Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: House (1977)

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss one of the towering monoliths of Japanese weird cinema: Nobuhiko Obayashi’s “House” AKA “Hausu.” (originally published 5/17/2024)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
And this is Joe McCormick. And today we're bringing you
an older episode of Weird House Cinema. This was our
feature on the nineteen seventy seven horror film House. Oh boy,
what a good time this was.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Oh this is one of the towering giants of weird Cinema.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
I don't think there's anything else to say. Let's listen
to House.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Hey you, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
My name is Rob Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Today on Weird House Cinema, we're tackling what might be
by many measures, I think by my measure, the ultimate
Haunted house movie. In another Haunted House property, nineteen seventy
one's Hell House, a novel by Richard Mavison. This was
later made into the Legend of Hell House in seventy three.
There's a description of the Belasco House, this haunted house

(01:11):
that's key to the plot, and it's described as quote
the mount everest of haunted houses due to the intense
sanity warping powers that it holds over anyone who attempts
to make it through the night there to complete the journey. Now,
there are various great haunted House films out there, and
I feel like the best of them excel in connecting

(01:33):
with something very ancient in the human psyche, right, the
essence of the damned place, a location that is so
just fundamentally physically or spiritually polluted that to venture into it,
to be there, to take place there, is to just
absolutely warp your identity and connection to reality. So there
are haunted House movies that tackle this in a very
serious fashion, and you might argue that they tackle it

(01:55):
more seriously than the movie we're talking about here today,
nineteen seventy seven's House. But when the chips are down
and House is firing on all cylinders, I think it
absolutely delivers on all the goods. It absolutely checks off
all the boxes. For my money. Right now, I'm going
to say that House is the Mount Everest of Haunted
house movies.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
It's got to be up there, and like Mount Everest,
it may cause a kind of altitude sickness, maybe a
sense of dizziness, a visions of other figures climbing up
the mountain with you that may or may not be there.
It is a weird, baffling, life changing experience. House is
one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen, but that's

(02:37):
not an observation unique to me. It is widely regarded
as like one of the great weird movies of all time,
And yeah, I think it also qualifies in the subgenre
of weirdest and most interesting haunted house movies. Though it's
different than than a lot of haunted house movies because
a lot of haunted house movies, like you're pointing out,

(02:58):
are about a house that's been pollute, a house that
has been sort of like made into a place of
evil because of something evil that happened there, you know,
like a person, an evil person does something wicked inside
the house, and then that evil infects the house and

(03:18):
so forth. But the difference I would point out is
that the evil in those cases seems to be spurred
by human wrongdoing, and in House nineteen seventy seven, I
don't know if I'd say that's the case. Instead, it's
hard to say where the evil comes from. The person

(03:38):
who occupies the evil. Haunted House doesn't seem to have
initially been an evil or bad person, but someone who
suffers a kind of unfortunate fate and is transformed by
forces unnamed into a type of monster. And in that transformation,
it's like the house comes with her, you know, like

(03:58):
she in the house urge into one being that is
fully just an expression of monstrousness and magical predation.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
It's like tragedy plus time equals house. That's like, you know,
like you're saying, she's not an evil person, and she had,
she went through a great tragedy, but it's like over
time that is like spiritually fermented into this new shape,
and that shape is is hungry and in many respects evil.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Maybe it's a tragedy plus time plus cat equals house
because the cat? What is the role of the cat
in this movie? Could we last October? Did an episode
or a series of episodes about monster cats of Japan
that was October, wasn't it?

Speaker 1 (04:43):
I believe it was?

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yes, Yeah, like the Bakin echo and stuff. There there
are a number of different sort of cat ghosts or
evil cat monster entities cat yo kai in Japanese lore,
and we talked about a few of them, shape shifting cats,
cats that the cats that might lurk out in the
wilderness and be some kind of monster. I don't know

(05:05):
if the cat in this movie is exactly supposed to
be supposed to correspond to one of these cat monster archetypes,
but what a presence it is. It feels kind of
like maybe all of the evil in the movie comes
from the cat. And it's not clear where the cat
comes from.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, the cat is somehow key to it is like
a nexus point or a physical incarnation. It's uncertain. I
mean as as I feel, like, you know, scary supernatural
things should be, they're difficult for us mortals to fathom.
But we Yeah, we have this fabulous cat at the
center of everything here. And I think it also this

(05:44):
is what serves to make House not only a great
haunted house movie, but also a great cat movie. Like
all the cat stuff is completely on point and very cute,
very cute cat, very cute flu fere.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
This movie got me thinking about what it what it
is meant to say about a character when a character
often has a cat in their lap. So this is
the thing. Actually I mostly associate with villains in films
like Blowfeld and the James Bond movies. Is this villain
who In the early James Bond movies, I think you
don't even ever see his face. You just see the

(06:17):
lower half of his body. He's a man who's presiding
over this evil, shadowy criminal empire known as Specter, and
he has all these henchmen going out and doing things
for him. But when you see the lower half of
his body, he has a fluffy, very flufy white cat
in his lap and he pets the cat while you know,
demanding updates from his assassins. And then later in the

(06:39):
James Bond movies, you do actually see the face of
blofeld So. And he's played by various different actors, but
in one movie, for example, he's played by Donald Pleasance.
And so you know we were sharing before coming in here,
like images of Donald Pleasants holding a white cat, much
like blanch the cat in house. What does the cat mean?
Why is the cat in the villain's lap, and what

(07:00):
what associations are we supposed to make from seeing that image?

Speaker 1 (07:04):
I mean, in the case of Blowfeld, I guess kind
of you know, it's the idea of like a regal
sort of lap creature, but also maybe a commentary on
the nature of the cat. You know, the cat has
its own air about it. Though it's weird that owning
the cat is villainous in these Bond movies, and yet

(07:24):
James Bond kicks a cat. I would think that that
is me and that's the And also like the forgot
was this? I forget which one this was? This may
be the one that actually takes place in Japan part
in the time anyway, but there's a whole bit where
it's like, oh, Blowfeld has a double, which one is
a real Blowfeld? Better kick the cat to find out
which master it scurries to, And it's like, I don't

(07:47):
even know if that would work, Like is that really
going to be the cat's number one? Moved like to
go back to a safe lap. I think the cat
may just go hide under something.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
I think there is something to be signaled about a
villain with the cat that it makes them seem more
threatening and sinister, the fact that they are ordering up
murder of humans at the same time that they're being
very gentle and stroking a cat. You know, It's like
that contrast of of delicate gentleness and friendliness with one

(08:18):
creature but cruelty to another.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
Yeah, I think that I think that probably sums it up.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Now. We've talked about House as a as a widely
reputed ultimate weird movie. We've talked about it as the
mount Everest of haunted house movies. But there's another thing
that we haven't really mentioned about it yet, which I
think is key to understanding what it is, which is
the childlike logic that operates in House. It is different

(08:45):
from a lot of horror movies. And I somehow connect
this to the fact that, say, the House doesn't have
a standard backstory of like human evil drawing in demons
and wicked spirits. Instead, it feels like the the evil
that infects the house just sort of totally unexplainable and random,
something that comes in and strikes and infects the house

(09:06):
and the occupant of the house from outside.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
That seems much more in line with the way that
children imagine evil spirits. You know, you don't need that
like backstory of it being caused by someone's human wicked choices. Instead,
it's just it comes out of nowhere and it's scary
and it doesn't even need to be explained.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
Yeah, this is a very important aspect of House, and
we're going to be talking about Nubuhiko Obayashi, the director,
who is also an actor in it and a producer
and director of special effects. But famously this like the
key aspects of this film were inspired by conversations he

(09:49):
had with his daughter, who I believe was ten at
the age, Chigumi Obayashi, where he would come to her
and like, well, what what what do you find scary?

Speaker 2 (09:58):
What?

Speaker 1 (09:58):
Tell me what fry? What would be I think he
also said like, hey, if daddy were to make a movie,
what kind of things would you want to be in it?
And so she came up with these various ideas that
were all based on just this child's eye view of
the world, like, for instance, so one particular thing. We'll
probably run through most of them. But there's a scary

(10:19):
clock in the movie, and according to her on the
Criterion collection disc of this film, there's an interview with
her and her father from several years back, and she
says that there was this there was this point where
they were staying at this house in the country, you know,
a family house, and there was a big clock in

(10:40):
the hallway and she would have to cross by it
in the night in order to go to the bathroom
and she was frightened by the clock, you know. And
so it's the kind of thing like humans are generally
not frightened by big, dusty clocks and houses, but children
can be. And so the beauty of this film, One
of the beautiful things about this film is that he

(11:00):
took these ideas from his daughter and then you know,
added a little more traditional ghost story structure to it
and handed it off to the screenwriter. But yet it
still retains these very childlike views of fear and threat
and then sort of translates them to a certain extent
into a wider understanding for you know, any viewer, they

(11:24):
may watch it. You don't have to be a child
to feel the fear of this clock.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
There is a young person's creativity in the way some
of the scary images in the movie are conjured, so
like making connections that an adult might not normally make,
but then also a kind of a young person's fearlessness
in deciding what is scary. So there is a scene
in the movie where a character is fatally attacked by

