House (1977)
HORROR-THON 2022 • HOUSE PARTY
10/10
DIRECTOR: Nobuhiko Obayashi
STARRING: Kimiko Ikegami, Miki Jinbo, Kumiko Ôba
RELEASED: 1977
RUNTIME: 1 hour, 28 minutes
WATCH ON: HBO Max, Tubi, Plex, Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, Criterion Channel
SCARE LEVEL: Low. Weirdness is off the charts.
DEMONIC HOUSE CAT: Yes, please.
A girl gets eaten by a piano. Her fingers keep playing after she’s gone. The cat is laughing. This isn’t even the weirdest scene in the movie.
A schoolgirl named Gorgeous is upset that her dad is remarrying, so she skips the family trip. Instead, she takes six friends to her aunt’s house in the countryside for a summer vacation. The friends all have nicknames that tell you exactly who they are: Fantasy dreams, Prof is the smart one, Kung Fu does kung fu, Melody plays piano, Mac eats, and Sweet is sweet.
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The aunt is very welcoming. Her white cat, Blanche, is extremely fluffy. And the house, well the house is hungry, specifically for teenage girls. One by one, the house eats the friends: a well, a futon, the piano and a grandfather clock.
MY HUMBLE OPINION
This is a real head trip. Nobuhiko Obayashi came from TV commercials and shot this like he was given every effect at once. There are painted backdrops, animation, a floating severed head, cartoon sound effects, and a flying watermelon. None of it is realistic, and that’s the point.
It’s brilliant, absurd, and very funny, sometimes all in one scene. And Blanche, the demonic house cat, steals every scene she is in. A sweet little white Persian with glowing eyes, holding court over the chaos.
My first reaction was that this movie is most definitely the dream of a 12-year-old. I was close. Obayashi built the story around ideas from his young daughter, who apparently had a lot of thoughts about scary pianos and hungry houses. You can tell. It has the kid-logic nightmare energy from start to finish.
Watch it once, and you’ll want everyone you know to see it. I will watch this one any day of the week.
FUN FACT FOR YOUR NEXT DINNER PARTY
House achieved unexpected commercial and critical success in Japan, but the movie was rarely seen in the United States until around 2009. Once the film appeared in the Criterion Collection, American audiences wanted to see more screenings of it, establishing it as a cult classic.