WEBVTT - Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: House (1977)

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<v Speaker 1>Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.

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<v Speaker 2>And this is Joe McCormick. And today we're bringing you

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<v Speaker 2>an older episode of Weird House Cinema. This was our

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<v Speaker 2>feature on the nineteen seventy seven horror film House. Oh boy,

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<v Speaker 2>what a good time this was.

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<v Speaker 1>Oh this is one of the towering giants of weird Cinema.

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<v Speaker 2>I don't think there's anything else to say. Let's listen

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<v Speaker 2>to House.

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<v Speaker 3>Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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<v Speaker 1>Hey you, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

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<v Speaker 2>My name is Rob Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.

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<v Speaker 1>Today on Weird House Cinema, we're tackling what might be

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<v Speaker 1>by many measures, I think by my measure, the ultimate

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<v Speaker 1>Haunted house movie. In another Haunted House property, nineteen seventy

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<v Speaker 1>one's Hell House, a novel by Richard Mavison. This was

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<v Speaker 1>later made into the Legend of Hell House in seventy three.

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<v Speaker 1>There's a description of the Belasco House, this haunted house

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<v Speaker 1>that's key to the plot, and it's described as quote

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<v Speaker 1>the mount everest of haunted houses due to the intense

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<v Speaker 1>sanity warping powers that it holds over anyone who attempts

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<v Speaker 1>to make it through the night there to complete the journey. Now,

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<v Speaker 1>there are various great haunted House films out there, and

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<v Speaker 1>I feel like the best of them excel in connecting

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<v Speaker 1>with something very ancient in the human psyche, right, the

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<v Speaker 1>essence of the damned place, a location that is so

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<v Speaker 1>just fundamentally physically or spiritually polluted that to venture into it,

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<v Speaker 1>to be there, to take place there, is to just

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<v Speaker 1>absolutely warp your identity and connection to reality. So there

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<v Speaker 1>are haunted House movies that tackle this in a very

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<v Speaker 1>serious fashion, and you might argue that they tackle it

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<v Speaker 1>more seriously than the movie we're talking about here today,

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<v Speaker 1>nineteen seventy seven's House. But when the chips are down

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<v Speaker 1>and House is firing on all cylinders, I think it

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<v Speaker 1>absolutely delivers on all the goods. It absolutely checks off

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<v Speaker 1>all the boxes. For my money. Right now, I'm going

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<v Speaker 1>to say that House is the Mount Everest of Haunted

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<v Speaker 1>house movies.

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<v Speaker 2>It's got to be up there, and like Mount Everest,

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<v Speaker 2>it may cause a kind of altitude sickness, maybe a

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<v Speaker 2>sense of dizziness, a visions of other figures climbing up

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<v Speaker 2>the mountain with you that may or may not be there.

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<v Speaker 2>It is a weird, baffling, life changing experience. House is

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<v Speaker 2>one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen, but that's

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<v Speaker 2>not an observation unique to me. It is widely regarded

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<v Speaker 2>as like one of the great weird movies of all time,

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<v Speaker 2>And yeah, I think it also qualifies in the subgenre

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<v Speaker 2>of weirdest and most interesting haunted house movies. Though it's

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<v Speaker 2>different than than a lot of haunted house movies because

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<v Speaker 2>a lot of haunted house movies, like you're pointing out,

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<v Speaker 2>are about a house that's been pollute, a house that

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<v Speaker 2>has been sort of like made into a place of

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<v Speaker 2>evil because of something evil that happened there, you know,

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<v Speaker 2>like a person, an evil person does something wicked inside

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<v Speaker 2>the house, and then that evil infects the house and

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<v Speaker 2>so forth. But the difference I would point out is

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<v Speaker 2>that the evil in those cases seems to be spurred

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<v Speaker 2>by human wrongdoing, and in House nineteen seventy seven, I

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<v Speaker 2>don't know if I'd say that's the case. Instead, it's

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<v Speaker 2>hard to say where the evil comes from. The person

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<v Speaker 2>who occupies the evil. Haunted House doesn't seem to have

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<v Speaker 2>initially been an evil or bad person, but someone who

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<v Speaker 2>suffers a kind of unfortunate fate and is transformed by

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<v Speaker 2>forces unnamed into a type of monster. And in that transformation,

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<v Speaker 2>it's like the house comes with her, you know, like

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<v Speaker 2>she in the house urge into one being that is

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<v Speaker 2>fully just an expression of monstrousness and magical predation.

