiting. The girls are waiting for him to come to the rescue at the house. And then we cut away to him and he's like at a ramen cart eating ramen. And this is the guy, I guess, operating the ramen cart. I believe so. Yeah. And we see him like stuff, a huge mass of noodles into his mouth and then grin at the camera with the noodles in his mouth. Yes.

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All right, now coming to the music. The music is important in House. Asai Kobayashi has the composer credit. He lived 1933 through 2021. Japanese composer and occasional actor. And in fact, he is in this acting as well as the watermelon salesman. That is an insanely weird role to go to somebody who's not primarily an actor. Like that is a weird, weird role. It is very memorable.

Apparently, it took some convincing to bring him onto the project, but Obayashi was insistent that, look, a ghost story needs the sweetest, most beautiful music in order to land properly, and that's why I need you on the picture.

And he was like, OK, OK, I'll do it. I also want to act in it. I'll do it. But then he was like, you know, you really need some youthful energy in this as well. So I was like, I'll work on these themes and all. But I think you should also bring in this Japanese rock band so that they can like recreate some of these themes and breathe additional life into the picture. And that is where the rock band Godigo comes into the picture here.

So this is a Japanese rock band, I believe named after the 96th emperor of Japan. They were mostly active in the 70s and 80s, but I think are still around to varying degrees. Like I see them doing press and all. They were notable for supplying the music for the Japanese TV series Monkey.

and and this by the way is a japanese tv adaptation of the chinese novel journey into the west that i think actually it also got some air uh outside of japan like i think i've read that it aired in australia for example so a lot of a lot of people even outside of japan have fond memories of this show and also i believe there is a scene in the movie where we see the band just hanging around uh

Oh, there's like five of them. And two of them, I think two of them are Americans. Hmm. Okay. I vaguely recalled this happening, but I don't remember when in the movie it is. Maybe it'll be in my plot notes here. I think it might be in one of those sort of Sesame Street esque sequences where we, we see this kind of like idealistic town. Okay. Yeah.

But anyway, these are the folks involved in the music and the music in house is absolutely bonkers bordering on and seemingly just intentionally irritating at times, even bordering on madness and,

And yeah, and other times just super sweet or happy-go-lucky or loaded with this kind of resilient 70s hippie vibes, you know, like the hippie dream is degraded, but the music is really insistent that it's still going. There are like pop rock anthems that feel very strange for the listeners.

for what's going on with the scene, there is a main theme that I assume was composed by, uh, by, uh, Kobayashi. I don't know for sure, but the main house theme that just plays over and over and over in all these different ways. And the, that, you know, the dun, dun, dun, dun. It like takes on a kind of evil magic of its own. It's like the, it's like the music is in some way responsible for the wicked magic that is taking place on screen. Yeah.

Absolutely. And on that note, let's get into the wicked magic of house. I love the animated title at the beginning. So there's like, of course we get the Toho logo, but then there's like a blue box on a black background with pink and green text inside it that says a movie. Yeah.

Oh, we actually says that this was key because he had to remind everyone that this is the essence of cinema. You can't dismiss it. This is a movie. I admit it. I admit it. It's a movie, but it's kind of telling because I think like some of the critics were like, this is not a movie. This is just a series of commercials. This is, this is excrement. And so like, even from the get go, he's like, this is a movie. I believe in the vision.

So after it says a movie, we see some like little white blobs jiggling like Jell-O in space. And then the little white Jell-O smudges turn into letters that spell house in English. And then the letters pop and a voice comes on and says house. Obayashi also stresses that giving a Japanese film a foreign language title, which is the case here, like the Japanese title for house is house.

he says this simply was not done at the time. It was really kind of taboo. And so he had to do it. Yeah, I was wondering what the cultural significance is of using English specifically. Now, I know in, say, if it's an English language movie, you might have a title in another language that signals something. For example, think of a horror movie called Oculus. You know, that's like a Latin title that

I don't know, something about using Latin in your title suggests kind of antiquity, something that is ancient and maybe kind of foreign and scary. I don't know what the connotations of using English specifically in your title would be here. But when I first saw the movie, I didn't even think about it. I didn't either. But yeah, he points out that, yeah, people hated this idea. Yeah.

You shouldn't do it. This isn't done. But like I say, he's he bucks those trends. So he's like, yeah, I'm going to call it house. But we're not done with the credit sequence. Credit sequence gets keeps getting more amazing. Yeah. Then you've got like the white jello house and then the O in house grows teeth and turns red. And then a woman screams. Then the teeth turn into red lipstick lips.

