House (1977)

House (NR)

A group of 7 overly cheerful and cliche-ridden young women take their Summer vacation at the house of a reclusive Aunt in the Japanese countryside.  What they find there, and how many drugs the someone must have slipped you and the filmmakers, is Nobuhiko Obayashi's cult masterpiece of horror, HOUSE.

A rare bird indeed, House is an arthouse splatter flick, a psychedelic comedy, a post-WWII-Hiroshima-catharsis and a surreal Japanese folk-fairy tale all rolled into one (pass it to the right).  Conceived with the help of the director's young daughter, the picture captures an artistic beauty of youthful imagination, while the adults throw every technical camera trick and special effect in a mad-dash for effectiveness.  You will never know what is going to happen next, and it keeps happening at such a rapid pace you can barely keep up.  Meanwhile the lovely surreal sets and obviously-on-purpose painted backdrops (produced on Toho's soundstage) are inhabited by a gaggle of spritely amateur actresses with heavy tropes for characterization.  There's the tough one, the smart one, the fat one, the pretty one, etc.  Another character is the music, featuring both orchestrated and 70s-rock'n'roll.  The soundtrack adds another layer of insanity and cheer to the proceedings that one can almost feel David Lynch bobbing his head in time to the beat.

Wholly original, wholly unique, and yet vaguely reminiscent of what a Japanese Jordowosky and Monty Python collaboration might have been (if you like your Holy Mountain holding hands with Sam Raimi in a girl's school uniform with just a dash of Dali, this is the film for you).  House is a colorful masterwork of genre bending ingenuity that was mostly unknown in the U.S. until it's rerelease to surprised Western audiences in 2010.

If you don't like it, then leave and don't let the shōji doors hit you on the way out!

9 Pianos that Eat People out of 10 (GREAT)