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On my birthday, I was due for a couple netflix discs (sadly, poverty will push me out of that particular luxury when they change their pricing soon). I compulsively watch things as they come in, so just leaving them alone for a day wasn't an option. So I decided to bump a couple things to the top of the queue I know would go over well. House and House 2. I really should give them this sort of treatment sometime. While searching for them however, I noticed that Netflix was finally stocking something I've wanted to see ever since I learned it existed. House. These three of course were all listed in the search results under the complete series of House, and above that terrible looking movie from a few years back, House. So... yeah. Time to watch House now.
If the above explanation managed to confuse you, of the many things called House, the one I'm sitting down to watch right now is the Japanese one from 1977. After the Toho logo fades away, a very movie type font first say "A" and then "MOVIE," letting us know we're about to watch a movie, I guess. That's nice of them. This then fades away, to be replaced with "House", in a very ghosty font. Teeth apear in the O, then an eye, then the O eats the eye, and spits out a hand. Now here's two typical Japanese schoolgirls taking pictures in a Sciense lab. One of these girls is named Gorgeous, the other apparently is Fantasy. Also we've got some Mr. Rogers sorta music here. I.. really don't think I'm going to be able to keep it straight which is which though. Ah, Gorgeous apparently is the one who's going on vacation with her dad out in the middle of nowhere, along with his new fiance, who is apparently a ghost. I mean, she's wearing this weird gauze-like layered dress thing and as soon as she walks in this crazy loud wind is blowing scarves and such everywhere and... yeah, this movie is already starting to do weird things with sound effects and editing. Anyway, Gorgeous hates her new potential ghost mom, so she runs to her room, slams the door, and... changes clothes like a Sims character. Seriously, she just stops, spins around in place, and is suddenly in her Dead Mom Picture Viewing Attire. Apparently she hates her dad too.
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NOW HERE'S A BAND! Oh, nope. Here's some kids at school, one of whom is holding a guitar, while the soundtrack blares light upbeat rock. Here's some cannon fodder characters. Mac Sensei and Kung Fu apparently. What's weird is that Ghost Mom has a totally normal name. Also I hate these subtitles. One teacher they called "Teacher" but this other one gets "Mr. Togo." Anyway, Gorgeous sez screw going off with Dad and Ghost Fiance, she's inviting all her friends to go visit her aunt. Then she writes her aunt a letter to let her in on this. Now here's a cat from nowhere. And here it is again. I guess the cat's the mailman or something. It appeared on her desk as soon as she finished her letter, then it appeared on the mailbox when the reply came. Or, I suppose more likely, the ghost of her real mom. In cat form.
Now here's Sesame Street. Uh. That was weird.Seriously though, we've got this super happy street wih little kids running around and adults in cartoonish dress happily toiling in the street, and someone just... randomly "tripped and fell" down a staircase, in an odd combination of stop motion and just plain crawling, and gets his butt stuck in a bucket... and then just kinda slides all over the ground in stop motion antics. Just for the hell of it. This movie isn't really big on doing things for reasons. Now all the girls are getting on a cartoon train, which the cat is also on of course. And... this is pretty notable. Gorgeous starts telling the backstory of her grandmother, so we switch to old black and white footage from WW2 era Japan of her and her husband and narrate over it. Which, would be one thing if it was Gorgeous telling her story but no, suddenly it turns into MST3k. We're watching this footage of Uncle getting drafted and such, and.... all the girls are just making fun of it. Not making fun of her story either, this is clearly them making fun of what's on screen. Bizarre.
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Anyway, they eventually get off the bus their train apparently turned into at some point, and traipse through some aggressively unrealistic landscape for a while. Eventually a creepy dude selling watermelons points out the House they're going to. Nothing is really proper creepy about this, it's a bright sunny day with rainbows and stuff. He's just kind of a weird fat dude. After they leave though, he ominously mutters how "the lady will be pleased." And then a watermelon with a face carved into it behind him laughs, puppet style. And wow. A fake hawk on a string swings by as they're knocking on the door. That... couldn't look more fake. Aunt kinda teleports to the door in her wheelchair to let them in. She's also petting the cat now. This movie by the way is constantly doing these overlaid close-ups in the middle of the screen. It's not worth pointing out it happens so often and randomly. Also, Fantasy's camera just kinda leapt out of her hands and slowly drifted to the floor and broke. You know what? When this happens, I'm just going to say things "fall" OK? If they actually just shoot an object falling to the ground like a sane person instead of doing stop motion and strings weirdness, I'll let you know.
So... they go inside, Aunt voice activates her chandelier, and then... something happens. A bunch of crazy colored lights appear on the chandelier, some girl screams and her hat flies straight up, a crystal detaches from the chandelier and falls, impaling a lizard by her feet. Then another detaches, but Kung Fu jumps up and punches it safely away. Then the hat falls back down. So... OK yeah. This is this movie. I've seen trailers and I knew it did totally weird stuff for no reason, but I kinda figured it wouldn't start in until things started getting all horror-y. This is more like some kind of surrealist low budget kids show. Where apparently people will eventually start being horribly mutilated by ghosts. I feel I should mention that they got a watermelon and are storing it down a well because the fridge apparently doesn't work. Enough time is dedicated to stressing this point that it will no doubt prove extremely important later.