(11:51):
pillows and mattresses that fall from the ceiling. I think
that is an image that if an adult were to
come up with it, they might think, no, that's silly,
that's not scary. That doesn't work. It just doesn't fit
the language of what is a threat in horror movies.
But I think I read this idea also came from
from the director's daughter. You know, she was afraid of

(12:11):
like being attacked by mattresses from the sky, and in
the movie it they just they just do it. That's
a scene.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think she mentioned in the interview
that it came from or maybe your father did that.
It came in part from going out to the countryside
and having to sleep on futons and then fold them
up during the day, and as a child, like the
futon is so big and it's kind of heavy, and
it's kind of falling on you, so it kind of
feeds into this idea.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
I never would have thought of that, but yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yeah, I mean that's that's really the beauty of it. Like,
these are all things that grown ups would not have
thought of. They come from the mind of children, and
the child's mind is capable of such wonders and such horrors.
You know that. It's one of the joys of parenthood
is getting to to be on the receiving end of

(13:02):
so many wild and creative ideas that they just come
up with on their own, you know, because they have
to this innate creativity.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Yeah, to see to see the wild mental leaps and
the strange connections that a young brain makes that you
just you're seeing into something that your brain may once
have been capable of but is no longer like the
pruning has cut you off from from that kind of
connection across mental distance.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
So this, again, this is a huge part of the film.
We'll keep coming back to this as we discuss the
making of the film and also get into the plot.
But yeah, I'm glad that we're finally covering House. It's
a film that has been on the Weird House Cinema
list for I mean really since the beginning. I mean
that's just if when you think of weird films and

(13:49):
you get into listings of weird films, it's always up there.
There's a poster or or a recreation of the poster
for this film in the the front window of Videodrome,
the movie rental place here in Atlanta. So you know,
it's always been on the list, and today we're finally
talking about it. I guess I'm gonna stick with the

(14:10):
Mount everest of Hunted House Films for my elevator pitch.
Do you have any anything to add to that?

Speaker 2 (14:14):
Joe Worst Summer vacation ever. Seven high school friends go
out for a leisurely visit to a countryside manor somewhere
in Japan and get eaten by various household appliances.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
All right, well, let's go ahead and listen to at
least part of the trailer audio here. I'm not sure
it necessarily makes sense to listen to the whole thing,
but we definitely want to get just a little taste
of that music, a little taste, especially of the title.
So let's have a listen. See that squin I see

(15:13):
in your Rise where tomorrow as Hi, my heart as
a bell, ringing blow at the touch of the leans
down the.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
Rainbow, come slide with loud row, skateball and as they
got clo.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
Cocaaia cosa. Oh all right now, if you want to

(16:07):
run out and watch House before we get into any
further discussion here, well, lucky for you, House is widely
available in pretty much any format you might desire here
in the States. You can currently stream it on Max
unless I think it's still there It's also available on
Blu Ray and DVD from the Criterion Collection. And that's
how I watched it. I rented it from Videodrome and

(16:29):
watched it on Blu Ray. And I'll refer back to
some of the special features as we perceive. All Right, Well,
let's get into the people who made this film, starting
once more at the top with Nuwahiko Obayashi again director.

(16:50):
He also plays husband in this producer, director of special effects.
He lived nineteen thirty eight through twenty twenty. He was
a Japanese director, screenwriter, and editor known for his work
in experimental cinema of the nineteen sixties TV commercials, reportedly
by the thousands and often involving the sort of Western

(17:10):
celebrity appearances that were parodied in two thousand and threes
lost in translation.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
Okay, so where you might have like a celebrity famous
in English language movies and TV come in and kind
of deliver some strange, out of context lines for a
soda commercial in Japan or something exactly.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
And if you look up at images of him, you'll
find a lot of old images of him, like standing
around with various celebrities from the West. Now, this film
nineteen seventy Seven's House was his first feature film and
intentionally off kilter, highly weird, experimental horror comedy. I guess
you might call it, but you can describe it many
other ways as well. Initially didn't land all that well

(17:55):
with especially the Japanese critics and in the industry, but
it's going developed a cult following in Japan and abroad,
and today it's celebrated as just a complete cinematic freak
out and stands tall amid the pantheon of global psychatronics cinema.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
As long as you're sticking to coherent narrative films, it
is one of the weirdest ever made.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
Yeah, and I do want to stress that it. Yeah,
it does have a plot that you can follow. It's
not one of these You can definitely describe it as
art house to a certain extent. Ty West the horror director,
has a little bit on the Criterion collection disc where
he talks about it being an art horror film, which
he says, you see little of these days, in part

(18:40):
because studios want to bring ironically someone in from the
commercial world to direct a very cookie cutter horror film
that kind of matches up with the style of everything
else and doesn't stand out. But you do still see
some art horror films like Slip Through, and there's some
great examples of that for sure, But yeah, this is
a very artistic vision here. Well.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
Yeah, I think horror films are often thought of as
a cash grab, and in many cases they are because
horror films are, for the most part, relatively cheap to make,
and they tend to gross a lot more than their budgets.
But you know, something that might be true of a
lot of entries in a genre is of course never
true of all right.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
Right, So again, there's a great interview with Obayashi and
his daughter on the Criterion collection disc and I highly
recommend folks to check that out. But because it also
has a lot of interesting stills, behind the scenes photos
and so forth, And they run through several aspects of
the making of and the reception of the film, and
I just want to go through a few things that
really stood out to me and I think are important

(19:41):
for understanding how this film came together and then how
it was interpreted. So he says that at the time,
so we would be dealing with I think at the time,
like mid seventies Japan. He said that cinema was pretty
much in decline, in that young people did not go
to them movies. TV was what was really in and

(20:03):
even his daughter, who would apparently go with him to
the theater all the time, would comment that Japanese films
were boring, Like when he asked her what kind of
film Shouldaddy make, she would be like, Oh, don't make
a movie, Daddy, Japanese films are boring. So a lot
of what he's doing is definitely trying to create something different,
something new.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
Bummer shut down by your child.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
But he says that a lot of aspiring filmmakers at
the time, like himself, didn't want to do commercials, but
he thought differently. He seems to have thought differently about
a lot of things. He points out that the big
thing is there was money in commercials, and the key
here is not that you would make a lot of money,
and I think that may have also been true, but
more to the point, you could actually work with a budget.

(20:46):
So again, like the Japanese cinematic world, according to him,
was sort of shrinking at the time. You couldn't get
these big budgets, but you could go into doing these
commercials and there was money there. He says that ultimately
the content might be meaningless, but you could experiment, you
could chase the visual expression of the thing.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
Yeah, and you see a lot of directors who eventually
end up making movies in all cultures. It's an American
cinema two that you know, they start in commercials and
also music videos. That used to be a big thing
because it was a place to just like work on techniques.
You know, whatever the actual content is, you're just experimenting
with ways of showing things and learning the craft that way. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
Yeah, He speaks in the interview of turning experimentation into expression,
and that really seems to have been a big part
of his IMO at the time. Certainly in the production
of House, which didn't even have any storyboards. They intentionally
they did not do storyboards for it. They would just
try things out and just like throw everything against the

(21:50):
wall and see what they could get. I believe it's
Tie West and the extra that points out that, like
they use just basically every in camera technique imaginable film.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
That makes sense because I would say that the visual
style of the finished product is incredibly chaotic. There are
just tons of different techniques on display, sometimes seemingly at random.
I want to talk about this later when we get
into discussing the plot, the sometimes the violation of cinematic
norms that takes place throughout the movie, but also in

(22:24):
terms of special effects, in terms of editing techniques, like
it all just is just crazy different visual stuff happening
all the time that does not feel part of an
attempt to select a particular visual texture that like a
lot of films do, Like they just have totally different
looking effects and styles happening back to back.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah. He mentions like having great admiration for filmmakers like Krosawa,
but then also wondering what would irritate Carrossow, pursuing that
line of thinking, that's great. So anyway, Toho Studios famously
was inspired by Jaws for this one. This is often
just thrown out there. It's like this was this was

(23:05):
an attempt to catch it on Jows. Well sort of
kind of, at least from Toho's position. Established studio again
realizes they need to they need to do something fresh,
and they look over and they say, oh, well, this
Steven Spielberg guy just made like this enormously successful shark movie,
huge hit from the mind of a young emerging talent.
Let's get one of those young emerging talents and get
them to make us a Jaws.

