HOUSE may be the single weirdest movie I've ever seen, and I've seen some weird ones. It almost defies explanation. That kind of sucks, because movies that defy explanation both demand to be seen and are destined to be hated by half the people who see them, so it's hard to say what you really want to say when asked about this kind of movie, which is, "You have to see it to believe it." While that is literally true, it's not a helpful recommendation.Movies that are weird for the sake of being weird are often love or hate affairs but if you see enough them you start to get immune to extreme feelings and end up somewhere in the middle. Several hundred movies ago, when I was 15, I imagine I would have loved or hated this movie. Now that I'm an old man, I didn't love or hate HOUSE. I was mildly amused by it while also waiting for it to end.
HOUSE, a Japanese film from the late 70s, has a fairly flimsy plot that's just an excuse for a bunch of hallucinatory visuals, some wacky sound design and a lot of counter intuitive editing tricks. It's like live action anime directed by Ken Russell.
Basically, this is the story of seven teenage schoolgirls in little sailor uniforms who go for a summer vacation at the country house of one of the girls' aunts (Yoko Minamida). The girls all have nicknames describing their personalities -- Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) is preoccupied with her looks, Prof (Ai Matsubara) is a nerd, Fantasy (Kumiko Oba) has her head in the clouds, Kung Fu (Miki Jinbo) does kung fu, and so on. The aunt has had a sad and lonely life since her husband died in World War II and it isn't long before weird stuff starts to happen at the house. At first the girls think it might be their imagination but eventually it becomes pretty clear the place is haunted.
The thing is, for the viewer, weird shit starts happening in the first second of the film and never stops. Music and sound effects are often completely at odds with whatever is going on onscreen, multiple editing tricks are used to transition into and out of scenes within seconds of each other, sometimes unnecessarily in the middle of a scene, the characters are cartoony and simplistic, and the backgrounds are obviously overwrought dramatic paintings. So, by the time weird shit starts going on in the narrative, it isn't that big of a deal to the audience because as far as we're concerned the whole thing has been weird all along. But, the girls in the movie don't realize they're living in a nightmarish cartoon fantasy acidland until people start disappearing and bodies start piling up. The house itself seems to be possessed as one girl is buried by a bunch of futons (seriously) and another is eaten by a piano (no kidding).
I don't want this to come off like some of this doesn't work. It undeniably does, on some level. I mean, you don't stare at it thinking whoever made it was incompetent. No, director Nobuhiko Obayashi definitely had a vision and you can tell this was all deliberate. So, it's not in the "so bad it's good" category because it's not bad -- not charmingly bad, or offensively bad. But, it doesn't quite reach the heights of greatness, either.
Granted, it must have been mind blowing to walk into a theater and see this unfold before your eyes with absolutely no preparation. But is that enough to make it a satisfying movie? I don't really think so. I think this works more as a piece of art to be looked at for art's sake, or maybe even as a novelty, and not so much as a traditional narrative that says much about the human condition or engages viewers on any kind of emotional level. Not that a "great" movie has to be a traditional narrative or any of that stuff, but... I don't know how to explain it.
I guess what I'm struggling to say is that this movie is just "okay." Normally that wouldn't be so much of a struggle, but it seems like an odd thing to say about a movie as unique as this one. I feel like I should either be wowed by its audacity or offended by its stupidity, and I'm neither.
At the very least, HOUSE is always interesting to look at, and for a horror flick with some exploitation stuff thrown in, it tends to keep a fairly positive vibe the whole time. Even though it's about a bunch of schoolgirls getting knocked off by ghosts, it never veers into disturbingly dark and dirty territory. Everyone seems to be having fun with the production, and that might be the secret of its redemption because there's nothing worse than a weird movie that takes itself too seriously.
At least these weirdos are fun weirdos.
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