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Or right now. Fantasy goes to check on it, and finds instead the severed head of Mac, last seen going to the bathroom. It says her name, she freaks out and drops it, it flys around for a bit, then bites her butt. So she screams and goes inside to tell everyone about how there was totally a severed human head in the well... and this scene STILL feels like I'm watching Sesame Street. Everyone else goes out to check, and, nope, just a watermelon. By the way, Aunt is CONSTANTLY mugging evilly for the camera. Like here, where they're all eating the watermelon, and she gives an evil ook at Fantasy and opens her mouth to reveal an eye after taking a bite. She moves it around with her tongue all in time with her real eyes a bit. Nobody else notices anything is wrong here. Someone pumps some fresh water which turns to... well, not so much blood as red koolaid as it fills her glass. She drinks it, nobody notices anything weird here. Then Sweet, goes to find futons, finds an evil doll that calls her over, and closes the door behind her. We still haven't gone into horror movie though. Still all upbeat and happy. Here's someone taking a bath. Boobs visible now at this late hour, but this is not the sort of movie to play by any rules, even the rules of @#$%ed up movies. Whoever's taking a bath almost gets attacked by some kind of strangling hair monster but it changes its mind. Kung Fu gets jumped by a gang of sticks while outside for some reason or other, but handily fights them off.
Aunt heads into the fridge and teleports into the foreground to mug, causing some plates to fell. Then she dances around with this plastic skeleton she has lying around, it was an old medical model or something. Then she heads off by herself to eat a human hand, play with a couple goldfish before dropping them into a bowl, biting one in half first, but it's fine. Then the cat meows along with the happy background music while running along the piano and hopping down and that clip playing forward and backward a lot. By the way, you see how I just casually dropped the hand eating bit in there like it was totally mundane and not at all noteworthy? That's totally how it's presented. It's just shot like this incidental background scene of her sitting down for a glass of tea while everyone's getting ready for bed. Anyway, that odd little montage over, someone is now playing the happy music on the piano. Nice slow relaxing bit. The skeleton is in the background kinda dancing along. While she plays, we get a nice calm outdoor shot, then various girls or maybe just one playing with an old vanity, putting on makeup and sticking stuff in her hair and whatnot. Presumably this is Gorgeous, because she's now flashing back to throwing away that wind scarf fiance gave her. Also her reflection is apparently a vampire. Then the eyes of the cat, who's outside I guess, flash green unrealistically, and... things go kinda trippy here. The mirror cracks, the reflection bleeds, and then the girl aside from her hair and eyes along with the mirror surface are replaced with fire. Like, picture a green screen sorta deal, where the chroma-key is set to Gorgeous. Meanwhile, the piano keys are now flashing various colors. Melody, the girl playing the piano, is screaming, meanwhile Sweet, still looking for futons, has the cat walk in on her and do the eye thing. Then uh... in Soviet Russia, Futon beat you!
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Ah. The piano apparently bit Melody. OK. Also, I'd love to blame all these on the nose names on lazy localizers, but no, everyone really has what they generally do, in English, as a name. Mac's is a reference to eating a lot. i.e. At McDonald's. Someone is ominously in the outhouse asking someone for toilet paper. Meanwhile Fantasy finds the futon murder scene and calls everyone else to come help. All they find are all of sweet's clothes, and a naked doll. Then Fantasy just kinda randomly has a fantasy about her teacher widing a horse across a field and sweeping her up, cliché romance imagery style, "The End" then we're back to relatively normal stuff. Now we're... just dropping the frame rate for some reason. Everyone's walking down stairs, and we're suddenly at like, 2 frames a second. Apparently they're calling yon teacher to invite him over. With this super old timey phone. The mouthpiece on the box, you hold the earpiece up separately sort. And... wow this low frame rate's going a while. Oh hey, there's an evil mummy. It starts kinda chasing them around. Then, suddenly, regular frame rate restored, they run some more, doors and wall panels are going nuts, there's some arbitrary laser sounds. Now here's Gorgeous wandering around outside by herself.
I'm just going to start hitting return at random points. In keeping with this movie's respect for narrative flow. So yeah, she's outside juggling special effects and... we cut immediately to some kind of rock tour bus being stuck in traffic in Tokyo. Then back to the House, where Kung Fu is trying to break the door down with combat. Kung Fu attacking stuff always looks weird. It's very stop motion-y and abrupt. This, like stuff falling, can always be assumed as the case. The general bulk of girls explore a little and find a hand in a jar. By the way, I have to ask what the hell Gorgeous is supposed to be wearing from the waist down. It's like.... a bikini bottom improvised out of a checkered dishcloth or something. Anyway, the girls all end up sitting around while Melody plays the piano some more. I'd really like to hear what the story behind this movie is some time. It really doesn't come off like someone is just being weird for the sake of weird. It's more like someone is trying to do a standard by the numbers haunted house movie, with the handycap of not having any firsthand familiarity with reality. Like, seriously. Not even like this was created by a crazy person. Like this was created by some kind of otherworldly intelligence who had only been in our universe for like a week.