Speaker 2 (23:28):
And of course, Jaws did lead to numerous ripoffs and
copycats in the American market and all around the world.
I mean, you can find the Italian Jaws ripoffs, American
Jaws ripoffs, they're they're popping off all over the place.
Jaws made a lot of money, and much like when
Star Wars made a lot of money, it spawned an
endless series of copycats. So did Jaws. So you would
get Jaws with a bear Jaws. Other people would just

(23:49):
do shark you know, shark copycat movies, Jaws with a
killer whale. Uh, there are so many of these.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
Yeah, And Obiasci points out that that's how the grown
up mind works, especially like the corporate mind is. Like
shark attack films are in, let's do a bear attack.
Let's do it, you know whatever, animal attack. And that's
the reason he turned to his ten year old daughter
for this fresh inspiration, like what what does she want
me to make a movie about? And so she gives
him this list of ideas. He adds this, you know,

(24:17):
basic ghost story premise because he says, you can't have
the house eating people for no reason. It's got to
be a story reason. And then he hands this off
to the screenwriter and they have a script.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
In a way, it's so beautiful just to imagine taking
all of your, like your kid's weirdest, most messed up
ideas and just saying that's gonna it's in the movie.
In the style of the Key and Peel sketch for
Gremlins too, It's just very much it's in the movie.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
Yeah. So it's impressive that the screenplay was green lit
by Toho. They're like, all right, let's do it. But
there was still apparently a long run up to actually
shooting the movie. I think it was like a couple
of years. And so during this time they produced and
sold the soundtrack, They produced and sold a novelation, there
was a radio play of it. I was really surprised

(25:03):
by all of this. I'm often not cute into all
of the gears of getting you know, the film from
the screenplay stage to the production and release stage, but
you know, it sounds like Obyashi put a lot of
effort in just like all right, let's do all these things.
Sort of to ensure that Toho keeps it greenlit and
and knows that it's coming. He talks about like printing

(25:25):
up business cards with the movie poster on it and
handing them out and saying Toho is making this movie,
TOAs making this movie, and so forth. And I also
have to to say that, like in the interview and
the various photos, it's like it's very clear that Obyashi
was a very flashy, very creative, you know again it's
experimental and establishment bucking young director, but also one who

(25:48):
seemed to be very personable with cast and crew, to
the point that he has shares this story about how
the lighting team ends up really coming around to him
because he addressed them by their names, and they this
had never happened before in the production of Toho films.
They were just they were never addressed by name, and like,
so he brought an entirely different vibe to the production.

(26:09):
And he also says that he made a point of
wearing a different outfit every day in order to sort
of keep the vibe up. So there are all these
interesting photos of him in various flashy outfits. He's often
got sunglasses on, very hip hoocking dude.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
I think I read something about how in order to
get people in the feeling of a scene in the movie,
he would like play music while they were shooting.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
Yeah. Yeah, it would kind of like, I think, dance
with everyone, that sort of thing. Now. Obyashi was born
in Hiroshima, and all of his childhood friends, he says,
died as a result of the bombing, and he also
makes a point of of, you know, pointing out that
he incorporates elements of this into this picture as well
into the anti war themes and other movies that he

(26:55):
would go on to direct. So he speaks of the
in this interview, he talked about the youth in this film.
The Seven Girls, as we'll get into that are a key.
So he was about forty at the time, and he
talks about like the young people being too young to
really know what war is and as a result to
fully appreciate the joy of peace. And I thought this

(27:17):
was really interesting. I have to hear this after watching
the film, because yeah, you think about the tension in
this movie that's president most harror movies, like the space
between and leading up to the horrible things, and there
is like this unnatural, almost sickeningly sweet aspect to the sweetness,

(27:38):
like it's artificial sweetener leading up to those moments that
you know were coming. And it absolutely works in house
like it like I felt myself, you know, you know,
getting chill bumps because I knew something terrible was going
to happen, which I have to say wasn't what I
quite expected from the movie. Like I was expecting you know,
psychotronic weirdness and craziness and and all that, and I

(28:01):
didn't really expect the scary parts to be scary or
to feel that the tension leading.

Speaker 2 (28:06):
Up to them. Yeah, well, there is a I would
say this movie is almost always in some ways trying
to subvert its own tone. So there are scenes that
are very ominous in what's happening, or they're conveying dark
or sad or scary information. And a lot of these
scenes will have things about like the sights and sounds

(28:29):
of the scene that are lighthearted and funny, like it'll
play jolly, sort of happy music while something really sad
or scary is happening. And then it'll do the opposite too,
something very light hearted is happening on screen, but there
will be things about it that make it very ominous
and unsettling.

Speaker 1 (28:48):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, as mentioned earlier, critics hated it
at the time, many didn't even review it, and those
that did often were just very savage about it all.
But is he stressed in the interview, young people loved it.
He says like, like ten through thirteen were the ages
of people that were going out and seeing this movie.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
And too young for this movie. I don't know, I
don't know.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
We had an off mike discussion like when is the
appropriate age to see House? And I I haven't no answers,
but hard to say ten to thirteen. I guess at
least in the late seventies in Japan. But anyway, Yeah,
young people loved it, made it a success in a way,
kind of to the disappointment of the studio establishment. And

(29:31):
then ultimately some of the people who loved it were
future filmmakers. The people who loved it were future film critics,
and so it would eventually be held up as one
of the great Japanese horror movies and ultimately, like we've
been saying, one of the great weird films of global cinema. So, Obiyoshi,
you've followed up House with a long filmography that ultimately

(29:53):
broadened his mainstream appeal, including several less nutty coming of
age movies, but he didn't abandon horror. His subsequent movies
also include nineteen eighty two's Cute Devil, nineteen eighty three's
Legend of the Cat Monster, nineteen eighty sevens The Forbidden Classroom,
and nineteen eighty eight's The Discarnates. The same year as House,

(30:14):
in seventy seventy, also made The Visitor in the Eye.
This was a live action manga adaptation, and his twenty
seventeen anti war film Hanagatami was actually forty years in
the making. He was actually working on the script for
that film with the screenwriter Katsura right before House. His
last film was twenty nineteen's Labyrinth of Cinema, and again.

(30:36):
He died in twenty twenty. Now his daughter is Chigumi Ogashi.
She actually appears in the movie. She's the shoe store girl.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
Oh yeah, yeah. There's a scene outside like a cobbler's shop,
shoemaker shop, and there is an old man and the
girl like hammering on some shoe soles. I think, I
think this is where mister Togo, the teacher in the
movie it's a bucket stuck on his butt and has
to go to the hospital.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
Yeah, in one of the goof here, just like Monty
python S sequences that occur in the film. Yeah, it's
just complete nuttiness, complete slapstick Charlie Chaplin esque and then
some I guess ye, but yeah, keep a lookout for her.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
And bucket butt scene is Yeah, it's powerful.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
Almost as good as the banana scene. Later on, we'll
get to that, okay, and then the screenplay proper I
mentioned Katsura. This is Chiho Katsura, who lived nineteen twenty
nine through twenty twenty so. He was a Japanese screenwriter, novelist, translator,
and film critic whose work, based on what I could
see of his available filmography, included a great deal of

(31:45):
Japanese pink he erotic films, but he also worked in
other genres, including at least a couple of family films.
He worked with Obashi on several mainstream films, including again
twenty seventeen's Hanaga Tommy. All right, but now we should
mentioned that really on the acting front, we have seven
core characters. These are the seven girls. Their names are

(32:09):
gorgeous kung Fu Fantasy prof or Professor Mac, which is
short for stomach because she likes food.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
Oh I didn't, I didn't get Mac.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
It took a while for me to put that together. Okay, Mac, Melody,
and sweet, and they are all exactly what their names imply.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
Right, So they're named after their trades. So Gorgeous is
supposed to be beautiful. Kung Fu is the jock of
the group. She can like she can do sports and
kung fu, and she's very decisive and active. Fantasy is
a day dreamer. She's Gorgeous's best friend, and she likes
to I don't know, she's often daydreaming, though most of

(32:51):
the things in the movie where it's like is she daydreaming? No,
they're actually happening. Prof is very smart and logical, and
she often has a book in her hand. Mac is
always hungry to a ridiculous extent, Like I think literally
every single line she says in the movie is like
I am eating now, yummy, you know, I want I

(33:12):
want a watermelon.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
She just has a great metabolism, though I have to stress, like,
it's not like she's overweight or depicted as such, Like
she just is hungry all the time.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
Mac Mac loves food and Melody loves music. She plays
the guitar. I think we see her with a violin case,
and she plays the piano. There's a there's a very
unfortunate piano scene where she gets her fingers bitten off.
And then there is Sweet, who is You might think
Sweet is the one who is into desserts, but no,
that's Mac. Sweet is named so because she is friendly

(33:44):
and like gentle and kind.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
But yeah, still, it's kind of like the Seven Dwarfs, right,
Like their names, yeah tell you who they are for
the most part, except what is Doc. Yeah, I don't
know what Doc Steal is, But yeah, these these gals
names all make sense. And and apparently the number seven
was was important Togo actually because like teams of seven

(34:08):
are or were common in Japan. Now. In casting the
Seven Girls, he says that, like he pretty much depended
on just casting girls that he'd worked with in his
commercial work, so a lot of them were, you know,
models with very limited acting experience. There's basically basically gorgeous.

(34:30):
I think it's the only one who had had an
acting career that was already like emotion, but it was
still still very early. So he but he says, like
this is also an important part of the vibe, Like
the acting from these girls is kind of amateurish and
it doesn't feel polished or professional, but that, like other

(34:51):
aspects of the film are intentional, Like that's part of
the intended fabric of the thing.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
Yeah, there are scenes in the movie that have an
almost sketch comedy kind to feel, if you know what
I mean, Like characters kind of like stumbling over each
other with their lines, talking over other people's lines, and
like sometimes maybe it seems like they're improvising, but it
is clearly part of the fabric of the movie. It's

(35:16):
what they're trying to create. I think somehow it simultaneously
makes the movie funnier but also makes the characters somehow
feel more vulnerable when they are threatened by the evil
magic of the house.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
Yeah. Absolutely, and in a way that maybe comparable to
how sometimes your b horror movies are more terrifying, in
that they feel more like it's documentary footage, you know,
like they're not actors, and it can, Yeah, it can
sort of warp your expectations and experience of watching it.