And then the lipstick lips open to reveal shark teeth and an eyeball in the back of the throat. And then a piano starts blinking on the soundtrack. And then the lips bite down on they bite down on something and then they spit out a severed human hand.

And then we finally cut to the action. And what we see at first is a woman filmed behind what looks like a green filter. And she's wearing a white sheet, like a hooded cloak. And she is surrounded by what looks like beakers and glass chemistry equipment, but also candles in ornate holders. So it's a very weird shot.

And then in a reverse shot, we see a girl in school uniform taking her photo. She gives a thumbs up. She says, OK. And then the girl in the photo throws off her cloak and walks to the window of the room. And we sort of zoom out of the frame within the picture to just be to just see one picture now. And this other girl is also in school uniform. So she had like a costume on.

And these are our two of our main characters. I would say the two most important of our characters, Gorgeous and Fantasy. Gorgeous was the one who was posing in the photo with the cloak over her head and Fantasy was the one taking the photo. And they're talking about how summer vacation is coming up and Gorgeous is going to spend summer vacation at the fabulous villa owned by her fabulous dad, which is in Karuizawa.

And I looked this up because I didn't know. Karuizawa is a mountain resort town that has long been a popular summer travel destination in Japan and for international visitors as well. It seems like it's kind of a beautiful forested mountain environment that gets like a nice cool weather in the summer and like people travel from all over to go there. We also learned that Gorgeous's father has been away in Italy and he is supposed to be coming back tomorrow.

A later scene reveals that Gorgeous's father is a film composer and that he is a rich and successful film composer. And he's been away working for somebody named Leone, who says that her father's music is better than Morricone's. So I guess they're saying he's working for Sergio Leone. All right. Sounds good. I'll buy it.

I wonder what went into that decision. Why? Anyway, let's see. Oh, but we also learned that so gorgeous is going to the villa and fantasy and their other five friends. The six girls together are going to go to some kind of camp for the summer. They're going to.

a camp by the seaside that is, uh, run by the sister of their teacher, Mr. Togo. So it's Mr. Togo's sisters in kind of complicated. Yeah. But ultimately unimportant, right? Cause they don't go there. Um, so gorgeous and fancy are best friends and they kind of tease each other, uh, fantasy, uh, gorgeous teases fantasy for having a crush on Mr. Togo, uh,

Uh, fantasy teases gorgeous for looking like a witch in a horror movie when she was dressed up in the, in the cloak, in the picture. Uh, they have a conversation with their gym teacher who is apparently getting married to Mr. Togo, I think. Yes. Yes. Okay.

Then there's kind of a montage of fantasy and gorgeous being best friends. There are a lot of montages in this movie. Now, while this movie represents a lot of kind of lighthearted scenes of, you know, just like teenagers being friends there, it also represents, I think, a lot of the like dark side and frustration of of being a young person.

And so there's a scene where like gorgeous goes home to meet her father and he's home earlier than expected. So at first she's very happy to see him. It seems they have a good relationship. Um,

But we learn that Gorgeous's mom died eight years ago. And today her father has some news he needs to share. A woman enters the frame at the house in a flowing white dress with a silk scarf blowing in the breeze. And her presence feels very almost ethereal. There's kind of a diaphanous quality to the way she's represented on film whenever we see her. And this character is named Ryoko Emma.

And the father informs gorgeous that she is going to be your mom now.

And he says several things to kind of try to soften the news, I guess. He's like, she's surprisingly good at cooking and other things, too. You won't have to mend my shirts anymore. But we can just see that is like not the kind of appeal that gorgeous wants to hear. Gorgeous is hurt by this because it seems that she hasn't really properly grieved for her mother's death, even though it was a long time ago. And she's not ready to accept a new member of the family.

Yeah, yeah. This portion of the film reminds me a little bit of what we'd get later in Jim Henson's Labyrinth, you know, with Sarah and sort of her, you know, the young woman's angst and so forth. And I imagine you see that in a lot of other movies as well. But the other thing, the main thing I want to stress is that I think it's essential to note that...

That this is, in many respects, the most normal part of the film, right? This is the real world set up to the speculative elements to come. So it would be the most boring part of your average cookie cutter horror movie. And yet in house, it's full of experimental and varied film techniques. I especially love the shooting through a kind of what is it like a glass mirror lattice work?

Yeah, yeah. Very weird. And also, I would say it is strange in how fearless it is in depicting the intense emotions of a teenager. So like after this interaction where she has she has this bad reaction to meeting Ryoko.

