House (1977)

• Year: 1977
• Released: 01 Sep 1977
• Country: Japan
• Adwords: 1 nomination
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076162/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/house
• Metacritics: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/house
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: Japanese
• MPA Rating: Not Rated
• Genre: Comedy, Horror
• Runtime: 88 min
• Writer: Chiho Katsura, Chigumi Ôbayashi
• Director: Nobuhiko Ôbayashi
• Cast: Kimiko Ikegami, Miki Jinbo, Kumiko Ohba
• Keywords: death, ghost, japan, teenage girl, haunted house,

	7.3/10
	20% – Critics

House Storyline

Oshare (Gorgeous) is excited about spending summer vacation with her father, until she finds out that his beautiful, freakishly serene girlfriend Ryouko would be going as well. Oshare decides she will be going to her aunt’s house in the country instead. She brings with her her friends from school – Fanta (who likes to take pictures, and daydreams a lot), KunFuu (who has very good reflexes), Gari/Prof (who is a major nerd), Sweet (who likes to clean), Mac (who eats a lot), and Melody (a musician). However, the girls are unaware that the house is actually haunted. When they arrive at the house, crazy events take place and the girls disappear one by one while slowly discovering the secret behind all the madness.

House Play trailer

House Photos

House Torrents Download

House Subtitles Download

House Movie Reviews

war’s effects manifest in horror-fantasy

It’s easy to interpret Nobuhiko Obayashi’s “Hausu” as a bizarre horror-fantasy. Let’s face it: a bunch of teenage girls who go to a house that swallows each of them, how could anyone take that seriously? It sounds more like something that should star Bruce Campbell.

Ah, but when you watch the interview with the director on the Criterion release, that’s where it changes. You see, it’s understood that the aunt died while waiting for her fiancé to return from WWII, so her spirit has stayed in the house and eats girls who enter. But the director has a more personal connection. He is from Hiroshima and survived the bombing, but he lost friends in the bombing. In that respect, the movie is an indictment of war and war’s lasting effects.

Of course, even if you don’t realize that, the movie is still a fun romp. It’s got some of the weirdest sequences imaginable. The sort of movie that you have to see to believe, and I have no doubt that you’ll enjoy it.

Great debut movie for director Nobuhiko Obayashi

This movie is the directing debut for (the great) Nobuhiko Obayashi. He has directed commercials for television before he got into directing movies. This experience helped Obayashi learn many special effects used in TV commercials. It shows in this movie as almost every scene contains some sort of special visual effects.

In the mid ’70s Toho studio was looking for fresh ideas for movies that would be a box office success. They’ve decided to use the then relative unknown Nobuhiko Obayashi to direct a movie with fresh new approach. Many of Toho’s experienced staff expressed concerns over this because Obayashi never had experience of being an assistant director. Project manager for this movie then said “Us experienced directors aren’t coming up with hit movies, so experience is not the criteria for making a successful movie. Lets allow this young director to make a movie to see if he knows more about what the audience really wants.”

The original plot of this movie was written by the then 13 year old daughter of Obayashi himself.

The movie has a strange career as it was rediscovered by an Asian movie affectionado who had connections with Janus films (which is the parent company of the Criterion Collection) after being released in Japan over 30 years ago. It then made limited showings in theaters around the U.S.. Very unusual as not too many film gets a roadshow in another country 30 years after it was made.

Seven girls makes a plan to go on a vacation at one of the girl’s aunts house in the country side. They don’t suspect that the aunt died long time ago, and what inhabits the house is the apparition of the aunt that can remain young only by devouring the bodies of others.

The movie is a horror comedy with bit of erotic exploitation starring many actors who were teen idols at the time. When it was first released, Miki Jinbo who played the role of Kung Fu gathered the most votes by the young male audiences, as she kicked her way around the house wearing skimpy tank top and shorts.

This movie is very original in almost every way. Visuals are unusual as expressed earlier that Obayashi used many of the special effects he’s learned while making TV commercials. Color is also very surreal as is the acting, but the movie has strange charm all its own, and not boring to watch. You can almost say that this is an artistic film that’s also geared to entertain the audience.

In the end Toho studio got just what it was hoping to achieve – a box office smash hit. This movie also established the career of Obayashi as a bankable director. Obayashi went on to direct many other successful movies including the original “Girl who leaped through time”.

An Ingeniously Bizarre Fairy Tale – Easily one of The Weirdest Flicks Ever made

Wow! Noribuki Obayashi’s “Hausu” aka. “House” of 1977 is easily one of the weirdest films I ever saw and I generally generally am a fan of the bizarre. A Horror-fan and avid lover of Japanese cinema, especially from the 70s, I had high expectations for this film, and I was not disappointed, even though the film was totally different than what I had expected. Having read no reviews of the film before seeing it, I expected a pure Horror film, but it turned out to be an incomparably bizarre and experimental Horror-parody, with a delightfully macabre and grotesque humor rather than scares. The film already starts out extremely strange (in an awesome manner), and it gradually gets weirder and weirder as it goes on.

The film starts off with a bunch of teenage high-school girls, all of whom have certain distinctive characteristics that are mentioned in their nicknames, who travel to the countryside to visit the aunt of one of the girls. I don’t want to spoil even a tiny bit of the plot of this unique Horror-parody, and therefore won’t carry with a plot description, but I can assure that fans of surrealism and weird cinema will be delighted. While “Hausu” is not a film I would recommend to everyone, this is an absolute must-see to all my fellow fans of Japanese film, the Horror-genre and bizarre art-house cinema. Director Obayashi uses a bizarre of editing imaginable, with grotesque cutting, totally insane effects. Sometimes the editing equals that of a (bizarre) video-clip, only to jump to an entirely different style. Yet all this strangeness never draws the viewer away from the story, which is itself just as surreal as the film’s style. Overall “Hausu” can be described as a unique and bizarre fairy tale with a grotesque and ingenious, often macabre and always unique sense of humor. There are moments in this film at which the viewer will just stare at the screen not knowing what to think, and scenes at which one is barely able to breathe in laughter, and every second of the film is very strange. Very delightfully strange that is, as “Hausu” is a bizarre gem that must not be missed by lovers of the surreal. Mainstream audiences might not know what to think of this, but every fan of a more unique form of cinema should give this a try. Surreal, exceptional, and one of a kind!