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<v Speaker 1>It's like tragedy plus time equals house. That's like, you know,

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<v Speaker 1>like you're saying, she's not an evil person, and she had,

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<v Speaker 1>she went through a great tragedy, but it's like over

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<v Speaker 1>time that is like spiritually fermented into this new shape,

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<v Speaker 1>and that shape is is hungry and in many respects evil.

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<v Speaker 2>Maybe it's a tragedy plus time plus cat equals house

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<v Speaker 2>because the cat? What is the role of the cat

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<v Speaker 2>in this movie? Could we last October? Did an episode

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<v Speaker 2>or a series of episodes about monster cats of Japan

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<v Speaker 2>that was October, wasn't it?

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<v Speaker 1>I believe it was?

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<v Speaker 2>Yes, Yeah, like the Bakin echo and stuff. There there

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<v Speaker 2>are a number of different sort of cat ghosts or

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<v Speaker 2>evil cat monster entities cat yo kai in Japanese lore,

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<v Speaker 2>and we talked about a few of them, shape shifting cats,

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<v Speaker 2>cats that the cats that might lurk out in the

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<v Speaker 2>wilderness and be some kind of monster. I don't know

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<v Speaker 2>if the cat in this movie is exactly supposed to

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<v Speaker 2>be supposed to correspond to one of these cat monster archetypes,

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<v Speaker 2>but what a presence it is. It feels kind of

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<v Speaker 2>like maybe all of the evil in the movie comes

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<v Speaker 2>from the cat. And it's not clear where the cat

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<v Speaker 2>comes from.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, the cat is somehow key to it is like

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<v Speaker 1>a nexus point or a physical incarnation. It's uncertain. I

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<v Speaker 1>mean as as I feel, like, you know, scary supernatural

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<v Speaker 1>things should be, they're difficult for us mortals to fathom.

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<v Speaker 1>But we Yeah, we have this fabulous cat at the

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<v Speaker 1>center of everything here. And I think it also this

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<v Speaker 1>is what serves to make House not only a great

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<v Speaker 1>haunted house movie, but also a great cat movie. Like

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<v Speaker 1>all the cat stuff is completely on point and very cute,

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<v Speaker 1>very cute cat, very cute flu fere.

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<v Speaker 2>This movie got me thinking about what it what it

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<v Speaker 2>is meant to say about a character when a character

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<v Speaker 2>often has a cat in their lap. So this is

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<v Speaker 2>the thing. Actually I mostly associate with villains in films

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<v Speaker 2>like Blowfeld and the James Bond movies. Is this villain

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<v Speaker 2>who In the early James Bond movies, I think you

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<v Speaker 2>don't even ever see his face. You just see the

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<v Speaker 2>lower half of his body. He's a man who's presiding

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<v Speaker 2>over this evil, shadowy criminal empire known as Specter, and

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<v Speaker 2>he has all these henchmen going out and doing things

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<v Speaker 2>for him. But when you see the lower half of

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<v Speaker 2>his body, he has a fluffy, very flufy white cat

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<v Speaker 2>in his lap and he pets the cat while you know,

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<v Speaker 2>demanding updates from his assassins. And then later in the

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<v Speaker 2>James Bond movies, you do actually see the face of

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<v Speaker 2>blofeld So. And he's played by various different actors, but

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<v Speaker 2>in one movie, for example, he's played by Donald Pleasance.

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<v Speaker 2>And so you know we were sharing before coming in here,

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<v Speaker 2>like images of Donald Pleasants holding a white cat, much

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<v Speaker 2>like blanch the cat in house. What does the cat mean?

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<v Speaker 2>Why is the cat in the villain's lap, and what

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<v Speaker 2>what associations are we supposed to make from seeing that image?

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<v Speaker 1>I mean, in the case of Blowfeld, I guess kind

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<v Speaker 1>of you know, it's the idea of like a regal

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<v Speaker 1>sort of lap creature, but also maybe a commentary on

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<v Speaker 1>the nature of the cat. You know, the cat has

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<v Speaker 1>its own air about it. Though it's weird that owning

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<v Speaker 1>the cat is villainous in these Bond movies, and yet

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<v Speaker 1>James Bond kicks a cat. I would think that that

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<v Speaker 1>is me and that's the And also like the forgot

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<v Speaker 1>was this? I forget which one this was? This may

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<v Speaker 1>be the one that actually takes place in Japan part

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<v Speaker 1>in the time anyway, but there's a whole bit where

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<v Speaker 1>it's like, oh, Blowfeld has a double, which one is

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<v Speaker 1>a real Blowfeld? Better kick the cat to find out

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<v Speaker 1>which master it scurries to, And it's like, I don't

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<v Speaker 1>even know if that would work, Like is that really

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<v Speaker 1>going to be the cat's number one? Moved like to

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<v Speaker 1>go back to a safe lap. I think the cat

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<v Speaker 1>may just go hide under something.