Uh, gorgeous goes back to her room, which is crazy by the way, it has like purple walls with huge flowers painted all over them. And she like, you know, she's got a piano in her room. Uh, and she, and she weirdly like suddenly seems very at peace in her room, despite having just run away from this family news that caused her so much distress. Uh,

But then she is acting kind of like silly and dreamy. And she speaks to a framed portrait of her mom and goes through a box of old family photos, remembering like good times with her father when he was proud of her when she like wanted a sports competition. And then she's just shown drawing X's over her dad's face in the photos and saying, I'll bully dad. I hate him. Wow. Yeah.

It's a time of intense emotions. But also in the sequence, she remembers her mom. She remembers her in a bridal costume, similar to how she cloaked herself in the chemistry lab photo earlier, actually. And she sees sort of a picture of her mother with her auntie. And she says, I wonder how auntie is.

the auntie in the photo is somehow kind of animated, even though she's in a still photograph and she is holding a white cat. Oh, that'll be important. Also here, we should mention just that the, the presence of music in this movie does not feel like,

I mean, all movie, most movies have music, but the presence of music in this movie does not feel normal. There's kind of a constant soundtrack playing, running under nearly every scene that makes everything feel like a montage or a flashback or something. That's a great point. And then there are choices made later on, like visually, stylistically, that also give you that feel. Like, is this the present? Is this the past? What's going on?

Yeah. Now, next at school, we meet our gang of student heroines. And again, they're each named for something about them. Again, they are gorgeous. Her best friend, Fantasy, who's always daydreaming. Prof, who wears glasses, is a nerd. She's logical. She has a book. Melody, who's holding a guitar and loves music. Mac, who loves food and is shown with a donut. Sweet, who is very nice and friendly. And Kung Fu, who is the jock and does martial arts.

When we first meet her, she like jumps up and karate chops a volleyball that is flying toward the group. And everybody says, you're so cool, Kung Fu. Also, when we first meet them, it's just a weird scene. They're like they're in a school courtyard and there are just bubbles floating through the air. Also, there is a fountain in the school courtyard with a copy of the Venus de Milo in the middle of it, like the armless Venus just there.

Yeah.

Mr. Togo shows up in this weird tiny car and he's like, bad news. My sister's going to have a baby. We cannot go vacationing by the sea. But I was just thinking, did he not know this was going to happen? I don't know. Maybe they didn't get a lot of advance notice from the sister, I guess. Yeah. And the girls bully Mr. Togo for this. I think he says, don't bully me.

But there's a new plan. Gorgeous suggests that they all come to her auntie's house in her mom's old hometown. And so we see Gorgeous writing a letter to her aunt informing her that all of her friends are coming. And she says, I know we've only met once. Please don't think I'm strange. Is the aunt going to think you're strange, Gorgeous? I don't know. Not this aunt. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, but she says, you know, she, she wants to spend time with her aunt, like she used to spend with her mom, uh, somewhere around here. She just happens to run into a fluffy white cat and she says, cute kitty, where are you from? Yeah.

And instantly adopts the cat. Now the cat is part of the crew. Yes. And named it Blanche. So Blanche is the name of the white cat. We see it sitting on top of the mailbox outside Gorgeous's apartment. And she gets a letter back from her aunt saying, oh, yes, come see me and bring all your friends.

So we know Gorgeous is going to go visit her aunt and take all her friends with her. And we also hear get a scene of Ryoko, Gorgeous's dad's new wife, announcing her plan to go later, go after Gorgeous and her friends, go to the aunt's house. She's going to go there and meet her so that she can get to know her and talk to her one-on-one. She says, this is my first trial in becoming her mother. And again, she's got this scarf on her neck blowing in the wind in a way that makes it, I don't know, it just looks kind of

doomed or vulnerable somehow. Like someone's it's suggesting like a grabbing of her by the neck or something. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and then the very next scene we get is so off the wall is this crazy musical number outside a cobbler's workshop. There's a guy working on shoes with a pipe and a cap. There's a young lady in the leather apron. This is the director's daughter. There's a donkey in the background or maybe a miniature pony. Uh, and, uh,

uh, yeah, it's just nuts. So like Mr. Togo comes down to this scene, but like falls down the stairs and gets a metal bucket stuck on his butt and, uh, announces he will have to go to the hospital for his butt bucket. Yeah. This scene is, yeah, it has strong Sesame street vibes and then it goes into just utter ridiculous slapstick territory. Um, it's,

In many ways, yeah, out of keeping with the tone so far, but also perfectly in line with the tone of house. It's hard to describe. There's a child drumming on Mr. Togo's bucket while he's on the phone. This would seem to be aggravating the condition or, I don't know, relieving it? I'm not sure. So without Mr. I guess Mr. Togo was going to accompany them somehow? I didn't fully understand this. He was going to be a chaperone.

