#4 House Review: Top 5 Horror Films For Halloween
House: Toho Co., Ltd.
Runtime: 88 mins Release Date: August 13th, 1977
Director: Nobuhiko Obayashi
Starring: Kimiko Ikegami, Yōko Minamida, Mie Kitahara, Eriko Tanaka, Mari Shirato
Screenplay: Chiho Katsura Score: Godiego
Distributor: Toho Co., Ltd.
House has been described by many as Scooby Doo on LSD in Japan, and I honestly cannot deny that it is a pretty accurate description. The film begins by introducing us to the main character Gorgeous; who got her nickname thanks to her obsession with her looks. She is going through a rough time because her father is remarrying after the death of her mother. After a bad meeting with the bride-to-be, she lays in bed with a photo of her mother reminiscing about the old days before she passed, during which she remembers her aunt that she hasn’t thought of in many years and she begins planning to visit her.
We are then introduced to her friends in the next scene that are named by archetype, Prof (the smart one) Kung Fu (the strong one), Fantasy (the daydreaming one), Sweet (the kind one), Melody (the musical one) and Mac (the one that’s obsessed with food, her name is short for stomach). Gorgeous you’ll notice fits into this schema as well. After her friends find out they can’t go to the inn they originally planned to visit over the summer, Gorgeous convinces them to accompany her to visit her aunt's house in the countryside.
While on the journey they meet a strange white cat named Blanche, who turns out to be owned by Gorgeous’s aunt. Once they arrive strange things begin happening and the girls start to disappear under mysterious circumstances, as the remaining girls continue to try to unravel the mystery they begin to realize that this house is not what it seems.
House, is probably one of the most entertaining haunted house films I’ve ever seen. The style is incredibly psychedelic, and the effects are done in such interesting ways. In one scene, for example, a piano is being played by dismembered fingers and it’s pretty clear they just put blue paint on the rest of the hand to make the effect. The story goes that the effects supervisor told the director he could make the effect look better but the director wanted to go for this kind of aesthetic and I think it really adds to the film.
House was also instrumental in saving the Japanese film industry, as youth were far more interested in watching TV at the time of its release and feature films were steadily dying out. This film released its soundtrack a year before the film came out which built up excitement around the film. It performed incredibly well at the box office proving that the film industry in Japan was far from dead.
The film is slightly gory, but the effects aren’t very realistic, it’s quite cartoonish, the main concept even came from the director's young daughter that he built out into the script. It is still R rated, so there is blood and some gore, just be aware if you plan on checking out the film.