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Anyway, Melody just got eaten by the piano. It took a while. At one point her head was just kinda floating around commenting on how it looked kinda dirty with her legs sticking out and all. Anyway, Sensei and Kung Fu come down to find Fantasy passed out after witnessing this, some scattered Melody bits, and her fingers are over playing the piano still. Also, I almost forgot, but while she was getting eaten, the skeleton was TOTALLY freaked out and panicking. Anyway, they revive Fantasy, tell her that "Even Gorgeous is a ghost now" which, yeah OK. Then some old guy is suddenly all up in her grill eating ramen. He's in a ramen shop somewhere.The head chef is a bear. Some spy is leaving. I... can't make that any clearer than how I just did.
So then the girls pile up a bunch of furniture in the corner of the stairs, to make a barricade against... whatever, I guess. They find Aunt's diary and start reading it. Then Gorgeous' giant head kinda comes out of the wall, and explains Aunt died a long time ago, and she's in her world now, and has exposition powers, explaining how she has to eat girls to wear her bridal dress again, and Gorgeous could stand to get in on that too. Also, stuff's flying around. Umbrellas, gettas, pottery, walls, bits of Melody. Kung Fu fights her way out and goes to the phone to call for help. The phone tries to standle er, so she fights the phone. Then the mummy attacks, so she fights it too. This leaves her outside, where ninja bride mode Gorgeous attacks . So she fights her too. Man, Kung Fu really is good at Fight. Fantasy is the only one who should logically survive all this, but.... Oh OK. A lamp grabs her and eats her. before she has a chance to Fight it. Now here's some... stuff. Then Kung Fus legs emerge from weirdo lamp space and jumpkick the paining of the cat on the wall, which is presumably the source of the evil power. It starts vomiting blood. This... starts flooding the house, so Sensei and Fanasy are stuck floating on a random hunk of floor. Oh yeah, and their teacher this whole time is driving onn over, from when they called him forever ago, it's just been taking him a while. He's finally up to melon guy though. "Hey, do you know where the girls are?" "They were eaten, hey, do you like melons?" "NO!" "What do you like then?" "Bananas!" Then melon guy turns into a cartoon skeleton.
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Then an urn bites sensei's hand and pulls her off the raft. It steals her glasses, and, apparently her clothes just aren't there anymore. She can't see without her glasses and apparently this makes it impossible for her to swim the right direction, so she flounders about underwater with some pretty gratuitous nudity, before eventually just being dead and gone I guess. Now here's Gorgeous. Fantasy is relieved to see how she's totally not a ghost, and reaches out to her, accidentally pulling her kimono open for some more boobs. Then she turns into Aunt, but I guess she just sees her as Gorgeous, or her mom, and calms down. Gorgeous Aunt's eyes flash.
Now here's Ghost Fiance driving around with her Wind Scarf. Seriously. Thing is a magic item. It constantly flutters in strong non-existant wind. She drives out, to see how he teacher has turned into a pile of bananas. Then starts... I guess flying around? She's super imposed over the path to the house, but it's an areal show so... I don't know what's up here. Not that I know what's up with anything in this movie. But yeah, she makes her way over, I guess he's here to pick the girls up to go home. Don't know why they can't just take the bus-train again. Nice sappy music while she flutters about looking for them and admiring the scenery. Oh hey, there's Gorgeous. Opening things up and saying good morning. She invites Fiance in, they sit down all formal like, she asks if herfriends are all still sleping or what. She nods, then says "They'll get up soon. They'll be hungry." They shake hands, Gorgeous' eyes flash, the scarf becomes fire, and the cat takes a nap. Then we've got this weird upbeat poetic line about people living on in people's hearts after they die. Because the only thing that lasts forever is love. Because... yeah sure. That was TOTALLY the message of this movie. Whatever you say. Now here's the credits, with more of the low key sappy American folk rock that's pretty weirdly common to this soundtrack. The credits play over footage of the cast kinda goofingg off. The credits are also being eaten by a cartoon house wit a mouth and huge tongue. Wadded up, presumably digested credits come out the chimney.
So OK. That was House. Well, that wasn't House, but it was House. You know what I mean. Special features on this DVD include an entire other movie. A 40 minute short film the director made where he established... let's call it his style. Much less interesting to watch though. There's also some making of stuff I'm really just going to have to watch. Apparently in the late 60's, Japan just kinda collectively stopped going to the movies. This guy got to make weird 2 minute short films to play in the desiccated abandoned theaters, and eventually got a job making insane Japanese TV commercials. Oh, here's what the deal is with this. When he got offered to make a proper feature length movie, he asked his daughter for suggestions. So... it's kind of an Axe Cop deal apparently. Also, the studio looked at the script and said "... No." So he just kinda went and created so much promotional side material on his own that they were eventually forced to let him just direct the thing due to crazy fan demand. And... aha. He figured since a kid wrote it, it should also look like a kid did all the special effects. Yeah, guess that makes as much sense as can be hoped for here.