Okay, he's going to chaperone this trip to the aunt's house, I guess. But so instead, they have to go without him. So the girls are at a train station and they're getting on the train and they're like, oh, who are all these cowboys and rock stars? Actually, no, they don't comment on it. I'm just wondering. The train is full of...

Oh, maybe this is where we see Godaigo. I don't know. But there are cowboys. There are nuns. There are sailors. The train is full of all different. Oh, El Topo's on there, I think. Yeah. Yeah. It's like this vision of, I don't know, like a very nonconformist Japanese society. I don't know what it is. Like, I don't know why. Why there are cowboys getting off these trains. And Blanche is on the train, too. They let cats on this train.

Somebody, while they're traveling with the cats, just happens to say any old cat can open a door. Only a witch cat can close a door. That'll be key. And also, if you haven't guessed already, this is definitely a witch cat.

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Now, here we get some backstory that's very important to the film, but I want to stress how strange the delivery of this character information is. So Gorgeous starts explaining to her friends that her aunt and her mother, they were sisters, and they loved each other very much. And Gorgeous once traveled with her mother to meet her aunt when she was six, but she hasn't seen her since.

And then like a film strip starts. And again, I want to say there's no way I could identify that they could be watching a film strip on the train. But we're watching a film strip with like sepia tones. And it's like the girls are watching it, too. And they're sort of riffing on what happens in the film. So as as.

as we see this stuff, it, uh, I guess, uh, gorgeous narrates, I think, or somebody narrates a long time ago, Japan was in a big war. This is auntie's house. Her late father was a doctor. This is my grandma. This is my mom. Isn't she cute? And then one says, she looks like you. Uh,

And then we see the aunt and her fiance and her fiance is a very dashing young man. One of the friends calls out, he's so handsome. They say he was a doctor and he was going to run the local hospital. And the friends ask, do you mean they didn't get married? And she says, no, they couldn't get married because of the war. So.

So we learn that her auntie's fiance gets drafted to serve in World War II, but he makes a pinky promise that he will come back and she promises to wait for him. And we see the auntie and her fiance kiss and then he has to go away to war. And then the film burns up and someone shouts a kiss of fire.

There's such a strange and wonderful energy to this part of the film with the optimistic and youthful responses to this story they're being presented with and the way they're riffing on it. So, you know, it's they're amazing and they're to be envied because they see mostly the beauty and the romance in this story and they feel it intensely.

And they're not you know, it's not like they don't understand the tragedy, but and they're not getting the tragedy, but they can't fully understand it. And or their understanding of the tragedy is overpowered by their youthful enthusiasm for the romantic elements of the tale. I think, yeah, that's exactly right. But then the backstory goes on. So after the kiss of fire, we learn that her fiance never returns from the war.

We see him revealed sitting in an almost comical looking and how strange it is. He's like shown sitting in the cockpit of a crashing airplane, just expressionless as the airplane goes down. And then we later see after the war, gorgeous as mom marrying her father posing for the photo that we saw earlier. So she's in her wedding garments and the auntie is beside her holding her white cat looking unhappy and unfulfilled.

After this, Gorgeous explains that her aunt has been living alone in the house for many years and that she gives piano lessons to the neighbors for money.

And then somehow suddenly they are on a bus instead of a train. Just an abrupt transition. The bus stops, the girls get off, and they are in a cartoon landscape. So they cross these different types of backgrounds, a valley with mountains, a cable bridge spanning a wide rocky stream. There's a path through a forest where Sweet says she's afraid of ghosts.

Prof says ghosts don't exist and Kung Fu implies that she will use martial arts on any ghosts that appear. Also through this whole track, Mac is just relentlessly announcing the consumption of food, just yelling like, yummy, this tastes good. Uh,

One of the last things before they get to the house is the watermelon vendor scene, which is tremendous. They come across like a watermelon stand and they remove a watermelon from the shelf of the stand. And then behind the watermelon is the face of the vendor, which is shaped, which is very round and shaped like a watermelon making this bizarre expression. And then he comes out and acts bizarre at

I don't know how to Rob, how would you describe this encounter? It's madcap for sure. Yeah. And I guess it is worth noting that at heart, this is a very this is certainly a hard trope. Like this is the guy that on the way to the haunted place.

whose role is to either say, don't you go to that haunted place, or as we see here, commenting after the kids have gone, I can't believe they're going to that haunted place. He fulfills that role while also being this wacky character who is selling watermelons. So the girls go on up to the house and it's on top of a hill with walls grown over by vines. There are owls diving around in the middle of the day.