(35:50):
So anyway, I'm not going to list all seven actresses
who play the seven Girls. A lot of them again
were new to acting and didn't necessary, you know, stick
around for more acting or maybe only have a handful
of credits. But the key exception is the actor who
plays Gorgeous. This is Kamiko Ikigami born nineteen fifty nine,

(36:12):
American born Japanese actress. She'd been acting for a few
years at this point, having made her TV and film
debuts in seventy five. Her subsequent films include nineteen seventy
nine's The Man Who Stole the Sun, The Acclaim, nineteen
eighty three drama Yokiro, for which she was nominated for
a Japanese Academy Award, and nineteen ninety three's Lone Wolf

(36:32):
and Cub The Final Conflict.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
Now, the seven main girls are sort of an ensemble
of heroes, but I'd say there I'd also say there
are sort of two main protagonists of the movie, and
that is Gorgeous, but also her best friend Fantasy.

Speaker 1 (36:46):
Fantasy, Yeah, Fantasy is very key. Komiko Oba born nineteen
sixty plays this role. I'm also a huge fan of
kung Fu. I thought Mickey Jimbo born nineteen sixty was
great in this.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
Ooh, you're so cool.

Speaker 1 (37:02):
Yeah, she is so cool, and she can kick ghosts.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
She can, she does. In fact, she can kick ghosts
even without her head attached to her body.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
But ultimately, yeah, it's an ensemble and all the girls
are great. They're all wonderful. I love their caricatures. It's fabulous. Yeah,
but again, most of them didn't have a lot of
acting experience.

Speaker 2 (37:25):
Really.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
The most established actor in the whole mix is the
actor playing the Auntie who they are visiting. Often credit
is Auntie Carrie House, so I guess her last name
is House anyway, played by Yoko Minamita. She lived nineteen
thirty three through two thousand and nine, a Japanese actress,

(37:47):
best known for this film, at least internationally, but with
credits going back to nineteen fifty two. So she was
a very established actor, but at the time, according to
the director, had trouble getting work in cinema, befitting her
status and her talent. Again, so like cinema seemed to
be down at the time in Japan, so but it
was it was still it was a big deal that

(38:08):
she took this role, not only because she had such
she was an established star, but Also, it was key
that she took the role of an older woman, according
to Obyashi, because in Japanese cinema, certainly at the time
and maybe still this is still the case, there was
no going back for an actor or actress once you
took an older person's role. Apparently it wasn't this wasn't
even necessarily like a double standard for women, as men

(38:32):
also couldn't keep playing younger characters as they aged.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
If like they had taken a role previously in which
it was acknowledged they were playing an older character.

Speaker 1 (38:41):
Yeah, like, once you take that older lady role, it's
like that's it. Now, now you play old ladies. There's
no sort of like midpoint where you can kind of
play both roles. But I have to say, she's tremendous
in this.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
Oh, she's so good. She's so crazy. Yes, there's a
really great scene where she's eating some food I don't
remember what she's she's munching on something and then just
kind of like pops her mouth open and yeah, she
has an eyeball that lives in her mouth and she
kind of looks around at people with it and then
closes her mouth like te.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
Yeah, there are times where she breaks the fourth wall,
and I mean you just kind of expect her to
craw out of the television at you at that point.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
Yeah, she's great.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
And really the only other main actor I would want
to mention is the cat and or cats. We don't
know how many cats played Blanche. You know, often you
have multiple cats in a role. But really, for the
most part, I was just struck by what a great
feline performance this is. Feline actors are notoriously difficult to

(39:42):
work with, and even in the best of cat related movies,
often look like they really would prefer to be out
of the shot and are more interested in like scurrying
off screen.

Speaker 2 (39:53):
We were looking at some of those Blowfeld shots where
the cat looks like it's trying to be somewhere else.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
Yeah, so it's a lot of that obvious working with
cats is difficult, but there are plenty of shots in
this film where yeah, it's like Blanche just looks like
she's completely at ease.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
Here.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Beautiful cat too, absolutely beautiful white cat, very.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
Fluffy love Blanche. Hey, you didn't mention him, but there.
You also had a credit note for the guy who
like operates the Ramen stand.

Speaker 1 (40:19):
Oh yeah, the guy credited as Ramen Trucker is a
Sraman trucker trucker. I yeah, okay, so maybe I don't
know if this is the I'm not sure exactly where
he shows up. But this is a guy named Shiochi
Heroes who lived nineteen Eighteeneen through nineteen ninety. Just a
bit player in a one time stunt man. But he
played King Kong in nineteen sixty three. He's King Kong

(40:41):
versus Godzilla.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
So he's the guy, you don't there's a scene where
mister Togo, he's supposed to be coming to He doesn't
know that they're in trouble, but he they're waiting, the
girls are waiting for him to come to the rescue
at the house. And then we cut away to him
and he's like at a Ramen card eating Ramen. And
this is the guy I guess operating the Ramen cart.
I believe, so yeah, And we see him like stuff

(41:04):
a huge mass of noodles into his mouth and then
grin at the camera with the noodles in his mouth.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
Yes, all right, now come into the music. The music
is important in house. A's say. Kobyashi has the composer credit.
He lived nineteen thirty three through twenty twenty one Japanese

(41:30):
composer in and occasional actor, and in fact he is
in this acting as well as the watermelon salesman.

Speaker 2 (41:36):
That is an insanely weird role to go to somebody
who's not primarily an actor, like that is a weird,
weird role.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
It is very memorable. Apparently it took some convincing to
bring him onto the project, but Obyashi was insistent that look,
a ghost story needs the sweetest, most beautiful music in
order to land properly, and that's why I need you
on the picture. And he was like, okay, okay, I'll
do but I also want to act in it. I'll
do it. But then he was like, you know, you

(42:04):
really need some youthful energy in this as well. So
it's like, I'll work on these themes and all, but
I think you should also bring in this Japanese rock
band so that they can like recreate some of these
themes and breathe additional life into the picture. And that
is where the rock band Godaigo comes into the picture here.

(42:26):
So this is a Japanese rock band, I believe named
after the ninety sixth Emperor of Japan. They were mostly
active in the seventies and eighties, but I think are
still around to varying degrees, like I see him doing
press and all. They were notable for supplying the music
for the Japanese TV series Monkey and This, by the way,
is the Japanese TV adaptation of the Chinese novel of

(42:48):
Journey into the West that I think. Actually, it also
got some air outside of Japan, like I think I've
read that it aired in Australia, for example, so a
lot of people even outside of Japan have fun memory
of this show. And also I believe there is a
scene in the movie where we see the band just
hanging around. There's like five of them, and two of

(43:10):
them I think two of them are Americans.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
Hmmm. Okay, I vaguely recalled this happening, but I don't
remember when in the movie it is. Maybe it'll be
in my plot notes here.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
I think it might be in one of those sort
of Sesame Street esque sequences where we see this kind
of like idealistic town. Okay, yeah, but anyway, these are
the folks involved in the music, and the music in
house is absolutely bonkers, bordering on and seemingly just intentionally
irritating at times even bordering on madness and yeah, and

(43:43):
other times just super sweet or happy, go lucky or
loaded with this kind of resilient seventies hippie vibes, you know,
like the hippie dream is degraded, but the music is
really insistent that it's still going.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
There are like pop rock anthems that feel very strange
for the for what's going on with the scene. There
is a main theme that I assume was composed by
by Kobayashi. I don't know for sure, but the main
house theme that just plays over and over and over
in all these different ways, and that you know, the

(44:17):
dun Dun dundune, it like takes on a kind of
evil magic of its own. It's like the it's like
the music is in some way responsible for the wicked
magic that is taking place on screen.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
Absolutely, and on that note, let's get into the wicked
magic of House.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
I love the animated title at the beginning, so there's like,
of course we get the Toho logo, but then there's
like a blue box on a black background with pink
and green text inside it that says a movie.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
Yeah. Ob Yashi says that this was key because he
had to remind everyone, this is the essence of cinema.
You can't dismiss it. This is a movie.

Speaker 2 (44:57):
I admit it. I admit it.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
It's a movie. But it's kind of telling because I think,
like some of the critics were like, this is not
a movie, this is just a series of commercials, this
is excrement, and so like even from the get go,
he's like, this is a movie. I believe in the vision.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
So after it says a movie, we see some like
little white blobs jiggling like jello in space, and then
the little white jello smudges turn into letters that spell
house in English, and then the letters pop and a
voice comes on and says.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
Howse Obayashi also stresses that giving a Japanese film a
foreign language title, which is the case here, like the
Japanese title for House is house. He says, this simply
was not done at the time. It was really kind
of taboo, and so he had to do it.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
Yeah, I was wondering what the cultural significance is of
using English specifically. Now I know, in say, if it's
an English language movie, you might have a title in
another language that signals some thing For example, I think
of a horror movie called Oculus. You know, that's like
a Latin title that I don't know. Something about using

(46:09):
Latin in your title suggests kind of antiquity, something that
is ancient and maybe kind of foreign and scary. I
don't know what the connotations of using English specifically in
your title would be here. But when I first saw
the movie, I didn't even think about it.

