This must be one of the weirdest films I've ever seen ... and I absolutely loved it!
"House" is primarily the story of teenage schoolgirl Gorgeous. Summer break is approaching, and she and her six girlfriends are excited about their vacations. Gorgeous is supposed to spend time with her widowed dad on a trip out of town, while her friends are excited about a summer camp.
Well, Gorgeous' dad surprises her by introducing her to his fiancé / her new mother, Ryoko. Gorgeous is not happy and decides to visit an aunt (her mother's sister) who lives in the family homestead way out in the middle of nowhere. When her friends' plan to go to summer camp falls through she invites them to join her.
The rest of the film is about Gorgeous and her friends, Fantasy, Kung-Fu, Mac, Prof, Melody, and Sweet, as they are terrorized by the House.
Random Notes:
As you may have guessed, the girls all go by nicknames that describe how they stand out in their group. Melody plays music, Kung-Fu knows how to fight, Prof is bookish, etc ...
The house in question struck me a bit like Pee Wee's Playhouse on acid ... with gore!
Surreal doesn't even begin to describe most of what happens, but the high-point for me was when the piano eats one of the girls (guess who).
The visual style of the film is all over the place. It seems that the director was determined to use every visual option available to him. Zoom in and out! Cross-fade! Color overlay! Stock backdrops for the sky and landscape! Sloppy green screen special effects! Twinkles! Speed up! Slow down! Random audio overlays! Stop-motion! These effects seem to come out of nowhere for no reason and that's part of the charm of the movie.
The Criterion Blu-ray release also included the director's short art-film, "Emotion". The story (if you can call it that) involves a girl that was raised by The Sea who had a longing to go Far Away. The director was influenced by the French filmmaking of the time, so you'll encounter the French language as well as Japanese and English.
There's an animated sequence involving a heterosexual S&M relationship with a female submissive that gets out of hand, the mention of an intergenerational and incestuous lesbian relationship, a vampire-ish man stalking around in a cape that drinks blood through a straw, and much more of the director's trademark let's-use-every-visual-option-at-our-disposal style. It's trippy and well worth watching.
Recommended!
"House" is primarily the story of teenage schoolgirl Gorgeous. Summer break is approaching, and she and her six girlfriends are excited about their vacations. Gorgeous is supposed to spend time with her widowed dad on a trip out of town, while her friends are excited about a summer camp.
Well, Gorgeous' dad surprises her by introducing her to his fiancé / her new mother, Ryoko. Gorgeous is not happy and decides to visit an aunt (her mother's sister) who lives in the family homestead way out in the middle of nowhere. When her friends' plan to go to summer camp falls through she invites them to join her.
The rest of the film is about Gorgeous and her friends, Fantasy, Kung-Fu, Mac, Prof, Melody, and Sweet, as they are terrorized by the House.
Random Notes:
As you may have guessed, the girls all go by nicknames that describe how they stand out in their group. Melody plays music, Kung-Fu knows how to fight, Prof is bookish, etc ...
The house in question struck me a bit like Pee Wee's Playhouse on acid ... with gore!
Surreal doesn't even begin to describe most of what happens, but the high-point for me was when the piano eats one of the girls (guess who).
The visual style of the film is all over the place. It seems that the director was determined to use every visual option available to him. Zoom in and out! Cross-fade! Color overlay! Stock backdrops for the sky and landscape! Sloppy green screen special effects! Twinkles! Speed up! Slow down! Random audio overlays! Stop-motion! These effects seem to come out of nowhere for no reason and that's part of the charm of the movie.
The Criterion Blu-ray release also included the director's short art-film, "Emotion". The story (if you can call it that) involves a girl that was raised by The Sea who had a longing to go Far Away. The director was influenced by the French filmmaking of the time, so you'll encounter the French language as well as Japanese and English.
There's an animated sequence involving a heterosexual S&M relationship with a female submissive that gets out of hand, the mention of an intergenerational and incestuous lesbian relationship, a vampire-ish man stalking around in a cape that drinks blood through a straw, and much more of the director's trademark let's-use-every-visual-option-at-our-disposal style. It's trippy and well worth watching.
Recommended!