And the gates creak open for them. Blanche runs inside and Gorgeous's aunt greets them. She is seated in a wheelchair. Her hair has turned white and she wears these cool Ringo Starr sunglasses. And she's holding the cat now. And I just want to point out, it's like the girls, as far as I could tell, there was no point at which they questioned this cat magic.

Oh, Blanche the cat was Auntie's cat and it came to fetch gorgeous in the city and now they're all here and that's just not remarked upon. No, they just roll with it completely. This is the cat who lives here. I don't know where the cat that traveled with us went. This is this is Blanche.

Also, one of them tries to take a picture and Blanche, the cat, shoots green rays out of her eyes. This will not be the last time Blanche shoots green laser beams out of her eyes. But it makes the camera fly in the air and smash on the ground. And one of the girls yells, sexy.

I need to point out that even when Blanche is not necessarily on screen, even when Blanche is not necessarily doing that creepy green eye sparkle thing, we often just get random meows in the soundtrack of the film, which just keeps you on edge and somehow keeps the weirdness level up no matter what's happening. You're just going to get some random meows in there and eventually musical meows.

That's right. Like meow mix. Yeah. Also, I should mention, even though they didn't buy a watermelon from the watermelon stand in the previous scene, suddenly Mac shows up with a huge watermelon and her friends accuse her of stealing it, which she denies. She's like, I paid for it. And I trust Mac. I don't think Mac would steal. I don't think Mac would steal. She paid for it. She's got some watermelon money in her wallet specifically for an occasion like this.

So they go inside the house and they learn that Auntie can make her lights come on by talking to them. That's cool. And they're like sort of having a, they're getting a tour of the place and the chandelier attacks them. It drops crystal shards that impale a lizard on the floor. And then it starts dropping more crystal shards, but Kung Fu flies in the air and attacks the shards. Yeah. Okay. And then Blanche eats one of the lizards. Okay. Okay.

And then Melody, the musical friend, is told about a grand piano in the house and she goes to play. But like when she gets to it, it's just strapped with cobwebs. They remarked that there are so many pictures of the cat in the house. And there are indeed so many pictures of the cat. It's a constant delight to see all the Blanche art, the Blanche iconography, as well as the various incarnations of this cat in this house.

There's so many weird things in the house that we can't even, we're going to reach a point where we're going to have to stop doing a, a sort of this minute plot recap and get just focus on some specific things. But like one thing is they find a skeleton in the house and they're like, oh yeah, grandfather used to treat patients in this room. Well,

Will this skeleton eventually dance randomly of its own power? Yes, it will. Perhaps. Yeah. And Auntie explains how she used to give piano lessons, but, you know, nobody comes here anymore. So she's been very lonely all these years. But now that she has all these girls in the house, she is very glad. Something a little ominous about the way in which she expresses her gladness.

So they decide to help Auntie out around the house and they split up the jobs. Of course, Mac is going to do the cooking and Sweet offers to do the cleaning. There is a moment in here where they're like moving around the house and somebody gets a cat thrown at them from off screen. I think it's Auntie. Yeah, I think the cat

quote unquote jumps into auntie's lap but clearly there was somebody just out of the shot gently throwing the cat into her lap just riding around getting cats thrown at her talking to her appliances and furniture uh at some point we learn that mac wants to chill the watermelon in the fridge but the fridge doesn't work so auntie suggests they put it down the well which they do and just randomly somewhere around here auntie looks at mac and says mac you sure look tasty

Now, this is just one place to mention. I could have said it earlier. I could have said it at any point. There is a very chaotic editing and transition style to this movie. The rhythm of cuts and the way one shot transitions to another is

These things do not feel normal for Japanese cinema or for any cinema that I know of. So I don't think it's a cultural thing. I think it is a unique to house thing. Just one example.

Among many, many weird things, there are sudden cross dissolves, you know, where like so it'll kind of like fade out and then fade back in on on something on the screen. And normally in a movie that indicates a transition forward in time. But here the movie uses cross dissolves when the action seems to be totally continuous, same time and place.

Yeah, it's one of the many things that makes viewing this film feel very psychedelic. It feels like some sort of an altered experience. It's violating norms of cinematic storytelling that you don't even normally think of, that you wouldn't usually notice are norms, and you only notice them once somebody does them differently than they're usually done. Yeah, like I say, he's all about bucking the trends and seeing what he can do to irritate Kurosawa. Okay, so...

So we're about to get to a scene, the watermelon head scene, which I think a lot of critics and film historians, people who celebrate this movie have sort of noted as a transition point in the film. Mm-hmm.