Speaker 1 (46:25):
I didn't either, But yeah, he points out that, yeah,
people hated this idea, so you shouldn't do it. This
isn't done. But like I say, he bucks those trends.
So he's like, yeah, I'm gonna call it house, but
we're not done with the credit sequence. Credit sequence gets
keeps getting more amazing.

Speaker 2 (46:40):
So yeah, then you've got like the white Jello house.
And then the O in house grows teeth and turns red,
and then a woman screams. Then the teeth turn into
red lipstick lips, and then the lipstick lips open to
reveal shark teeth and an eyeball in the back of
the throat, and then a piano starts linking on the soundtrack,

(47:01):
and then the O lips bite down on they bite
down on something and then they spit out a severed
human hand, and then we finally cut to the action,
and what we see at first is a woman filmed
behind what looks like a green filter, and she's wearing
a white sheet like a hooded cloak, and she is
surrounded by what looks like beakers and glass chemistry equipment,

(47:23):
but also candles in ornate holders, so it's a very
weird shot. And then in a reverse shot, we see
a girl in school uniform taking her photo. She gives
a thumbs up, she says okay, and then the girl
in the photo throws off her cloak and walks to
the window of the room and we sort of zoom
out of the frame within the picture to just be

(47:43):
to just see one picture now. And this other girl
is also in a school uniform, so she had like
a costume on. And these are our two of our
main characters, I would say the two most important of
our characters, Gorgeous and Fantasy. Gorgeous was the one who
was posing in the photo with the cloak over head,
and Fantasy was the one taking the photo. And they're
talking about how summer vacation is coming up, and Gorgeous

(48:07):
is going to spend summer vacation at the Fabulous Villa
owned by her fabulous dad, which is in Karuizawa. And
I looked this up because I didn't know. Karuizawa is
a mountain resort town that has long been a popular
summer travel destination in Japan and for international visitors as well.

(48:27):
It seems like it's kind of a beautiful forested mountain
environment that gets like a nice cool weather in the summer,
and like people travel from all over to go there.
We also learned that Gorgeous's father has been away in
Italy and he is supposed to be coming back tomorrow.
A later scene reveals that Gorgeous's father is a film composer,

(48:50):
and that he is a rich and successful film composer,
and he's been away working for somebody named Leoni, who
says that her father's music is better than Morricone's. So
I guess he they they're saying he's working for Sergio Leoni.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
All right, sounds good, I'll buy it.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
I wonder what went into that decision. Why anyway, let's see. Oh,
but we also learned that so Gorgeous is going to
the villa and Fantasy and their other five friends. The
six girls together are going to go to some kind
of camp for the summer. They're going to a camp
by the seaside that is run by the sister of

(49:31):
their teacher, mister Togo. So it's mister Togo's sisters in
kind of complicated yeah, but ultimately unimportant, right because they
don't go there. So Gorgeous and Fantasy are best friends
and they kind of tease each other. Fantasy Gorgeous teases
Fantasy for having a crush on mister Togo. Fantasy teases

(49:51):
Gorgeous for looking like a witch in a horror movie
when she was dressed up in the in the cloak
in the picture. They have a conversation with their Jim teacher,
who is a currently getting married to mister Togo. I think, yes, yes, Okay.
Then there's kind of a montage of Fantasy and Gorgeous
being best friends. There are a lot of montages in
this movie. Now, while this movie represents a lot of

(50:13):
kind of lighthearted scenes of you know, just like teenagers
being friends, there it also represents I think a lot
of the dark side and frustration of being a young person.
And so there's a scene where, like Gorgeous goes home
to meet her father and he's home earlier than expected,
so at first she's very happy to see him. It
seems they have a good relationship, but we learn that Gorgeous'

(50:36):
mom died eight years ago and today her father has
some news he needs to share. A woman enters the
frame at the house in a flowing white dress with
a silk scarf blowing in the breeze, and her presence
feels very almost ethereal. There's kind of a diaphanous quality
to the way she's represented on film whenever we see her.
And this character is named Rioko Emma, and the father

(51:00):
informs Gorgeous that she is going to be your mom now,
and he says several things to kind of try to
soften the news. I guess he's like, she's surprisingly good
at cooking and other things too. You won't have to
mend my shirts anymore. But we can just see that
is like not the kind of appeal that Gorgeous wants
to hear. Gorgeous is hurt by this because it seems

(51:20):
that she hasn't really properly grieved for her mother's death,
even though it was a long time ago, and she's
not ready to accept a new member of the family.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
Yeah. Yeah, this portion of the film reminds me a
little bit of what we'd get later in Jim Henson's Labyrinth,
you know, with Sarah and sort of you know, the
young woman's angst and so forth, and I imagine you
see that in a lot of other movies as well.
But the other thing, the main thing I want to
stress is that I think it's essential to note that
this is, in many respects the most normal part of

(51:51):
the film. Right, this is the real world set up
to the speculative elements to come. So it would be
the most boring part of your average cookie cutter horror movie.
And yet in house it's full of experimentals and varied
film techniques. I especially love the shooting through a kind
of what is it like a glass mirror lattice work?

Speaker 2 (52:11):
Yeah, yeah, very weird. And also I would say it
is strange in how fearless it is in depicting the
intense emotions of a teenager. So like after this interaction
where she has she has this bad reaction to meeting Rioko,
gorgeous goes back to her room, which is crazy, by
the way, it has like purple walls with huge flowers
painted all over them, and she like, you know, she's

(52:33):
got a piano in her room. Uh, and she and
she weirdly like suddenly seems very at peace in her
room despite having just run away from this family news
that caused her so much distress. But then she is
acting kind of like silly and dreamy, and she speaks
to a framed portrait of her mom and goes through
a box of old family photos, remembering like good times

(52:56):
with her father, when he was proud of her, when
she wanted a sports competition. And then she's just shown
drawing x's over her dad's face in the photos and saying,
I'll bully dad. I hate him.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
Wow. Yeah, it's a time of intense emotions.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
But also in the sequence she remembers her mom, she
remembers her in a bridal costume, similar to how she
cloaked herself in the in the Chemistry Lab photo earlier. Actually,
and in she sees sort of a picture of her
mother with her auntie, and she says, I wonder how
auntie is. The auntie in the photo is somehow kind

(53:32):
of animated, even though she's in a still photograph, and
she is holding a white cat.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
Oh, that'll be important.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
Also here we should mention just that the presence of
music in this movie does not feel like no, I
mean all movie. Most movies have music, but the presence
of music in this movie does not feel normal. There's
kind of a constant soundtrack playing running under nearly every
scene that makes everything feel like a monta or a

(54:00):
flashback or something.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
That's a great point. And then there are choices made
later on, like visually stylistically that also give you that feel.
Is this the present? Is this the past? What's going on?

Speaker 2 (54:12):
Yeah? Now, next, at school, we meet our gang of
student heroines, and again they're each named for something about them. Again,
they are gorgeous, her best friend Fantasy, who's always daydreaming.
Prof who wears glasses, is a nerd. She's logical, she
has a book, Melody who's holding a guitar and loves music,
Mac who loves food and is shown with a donut,

(54:34):
Sweet who is very nice and friendly. And Kung Fu,
who is the jock and does martial arts. When we
first meet her, she jumps up and karate chops of
volleyball that is flying toward the group, and everybody says
you're so cool, kung Fu. Also, when we first meet them,
it's just a weird scene. They're like they're in a

(54:54):
school courtyard and there are just bubbles floating through the air. Also,
there is a in the school courtyard with a copy
of the Venus de Milo in the middle of it,
like the armless you know venus just there.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
So they're talking about how they're all about to go
on vacation to the you know, the seaside inn of
mister Togo's sister for ten days, and they're bummed because
Gorgeous can't go with them. She's going to the country
with her dad instead. But mister Togo shows up in
this weird tiny car and he's like, bad news, my
sister's gonna have a baby. We cannot go vacationing by

(55:30):
the sea. But I was just thinking, did he not
know this was going to happen?

Speaker 1 (55:34):
I know she didn't get a lot of advanced notice
from the sister. I guess yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
And the girls bully mister Togo for this. I think
he says, don't bully me. But there's a new plan.
Gorgeous suggests that they all come to her Auntie's house
in her mom's old hometown. And so we see Gorgeous
writing a letter to her aunt informing her that all
of her friends are coming, and she says, I know
we've only met once. Please don't think I'm strange. Is

(56:02):
the aunt going to think you're strange? Gorgeous, I don't
know this aunt. Yeah, but she says, you know, she
wants to spend time with her aunt like she used
to spend with her mom. Somewhere around here, she just
happens to run into a fluffy white cat, and she says,
cute kitty, where are you from?