So

So after supper, Mac disappears. She says she's going to go get the watermelon out of the well. And she doesn't come back after a while. And so fantasy goes to look for her. And out in the garden by the well, there's a beautiful multicolored sunset. There's soft focus on the camera like we are within a daydream, which kind of makes sense because this is fantasy going to do this. She daydreams a lot, though it's strange because this is definitely really happening. So it's almost like a

even fantasy's regular life is like a daydream. You know, it's using the cinematic conventions of showing a dream. Yeah. It's like we're in a really nice yogurt commercial or something, you know? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And so fantasy starts pulling up the watermelon from the well, it's tied to a rope and she retrieves it and it's, you know, it's a round thing, but then she turns it over and realizes, Oh, this is not a watermelon. It's Mac's head.

And Mac now has sort of blue skin like a vampire and I think fangs.

Oh, my God. And it's alive or undead or something. And it's horrifying. It's quite frightening. And the buildup to it has been exceptional. Like everything's just super sweet. Again, yogurt commercial, yogurt commercial, and then just absolute horror. The head talks and then it starts flying around in the air and then it bites fantasy on the butt and then it vomits blood and then it goes back down in the well. Excellent. What a roller coaster. Yeah.

Uh, so fantasy goes back and reports what happened and her friends go to see the head. But when they get there, there is no head to be found. It's only a regular old watermelon, which they decide to eat.

Uh, also auntie is here and she likes to, she stands up right out of her wheelchair and explains you girls gave me energy and then grins into the camera while eating a slice of watermelon. Um, also this is the scene where she sort of shows off to fantasy and I think nobody else that she does have a third eyeball inside her mouth. Yes. It's also wonderfully creepy sequence.

So there's all kinds of just like little vignettes of the various characters getting freaked out by stuff. So like Sweet is cleaning the floors. She gets lured to a room with a doll that has green laser eyes like Blanche does and it whispers her name.

uh, gorgeous is taking a bath and she gets creeped on by like wet black hair that comes up from some unknown creature out of the water. It's horrifying. Yeah. Very creepy. Uh, Kung Fu in a much funnier sequence is attacked by flying wooden logs. Like she's splitting wood and then the logs started attacking her and she defeats them with karate chops. Yeah. Uh,

There's one point here where Auntie says, she's like, one time I was excited to go to a restaurant in town, and now I'm excited like that again. And then she climbs inside the refrigerator and disappears. Oh my God, this sequence is so creepy. It's shot in such a way that the other characters in the room with her don't see her suddenly go into the refrigerator, but we do. And then I think she reemerges again

um in the foreground of the shot and may break the fourth wall here i can't recall specifically but she does break the fourth wall at various points as if to say like yep it's me auntie i'm gonna eat these kids yep yep dancing with the skeleton eating a severed hand uh dropping a fried fish into a fish bowl and it comes back to life i think we see her dancing in the rafters of the house yeah yeah

There's also a sequence where Melody, the musical friend, goes to play the piano again. And she, of course, plays the house theme. Maybe we can get a little sample of that because you've got to know what it sounds like. Mm-hmm.

Sometime around here while like, you know, Melody's playing the piano and stuff. Gorgeous sort of, what would you say happens to her? She kind of gets possessed by the house. She's like looking in the mirror and she starts putting on her aunt's makeup and she sees herself as her aunt with fangs and

And like like she's looking in a mirror and the mirror shatters and then gorgeous as actual face shatters, revealing animated fire inside. I think the ghosts have taken her over. Yeah, it's a it's another fabulous sequence. This one, I think, was inspired by just the director's daughter saying, hey, what if my reflection attacked me?

Wouldn't that be scary? And of course, they've taken that and applied the ghost story logic to it. And yeah, absolutely wonderful. Somewhere around here is also the scene we talked about earlier where their friend Sweet, she's been cleaning the house up. She gets attacked by falling pillows and sentient mattresses from heaven and seemingly killed and then also maybe transformed into a large doll by the evil possessed mattresses. Mm hmm.

Uh, uh, there's one part around here where somebody imagines, uh, Togo, uh, Mr. Togo, their teacher as like a Prince on a white horse. They're like, he's coming. He'll be here. He he's going to save us. Uh, but it's so funny every time they're like these repeated cuts back to whatever Mr. Togo is doing. I think he is trying to find them, but he never does. Uh,

Uh, he's, they show him like stuck in traffic in this incredibly tiny, like what, what is this car of his? Is it like some kind of dune buggy or. I don't know, but yeah, he's, he's trying to find them. He's having no luck.

And spoiler is eventually turned into a pile of bananas. God, that's a crazy scene. Well, OK, we should just say what happens in that scene. Then this this is a little bit later. So we're jumping around in time. But eventually, Mr. Togo, he he stops for ramen and he eats ramen at this ramen cart. We see him driving around in the woods at night like a complete bumpkin, just trying to, like, find the house and being like, there's no house here.

And then I guess he eventually does get close because he meets the watermelon vendor, which we know was just down the hill from the house. Mr. Togo goes up to the watermelon vendor and says, do you know where the house is? The house watermelon vendor says the girls, they were eaten. Do you like watermelons? Mr. Togo says, no, no.

Watermelon vendor says, what then? He says, bananas. Watermelon vendor collapses into a pile of bones. His skull floats and then emits smoke. And then Mr. Togo runs away screaming, banana, banana. And then later it is revealed that by the morning he has transformed into a pile of bananas inside his car.

Yes, that is what happens. And I don't know what it means, how it really factors into the rest of the plot, but...

I guess suffice to say he was unsuccessful in being the white knight for this movie. Now, all this while the girls are trapped in the house, they try to escape, but they've been like locked in. They try to call for help, but there's just like weird stuff going on on the phone. Melody is attacked by the piano while playing it. So she's like playing the house theme and then the piano suddenly bites all of her fingers off and then it proceeds to eat her whole body in this

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely delirious. Yeah. Gorgeous, now sort of possessed by the evil ghost magic of the house, is dressed up like a pale bride. In fact, I think she's supposed to look like her mother. She's sort of become her mother in a way, but she's also become her aunt. And we see her sort of moving around accompanied by Prof and Kung Fu. At some point here, Prof gets absorbed by reading this book called

that i think is the aunt's diary it's a book that contains lore and through reading this book prof will get more of the backstory that explains what happened at the house oh but meanwhile uh is so she's uh prof is like looking at this book and just yelling like unscientific illogical uh at the same time kung fu is staring into this giant steampunk grandfather clock and

and sees an undead version of Sweet inside it, and the clock is wreaking rivulets of blood down its glass front. This is probably as good a point as any to mention that Obayashi, again, was the head of special effects on this film, and said in the interview that they actually could have used Toho's in-house special effects people, who were quite good. They'd worked on various pictures, Godzilla movies and so forth.

But he said they didn't want to go that route because they didn't want the special effects to be too believable. Like they needed to have

a certain unreality to them and I guess even an enhanced unreality yes yes yes I mean the clock scene looks very frightening and looks great there are other parts that don't look realistic at all but I love the style there there is one part where after melody gets her gets eaten by the piano we just see severed bloody disembodied fingers playing the piano and still playing the house theme

Except meow style, right? Is this when it starts being like a meow song? Oh, I think that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, we learn more from the diary of Gorgeous's aunt. We learn that, you know, she was waiting for her fiance to come home from the war in denial that he had died. And she mentions that all of the young girls in the town are gone now and she is all alone. Hmm.

Uh, and then suddenly while they're like reading this, learning about it, a giant head bursts into the room with them and it is the head of gorgeous. And she says, I'm in my aunt's world now. And then she morphs into a giant pair of lips. And one of the girls yells, huge lips. And the lips reveal that auntie actually died many years ago. And she became after she died and she became a jealous, vengeful ghost. Uh,

I think the idea is she she so longed for her fiance. She wanted to marry him and couldn't accept that he had died in the war. So now instead, she is this vengeful ghost that eats all of the unmarried girls who come to her house. So I think the suggestion is this may have been what happened to all of the girls in town who were getting piano lessons. Just eating one by one. Yeah.

And she says that when she eats them is the only time that she can wear her bridal gown. And then she says, now it's your turn. Just let me eat you. So, yes, at this point, like the poster art has come true. The promise is fulfilled. House is a house that eats people. So there's a bunch more stuff that happens. The girls are attacked by various flying household objects. I do want to emphasize the house theme and how much it is like just...

Just the objects one would find in a domestic residence are all turned evil in the movie. Everything that would be in a house, appliances, furniture, just household items are all now monsters that attack the girls. Yeah, I mean, we've talked about this on Stuff to Blow Your Mind before, some of these ideas about how significantly old household objects can kind of become animated and so forth. Yeah, yeah. So while they're being attacked by the house, probably...

Prof at some point realizes that in order to escape, they must destroy Blanche the cat or perhaps destroy an image of the an image of Blanche the cat, which is on the wall. And so Kung Fu is like, right, got my orders. And she tries to carry out this attack on the image of the cat. But she is in turn attacked by an overhead lamp, which latches onto her skull and electrocutes her.

Um, and then like, uh, the lamp seems to suck Kung Fu into a psychic vortex where she perceives floating, rotating body parts and hears the voices of her dead friends. But somehow she snaps out of this vortex, uh,

And the upper half of her body seems to have been destroyed, but her disembodied legs fly out of the lamp and kick the image of the cat on the wall, which vomits blood and freaks out and leaps up in pain, which in turn causes gorgeous to gush blood and scream like a vampire doused in holy water.