Speaker 1 (56:23):
And instantly adopts the cat.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
Yaw. The cat is part of the yes and named
it Blanche. So Blanche is the name of the white cat.
We see it sitting on top of the mailbox outside
Gorgeous's apartment, and she gets a letter back from her
aunt saying, oh, yes, come see me and bring all
your friends. So we know Gorgeous is going to go
visit her aunt and take all her friends with her.
And we also here get a scene of Rioko, Gorgeous's

(56:47):
dad's new wife, announcing her plan to go later go
after Gorgeous and her friends go to the aunt's house
she's going to go there and meet her so that
she can get to know her and talk to her
one on one. She says, this is my first trial
in becoming her mother. And again she's got this scarf
on her neck blowing in the wind in a way
that makes it I don't know, it just looks kind

(57:07):
of doomed or vulnerable somehow, like someone it's suggesting like
a grabbing of her by the neck or something. Yeah. Yeah, Oh,
And then the very next scene we get is so
off the wall. It's this crazy musical number outside a
cobbler's workshop. There's a guy working on shoes with a
pipe and a cap. There's a young lady in the
leather apron. This is the director's daughter. There's a donkey

(57:30):
in the background or maybe a miniature pony. Uh, and yeah,
it's just nuts. So like mister Togo comes down to
this scene but like falls down the stairs and gets
a metal bucket stuck on his butt and announces he
will have to go to the hospital for his butt bucket.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
Yeah, this scene is yeah, it has strong sesame street vibes.
And then it goes into just utter ridiculous slapstick territory.
It's in many ways, yeah, out of keeping with the
tone so far, but also perfectly in line with the
tone of house. Yep, it's hard to describe.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
There's a child drumming on mister Togo's bucket while he's
on the phone.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
This would seem to be aggravating the condition, or I
don't know, I'm relieving it. I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 (58:14):
So without mister I guess mister Togo was going to
accompany them somehow, I didn't fully understand this.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
He was gonna be chaperone.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
I okay, he's going to chaperone this trip to the
ant's house, I guess. But so instead they have to
go without him. So the girls are at a train
station and they're getting on the train and they're like, oh,
who are all these cowboys and rock stars? Or actually no,
they don't comment on it. I'm just wondering. There's Yeah,
the train is full of Oh maybe this is where

(58:43):
we see Godaigo. I don't know. But there are cowboys,
there are nuns, there are sailors. The train is full
of all different kinds. Oh, el Topo's on there, I think.

Speaker 1 (58:53):
Yeah, yeah, it's like this vision of I don't know,
like a very non conformist Japanese society. I don't know
what it is, like why they're cowboys getting off these trains.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
And blanches on the train too. They let cats on
this train. Somebody while they're traveling with the cats just
happens to say, any old cat can open a door,
only a witch cat can close a door.

Speaker 1 (59:19):
Ah, that'll be key. And also, if you haven't guessed already,
this is definitely a witch cat.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
Now Here, we get some backstory that's very important to
the film, but I want to stress how strange the
delivery of this character information is so Gorgeous starts explaining
to her friends that her aunt and her mother they
were sisters and they loved each other very much, and
Gorgeous once traveled with her mother to meet her aunt

(59:52):
when she was six, but she hasn't seen her since.
And then like a film strip starts and again I
want to say, there's no way I could identify that
they could be watching a film strip on the train.
But we're watching a film strip with like CPA tones,
and it's like the girls are watching it too, and

(01:00:13):
they're sort of riffing on what happens in the film.
So as we see this stuff. I guess gorgeous narrates,
I think, or somebody narrates A long time ago, Japan
was in a big war. This is Auntie's house. Her
late father was a doctor. This is my grandma, this
is my mom. Isn't she cute? And then one says

(01:00:34):
she looks like you? And then we see the ant
and her fiance, and her fiance is a very dashing
young man. One of the friends calls out, he's so handsome.
They say he was a doctor and he was going
to run the local hospital. And the friends asked, you
mean they didn't get married, and she says, no, they
couldn't get married because of the war. So we learned

(01:00:55):
that her auntie's fiance gets drafted to serve in World
War two, but he makes a pinky promise that he
will come back, and she promises to wait for him,
and we see the auntie and her fiance kiss, and
then he has to go away to war, and then
the film burns up and someone shouts a kiss of fire.

Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
Yeah, there's such a strange and wonderful energy to this
part of the film, with the optimistic and youthful responses
to this story. They're being presented with and the way
they're riffing on it, So you know, they're amazing and
they're to be envied because they see mostly the beauty
and the romance in this story and they feel it intensely,

(01:01:35):
and they're not you know, it's not like they don't
understand the tragedy, but and they're not getting the tragedy,
but they can't fully understand it, and or their understanding
of the tragedy is overpowered by their youthful enthusiasm for
the romantic elements of the tale.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
I think, yeah, that's exactly right. But then the backstory
goes on. So after the Kiss of Fire, we learned
that her fiance never returns from the war. We see
him revealed sitting in an almost comical looking in how
strange it is. He's like shown sitting in the cockpit
of a crashing airplane, just expressionless as the airplane goes down.

(01:02:13):
And then we later see after the war, Gorgeous's mom
marrying her father, posing for the photo that we saw earlier.
So she's in her wedding garments and the auntie is
beside her holding her white cat, looking unhappy and unfulfilled.
After this gorgeous, explains that her aunt has been living
alone in the house for many years and that she

(01:02:33):
gives piano lessons to the neighbors for money. And then
somehow suddenly they are on a bus instead of a train.
Just a abrupt transition, the bus stops, the girls get off,
and they are in a cartoon landscape. So they cross
these different types of backgrounds, a valley with mountains, a

(01:02:53):
cable bridge spanning a wide rocky stream. There's a path
through a forest where sweets. She's afraid of ghosts. Prof
says ghosts don't exist, and Kung Fu implies that she
will use martial arts on any ghosts that appear. Perfect.
Also through this whole track, Mac is just relentlessly announcing
the consumption of food, just yelling like, yummy, this tastes good.

(01:03:17):
One of the last things before they get to the
house is the watermelon vendor scene, which is tremendous. They
come across like a watermelon stand and they remove a
watermelon from the shelf of the stand, and then behind
the watermelon is the face of the vendor which is shaped,
which is very round and shaped like a watermelon, making

(01:03:38):
this bizarre expression, and then he comes out and acts
bizarre at them. I don't know how to Rob, how
would you describe this encounter.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
It's mad cap for sure, yea. And I guess it
is worth noting that at heart, this is a very
that this is certainly a hard trope, like this is
the guy that on the way to the haunted place,
whose role is to either say, don't you go to
that haunted place, or as we see here commenting after
the kids have gone, I can't believe they're going to

(01:04:07):
that haunted place. He fulfills that role while also being
this wacky character who is selling watermelons.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
So the girls go on up to the house and
it's on top of a hill with walls grown over
by vines. They're owls diving around in the middle of
the day, and the gates creak open for them. Blanche
runs inside and Gorgeous's aunt greets them. She is seated
in a wheelchair, her hair has turned white, and she

(01:04:34):
wears these cool Ringo Star sunglasses and she's holding the
cat now. And I just want to point out it's
like the girls, as far as I could tell, there
was no point at which they question this cat magic.
Oh Blanche, the cat was Auntie's cat, and it came
to fetch gorgeous in the city. And now they're all here,
and that's just not remarked upon.

Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
No, they just roll with it completely. This is the
cat who lives here. I don't know where the ca
that traveled with us went. This is this is Blanche.

Speaker 2 (01:05:03):
Also, one of them tries to take a picture and
Blanch the cat shoots green rays out of her eyes.
This will not be the last time Blanche shoots green
laser laser beams out of her eyes. But it makes
the camera fly in the air and smash on the ground,
and one of the girls yells sexy.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
I need to point out that even when Blanche is
not necessarily on screen, even when Blanche is not necessarily
doing that creepy green eye sparkle thing, we often just
get random meals in the soundtrack of the film, which
just keeps you on edge and like somehow keeps the
weirdness level up. No matter what's happening, you're just gonna

(01:05:40):
get some randomyows in there and eventually musical meals.

Speaker 2 (01:05:44):
That's all right, Like now mix the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
Yeah. Also, I should mention even though they didn't buy
a watermelon from the watermelon stand in the previous scene.
Suddenly Max shows up with a huge watermelon and her
friends accuse her of stealing it, which he's like.

Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
I paid for it, and I trust Mac. I don't
think Mac would steal.

Speaker 2 (01:06:03):
I don't think Mac would steel. She paid for it.
She's got some watermelon money in her wallet specifically for
an occasion like this. So they go inside the house
and they learned that Antie can make her lights come
on by talking to them. That's cool, m h. And
they're like sort of having a they're getting a tour
of the place, and the chandelier attacks them. It drops
crystal shards that impale a lizard on the floor, and

(01:06:26):
then it starts dropping more crystal shards, but Kung Fu
flies in the air and attacks the shards.

Speaker 1 (01:06:32):
Yeah, and then Blanche eats one of the lizards.

Speaker 2 (01:06:35):
Okay, And then Melody the musical friend is told about
a grand piano in the house and she goes to play,
but like when she gets to it's strapped with cobwebs.
They remark that there are so many pictures of the
cat in the house.

Speaker 1 (01:06:50):
And there are indeed so many pictures of the cat
it's a constant delight to see all of the Blanche
are the Blanche iconography, as well as the various incarnation
of this cat in this house.

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
There's so many weird things in the house that we
can't even We're going to reach a point where we're
going to have to stop doing a sort of one
of this minute plot recap and get just focus on
some specific things. But like one thing is they find
a skeleton in the house, and they're like, oh, yeah,
grandfather used to treat patients in this room.

Speaker 1 (01:07:20):
Will this skeleton eventually dance randomly of its own power?

Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
Yes, it will perhaps, Yeah, And Auntie explains how she
used to give piano lessons, but you know, nobody comes
here anymore. So she's been very lonely all these years.
But now that she has all these girls in the house,
she is very glad. Something a little ominous about the
way in which she expresses her gladness. So they decide
to help Antie out around the house, and they split

(01:07:45):
up the jobs. Of course, Mac is going to do
the cooking and Sweet offers to do the cleaning. There
is a moment in here where they're like moving around
the house and somebody gets a cat thrown at them
from off screen. I think it's Anti.

Speaker 1 (01:07:57):
Yeah, I think the cat quote unquote umps into Anti's lap,
but clearly if there was somebody just out of the
shot gently throwing the cat into her lap.

Speaker 2 (01:08:06):
Just riding around getting cats thrown at her, talking to
her appliances and furniture. At some point, we learn that
Mac wants to chill the watermelon in the fridge, but
the fridge doesn't work, so Anti suggests they put it
down the well, which they do and just randomly somewhere
around here, Anti looks at Mac and says, Mac, you
sure look tasty. Now, this is just one place to mention.

(01:08:29):
I could have said it earlier. I could have said
it at any point. There is a very chaotic editing
and transition style to this movie. The rhythm of cuts
and the way one shot transitions to another. These things
do not feel normal for Japanese cinema, or for any
cinema that I know of, So I don't think it's

(01:08:51):
a cultural thing. I think it is a unique, too
house thing, just one example among many many weird things.
There are sudden cross dissolves, you know where like so
it'll kind of like fade out and then fade back
in on something on the screen, and normally in a
movie that indicates a transition forward in time, but here

(01:09:12):
the movie uses cross dissolves when the action seems to
be totally continuous, same time in place.

Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
Yeah, it's one of the many things that makes viewing
this film feel very psychedelic. It feels like some sort
of sort of an altered experience.

Speaker 2 (01:09:26):
It's violating like norms of cinematic storytelling that you don't
even normally think of, that you wouldn't usually notice our norms,
and like you only notice them once somebody does them
differently than they're usually done.

Speaker 1 (01:09:38):
Yeah. Like I say, he's all about bucking the trends
and same way he can do to irritate Kirosawa.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
Okay, So, so we're about to get to a scene,
the watermelon Head scene, which I think a lot of
critics and film historians people who celebrate this movie have
sort of noted as a transition point in the film
that like things take on, just that things just get
different starting at what's about to happen. And so I

(01:10:07):
think this should also be the point where we stop
trying to recount what happens, just moment by moment, because
it would be crazy and impossible to do here. But
to begin, we're going to talk about the watermelon head scene.
So after supper Mac disappears, she says she's going to
go get the watermelon out of the well, and she

(01:10:28):
doesn't come back after a while, and so Fantasy goes
to look for her, and out in the garden by
the well, there's a beautiful multicolor sunset. There's soft focus
on the camera, like we are within a day dream,
which kind of makes sense because this is Fantasy going
to do this. She daydreams a lot, though it's strange
because this is definitely really happening. So it's almost like

(01:10:48):
even Fantasy's regular life is like a day dream. You know,
it's using the cinematic conventions of showing a dream.

Speaker 1 (01:10:56):
Yeah, it's like we're in a really nice yogurt commercial
or something, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):
Yeah. Yeah. And so Fantasy starts pulling up the watermelon
from the well. It's tied to a rope and she
retrieves it and it's, you know, it's a round thing.
But then she turns it over and realizes, oh, this
is not a watermelon. It's Max's head and mac now
has sort of blue skin like a vampire and I

(01:11:20):
think fangs.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
Oh my god, and it's alive or undead or something,
and it's it's horrifying. It's quite frightening. And the build
up to it has been exceptional, like everything's just super
sweet again, yogurt commercial, yogurt commercial, and then just absolute horror.

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
The head talks and then it starts flying around in
the air, and then it bites Fantasy on the butt,
and then it vomits blood and then it goes back
down in the well. Excellent, what a roller coaster. Yeah,
So Fantasy goes back and reports what happened, and her
friends go to see the head, but when they get there,
there is no head to be found. It's only a

(01:11:59):
regular old watermelon, which they decide to eat. Also, Auntie
is here, and she like she stands up right out
of her wheelchair and explains, you girls gave me energy,
and then grins into the camera while eating a slice
of watermelon. Also, this is the scene where she sort
of shows off to Fantasy and I think nobody else
that she does have a third eyeball inside her mouth.

Speaker 1 (01:12:22):
Yes, yes, all's a wonderfully creepy sequence.

Speaker 2 (01:12:25):
So there's all kinds of just like little little vignettes
of the various characters getting freaked out by stuff. So
like Sweet is cleaning the floors as she gets lured
to a room with a doll that has green laser
eyes like blanch does, and it whispers her name. Gorgeous
is taking a bath and she gets creeped on by

(01:12:46):
like wet black hair that comes up from some unknown
creature out of the waters, horrifying kung Fu in a
much funnier sequence, is attacked by flying wooden logs like
she's splitting wood, and then the logs start attack her
and she defeats them with karate chops. Yeah, there's one
point here where Auntie says She's like, one time I

(01:13:07):
was excited to go to a restaurant in town, and
now I'm excited like that again. And then she climbs
inside the refrigerator and disappears.

Speaker 1 (01:13:17):
Oh my god, this sequence is so creepy. It's shot
in a way in such a way that the other
characters in the room with her don't see her suddenly
go into the refrigerator, but we do. And then I
think she re emerges in the foreground of the shot
and may break the fourth wall here. I can't recall specifically,
but she does break the fourth wall at various points,

(01:13:39):
as if to say, like, yeah, it's me, Auntie, I'm
gonna eat these kids.

Speaker 2 (01:13:43):
Yep, yep, dancing with the skeleton, eating a severed hand,
dropping a fried fish into a fish bowl and it
comes back to life. I think we see her dancing
in the rafters of the house.

Speaker 1 (01:13:55):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:13:56):
There's also a sequence where Melody the musical friend goes
to play the piano again, and she of course plays
the house theme, you know, the Maybe we can get
a little sample of that, because you got to know
what it sounds like. Sometime around here, while like you know,
Melody's playing the piano and stuff, gorgeous sort of what

(01:14:20):
would you say happens to her. She kind of gets
possessed by the house. She's like looking in the mirror
and she starts putting on her aunt's makeup, and she
sees herself as her aunt with fangs and like like
she's looking in a mirror and the mirror shatters, and
then Gorgeous's actual face shatters, revealing animated fire inside. I

(01:14:43):
think the ghosts have taken her over.

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
Yeah, it's a It's another fabulous sequence. This one I
think was inspired by just the director's daughter saying, hey,
what if my reflection attacked me, wouldn't that be scary?
And of course they've taken that in a applied you know,
the ghost story logic to it, and yeah, absolutely wonderful.

Speaker 2 (01:15:04):
Somewhere around here is also the scene we talked about
earlier where their friend's sweet she's been cleaning the house up.
She gets attacked by falling pillows and sentient mattresses from
heaven and seemingly killed and then also maybe transformed into
a large doll by the evil possessed mattresses. There's one

(01:15:25):
part around here where somebody imagines Togo, a mister Togo,
their teacher, as like a prince on a white horse.
They're like, he's coming, he'll be here, He's gonna save us.
But it's so funny every time they're like these repeated
cuts back to whatever mister Togo is doing. I think
he is trying to find them, but he never does.

(01:15:47):
They show him like stuck in traffic in this incredibly
tiny like what is this car of his? Is it
like some kind of dune buggy or.

Speaker 1 (01:15:56):
I don't know, but yeah, he's he's trying to find them.
He's having no luck, and spoiler is eventually turned into
a pile of bananas.

Speaker 2 (01:16:03):
God, that's a crazy seat. Well, okay, we should just
say what happens in that scene. Then this is a
little bit later, so we're jumping around in time. But
eventually mister Togo he stops for rama and he eats ramen.
At this Ramen card, we see him driving around in
the woods at night like a complete bumpkin and just
trying to like find the house and being like, there's
no house here, And then I guess he eventually does

(01:16:25):
get close because he meets the watermelon vendor, which we
know is just down the hill from the house. Mister
Togo goes up to the watermelon vendor and says, do
you know where the house is? The house? Watermelon vendor says,
the girls they were eaten. Do you like watermelons? Mister
Togo says no, watermelon vendor says what. Then he says bananas.

(01:16:48):
Watermelon vendor collapses into a pile of bones, his skull
floats and then emids smoke, and then mister Togo runs
away screaming banana banana, and then later it is revealed
that by the morning he has transformed into a pile
of ben in as inside his car.

Speaker 1 (01:17:05):
Yes, that is what happens, and I don't know what
it means how it really factors into the rest of
the plot, but I guess defies to say he was
unsuccessful in being the white Night for the Smoothie.