And when the cat leaps up, it's kind of like animated lightning cat. Yes. Really, all of this has to be seen to be understood. We can describe it to you, but you just have to experience it. It's even crazier than we made it sound here. It's also like, yes, there's

lots of blood going on here, but it's also, and it is gory, but I don't want to like oversell that and say like, oh, this is just a real gore fest. It's, it's not because it's so weird and there is this unreality to the effects. It, it exists in its own dimension.

It's hard to describe what comes next. There's a lot of like, there's like cat images, vomiting blood, lots of things, vomiting blood, uh, uh, people drowning in blood. Uh, yeah. Uh, floating on blood floating. There's, there's all this blood, uh,

Um, and then finally, it seems that all of the girls are devoured by the house and that gorgeous is something altered. She has somehow merged with auntie and, uh, whatever comfort, you know, she, uh, offers to her friends is, is a prelude to eating your soul. So that we are to understand that all of the girls are, are, have their souls eaten by the house.

But then, oh man, the movie has such a stinger. The next day, remember, remember Gorgeous's new stepmom, Ryoko? Yeah, with the scarf. Yeah, with the scarf. She's driving through the country, her scarf blowing in the wind. She said she was going to go to the house to catch up with Gorgeous, you know, to get to know her. Oh no.

Uh, and, uh, she, uh, she comes, no, wait, maybe she, wait, do we learn whether she and, uh, the father had actually gotten married yet? I think maybe they had not. I think they were going to get married. Yeah. I think this is still like, she's like, I'm going to go patch things up with her, you know, beforehand. Yes. Uh, so she, uh, she's driving through the country. She finds the house. She walks by the watermelon stand where we see Mr. Togo has turned into bananas. Yeah.

Uh, and then she goes up to, uh, the, uh, the aunt's house. Uh, this bittersweet kind of Beatles-y pop song is playing. She wanders through the garden and it's very dreamlike and ethereal. And, uh, she meets Gorgeous at the house and is invited inside. And she asks Gorgeous, where are your friends? And Gorgeous says, they're still sleeping, but they'll be up soon when they're hungry. They get up when they're hungry. Yeah.

And then Ryoko bursts into flames. Amazing. Just absolutely amazing. Like legitimately creepy and amazing. Oh, and then there's like a monologue at the end, which I feel like I should just relate. I don't see exactly how it connects, but it says...

Even after the flesh perishes, one can live in the hearts of others together with the feelings one has for them. Therefore, the story of love must be told many times so that the spirits of lovers may live forever, forever. The one thing that never perishes, the only promise, is love. Yeah, I don't fully understand it here. It reminds me a little bit of how on the 90s Outer Limits you'll have the narration voice come on at the end and sum things up in ways that

sometimes feel a little disconnected from what you just watched.

But I don't know, maybe something's lost in translation here, or maybe it is like so much of this film intended to be a bit off kilter, intended to make you scratch your head. So that's how, again, truly one of the weirdest films ever made, widely recognized as such. And I have to concur with that opinion. It is there's not not really anything like it. Agreed. It is a masterpiece. This is a masterpiece of weird cinema. Highly recommend it. Yeah.

Again, luckily, it's pretty easy to get your hands on if you're interested in watching it. And it's definitely worth watching it. I mean, have it on in the background, if nothing else. But I think you'll be sucked in. It's hard to casually watch this movie. I watched it by myself and I kept catching myself like making faces, you know, like my jaw literally dropping at some of the sequences.

It's like a dream that a cat had about being a human. Yeah, it might be. That's as good of an explanation as any. Well, there you have it, House. It's great to have finally discussed this film on Weird House Cinema. I felt like it was fated to happen at some point or another. And we hadn't covered a Japanese film in a spell there, so it was good to cover another one here. Obviously, we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Do you have thoughts on House?

Memories of seeing it for the first time, hearing about it for the first time. Write in. We would love to hear from you. As always, we'll remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast with core episodes in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Go to Letterboxd.com. That's L-E-T-T-E-R-B-O-X-D.com. Look us up. Our username is WeirdHouseCinema.

We have all the movies we've covered listed there, and sometimes you can get a peek ahead at what's coming up next.

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I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take phone calls from anonymous strangers as a fake call.

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This week on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler. Connie Britton is here. I think you should encourage your friend to go ahead and not be holding out for any man to have her babies. She could be waiting another 10 years before she finds the right guy. Connie didn't meet her right guy until you were what, 50, Connie?

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