Speaker 2 (01:17:19):
Now, all this while the girls are trapped in the house.
They try to escape, but they've been like locked in.
They try to call for help, but there's just like
weird stuff going on on the phone. Melody is attacked
by the piano while playing it, so she's like playing
the house theme, and then the piano suddenly bites all
of her fingers off, and then it proceeds to eat
her whole body in this mind rending cartoon musical number

(01:17:42):
where the piano is like chomping on her and there
are like various human organs and body parts just sticking
out all over it, like you know, like a leg
hanging out of a monster's mouth. And then Melody is
also still laughing as she's being devoured. Yeah, absolutely delirious,
Yeah gorgeous. Now sort of possessed by the evil ghost

(01:18:03):
magic of the house is dressed up like a pale bride.
In fact, I think she's supposed to look like her mother.
She's sort of become her mother in a way, but
she's also become her aunt, and we see her sort
of moving around accompanied by Prof and Kung Fu. At
some point here, Prof gets absorbed by reading this book

(01:18:24):
that I think is the aunt's diary. It's a book
that contains lore, and through reading this book, Prof will
get more of the backstory that explains what happened at
the house. Oh but meanwhile she's Prof is like looking
at this book and just yelling like unscientific, illogical. At
the same time, Kung Fu is staring into this giant

(01:18:45):
steampunk grandfather clock and sees an undead version of Sweet
inside it, and the clock is reeking rivulets of blood
down its glass front.

Speaker 1 (01:18:56):
This is probably a good point, is any to mention
that Oh yash she again was the head of special
effects on this film, and said in the interview that, like,
they actually could have used Toho's in house special effects
people who were quite good. You know, they'd worked on
various pictures, Godzilla movies and so forth. But he said
they didn't want to go that route because they didn't

(01:19:18):
want the special effects to be too believable, like they
needed to have a certain unreality to them, and I
guess even an enhanced unreality.

Speaker 2 (01:19:27):
Yes, yes, yes, I mean the clock scene looks very
frightening and looks great. There are other parts that don't
look realistic at all, but I love the style. There
is one part where after Melody gets eaten by the piano,
we just see severed, bloody, disembodied fingers playing the piano
and still playing the house theme.

Speaker 1 (01:19:48):
Except meal style. Right, This is when it starts being
like a meal.

Speaker 2 (01:19:52):
Oh, I think that's right. Yeah, yeah. We learn more
from the Diary of gorgeouses on. We learned that, you know,
she was waiting for her fiance to come home from
the war in denial that he had died. And she
mentions that all of the young girls in the town
are gone now and she is all alone. Hmmm. And

(01:20:13):
then suddenly, while they're like reading this learning about it,
a giant head bursts into the room with them, and
it is the head of Gorgeous and she says, I'm
in my aunt's world now, and then she morphs into
a giant pair of lips, and one of the girls
yells huge lips, and the lips revealed that Auntie actually
died many years ago, and she became after she died,

(01:20:36):
and she became a jealous, vengeful ghost. I think the
idea is she so longed for her fiance, she wanted
to marry him and couldn't accept that he had died
in the war. So now instead she is this vengeful
ghost that eats all of the unmarried girls who come
to her house. So I think the suggestion is this

(01:20:57):
may have been what happened to all of the girls
in town who are getting piano lessons, just one by one. Yeah,
And she says that when she eats them is the
only time that she can wear her bridle gown. And
then she says, now it's your turn, just let me
eat you.

Speaker 1 (01:21:12):
So yes, at this point that, like the poster art
has come to get, the promise is fulfilled. House is
a house that eats people.

Speaker 2 (01:21:20):
So there's a bunch more stuff that happens. The girls
are attacked by various flying household objects. I do you
want to emphasize the house theme and how much it
is like just the objects one would find in a
domestic residence are all turned evil in the movie. Everything
that would be in a house, appliances, furniture, just household

(01:21:40):
items are all now monsters that attack the girls.

Speaker 1 (01:21:44):
Yeah. I mean we've talked about this un stuff to
blow your mind before, some of these ideas about house
significantly old household objects can kind of become animated and
so forth. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:21:54):
Yeah, So, while they're being attacked by the house prof
at some point that in order to escape they must
destroy Blanch the Cat, or perhaps destroy an image of
an image of Blanch the Cat which is on the wall,
and so Kung Fu is like, right, got my orders,
and she tries to carry out this attack on the

(01:22:14):
image of the cat, but she is in turn attacked
by an overhead lamp, which latches onto her skull and
electrocutes her, and then like the lamp seems to suck
Kung Fu into a psychic vortex where she perceives floating,
rotating body parts and hears the voices of her dead friends.

(01:22:36):
But somehow she snaps out of this vortex and the
upper half of her body seems to have been destroyed,
but her disembodied legs fly out of the lamp and
kick the image of the cat on the wall, which
vomits blood and freaks out and leaps up in pain,
which in turn causes Gorgeous to gush blood and scream
like a vampire dowsed in holy water.

Speaker 1 (01:22:58):
And when the cat leaps up, it's kind of like
animated lightning cat. It's really all this has to be
seen to be understood. We can describe it to you,
but you just have to experience it. It's even crazier
than we made it sound here. It's also like, yes,
there's lots of blood going on here, but it's also
and it is gory. But I don't want to like
oversell that and say, like, oh, this is just a

(01:23:20):
real gorefest. It's not. Because it's so weird and there
is this unreality to the effects. It exists in its
own dimension.

Speaker 2 (01:23:28):
It's hard to describe what comes next. There's a lot
of like there's like cat images vomiting blood, lots of
things vomiting blood. People drowning in blood, yeah, floating on blood, floating.
There's all this blood. And then finally it seems that
all of the girls are devoured by the house and

(01:23:49):
that Gorgeous is something altered. She is somehow merged with
Auntie and whatever comfort you know she offers to her
friends is a prelude to eating yourself. So they weird
to understand that all of the girls are have their
souls eaten by the house. But then, oh man, the
movie has such a stinger. The next day. Remember remember

(01:24:13):
Gorgeous's new step mom Rioko.

Speaker 1 (01:24:15):
Yeah, she's scarf.

Speaker 2 (01:24:17):
Yeah, with the scarf she's driving through the country or
scarf blowing in the wind. She said she was going
to go to the house to uh, to catch up
with Gorgeous, you know, to get.

Speaker 1 (01:24:25):
To know her.

Speaker 2 (01:24:26):
Uh. And she she comes to no, wait maybe she
wait do we learn whether she and the father had
actually gotten married yet? I think maybe they had not.
I think they were going to get married.

Speaker 1 (01:24:37):
Yeah, I think this is still like she's like, I'm
gonna go patch things up with her, you know beforehand.

Speaker 2 (01:24:43):
Yes. Uh. So she she's driving through the country, she
finds the house. She walks by the watermelon stand where
we see mister Togo has turned into bananas. Uh. And
then she goes up to the ant's house. This bittersweet
kind of beatlesy pop song is played. She wanders through
the garden and it's very dreamlike and ethereal. And she

(01:25:05):
meets Gorgeous at the house and is invited inside, and
she asks, Gorgeous, where are your friends? And Gorgeous says,
they're still sleeping, but they'll be up soon when they're hungry.
They get up when they're hungry, and then Rioko bursts
into flames.

Speaker 1 (01:25:20):
Amazing, just absolutely amazing, like legitimately creepy and amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:25:25):
Oh and then there's like a monologue at the end,
which I feel like I should just relate. I don't
see exactly how it connects, but it says, even after
the flesh perishes, one can live in the hearts of others,
together with the feelings one has for them. Therefore, the
story of love must be told many times so that
the spirits of lovers may live forever, forever, the one

(01:25:47):
thing that never perishes. The only promise is love.

Speaker 1 (01:25:50):
Yeah, I don't fully understand. It reminds me a little
bit of the how on the nineties Outer Limits. You'll
have the narration voice come on at the end, and
something up in ways that sometimes feel a little disconnected
from what you just watched. But I don't know, maybe
something's lost in translation here. Or maybe it is, like
so much of this film intended to be a bit

(01:26:11):
off kilter and intended to make you scratch your head.

Speaker 2 (01:26:15):
So that's how again. Truly one of the weirdest films
ever made, widely recognized as such, and I have to
concur with that opinion. It is there's not really anything
like it.

Speaker 1 (01:26:26):
Agreed, it is a masterpiece. This is a masterpiece of
weird cinema. Highly recommend it again. Luckily, it's pretty easy
to get your hands on if you're interested in watching it,
and it's definitely worth watching it. I mean, have it
on in the background if nothing else, but I think
you'll be sucked in. It's hard to casually watch this movie.

(01:26:47):
I watched it by myself and I kept catching myself
like making faces, you know, like my jaw literally dropping
at some of the sequences.

Speaker 2 (01:26:56):
It's like a dream that a cat had about being
a human.

Speaker 1 (01:27:00):
Yeah, it might be. It's as good of an explanation
as any Well, there you have a house. It's great
to have finally discussed this film on Weird House Cinema.
I felt like it was faded to happen at some
point or another, and we hadn't covered a Japanese film
and a spell there, so it was good to cover
another one here. Obviously, we'd love to hear from everyone
out there. Do you have thoughts on House, memories of

(01:27:23):
seeing it for the first time, hearing about it for
the first time? Writ in, We would love to hear
from you. As always, will remind you that Stuff to
Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast with core
episodes and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed
on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside
most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
on Weird House Cinema. Go to letterbox dot com. That's

(01:27:44):
l E T T e r box d dot com.
Look us up. Our username is weird House. We have
all the movies we've covered listed there, and sometimes you
can get a peek ahead at what's coming up next. Also, hey,
if you just want to support the show, we'll go
ahead and hammer this home again. One of the best
things you can do is wherever you get your podcast,
make sure you have subscribed and that you're receiving downloads.

(01:28:04):
That helps us out, that keeps the show alive.

Speaker 2 (01:28:06):
Here's thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:28:27):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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