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<v Speaker 2>I think there is something to be signaled about a

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<v Speaker 2>villain with the cat that it makes them seem more

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<v Speaker 2>threatening and sinister, the fact that they are ordering up

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<v Speaker 2>murder of humans at the same time that they're being

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<v Speaker 2>very gentle and stroking a cat. You know, It's like

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<v Speaker 2>that contrast of of delicate gentleness and friendliness with one

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<v Speaker 2>creature but cruelty to another.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I think that I think that probably sums it up.

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<v Speaker 2>Now. We've talked about House as a as a widely

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<v Speaker 2>reputed ultimate weird movie. We've talked about it as the

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<v Speaker 2>mount Everest of haunted house movies. But there's another thing

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<v Speaker 2>that we haven't really mentioned about it yet, which I

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<v Speaker 2>think is key to understanding what it is, which is

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<v Speaker 2>the childlike logic that operates in House. It is different

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<v Speaker 2>from a lot of horror movies. And I somehow connect

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<v Speaker 2>this to the fact that, say, the House doesn't have

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<v Speaker 2>a standard backstory of like human evil drawing in demons

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<v Speaker 2>and wicked spirits. Instead, it feels like the the evil

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<v Speaker 2>that infects the house just sort of totally unexplainable and random,

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<v Speaker 2>something that comes in and strikes and infects the house

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<v Speaker 2>and the occupant of the house from outside.

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<v Speaker 1>Uh.

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<v Speaker 2>That seems much more in line with the way that

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<v Speaker 2>children imagine evil spirits. You know, you don't need that

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<v Speaker 2>like backstory of it being caused by someone's human wicked choices. Instead,

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<v Speaker 2>it's just it comes out of nowhere and it's scary

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<v Speaker 2>and it doesn't even need to be explained.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, this is a very important aspect of House, and

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<v Speaker 1>we're going to be talking about Nubuhiko Obayashi, the director,

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<v Speaker 1>who is also an actor in it and a producer

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<v Speaker 1>and director of special effects. But famously this like the

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<v Speaker 1>key aspects of this film were inspired by conversations he

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<v Speaker 1>had with his daughter, who I believe was ten at

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<v Speaker 1>the age, Chigumi Obayashi, where he would come to her

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<v Speaker 1>and like, well, what what what do you find scary?

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<v Speaker 2>What?

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<v Speaker 1>Tell me what fry? What would be I think he

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<v Speaker 1>also said like, hey, if daddy were to make a movie,

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<v Speaker 1>what kind of things would you want to be in it?

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<v Speaker 1>And so she came up with these various ideas that

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<v Speaker 1>were all based on just this child's eye view of

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<v Speaker 1>the world, like, for instance, so one particular thing. We'll

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<v Speaker 1>probably run through most of them. But there's a scary

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<v Speaker 1>clock in the movie, and according to her on the

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<v Speaker 1>Criterion collection disc of this film, there's an interview with

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<v Speaker 1>her and her father from several years back, and she

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<v Speaker 1>says that there was this there was this point where

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<v Speaker 1>they were staying at this house in the country, you know,

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<v Speaker 1>a family house, and there was a big clock in

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<v Speaker 1>the hallway and she would have to cross by it

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<v Speaker 1>in the night in order to go to the bathroom

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<v Speaker 1>and she was frightened by the clock, you know. And

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<v Speaker 1>so it's the kind of thing like humans are generally

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<v Speaker 1>not frightened by big, dusty clocks and houses, but children

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<v Speaker 1>can be. And so the beauty of this film, One

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<v Speaker 1>of the beautiful things about this film is that he

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<v Speaker 1>took these ideas from his daughter and then you know,

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<v Speaker 1>added a little more traditional ghost story structure to it

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<v Speaker 1>and handed it off to the screenwriter. But yet it

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<v Speaker 1>still retains these very childlike views of fear and threat

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<v Speaker 1>and then sort of translates them to a certain extent

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<v Speaker 1>into a wider understanding for you know, any viewer, they

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<v Speaker 1>may watch it. You don't have to be a child

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<v Speaker 1>to feel the fear of this clock.

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<v Speaker 2>There is a young person's creativity in the way some

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<v Speaker 2>of the scary images in the movie are conjured, so

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<v Speaker 2>like making connections that an adult might not normally make,

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<v Speaker 2>but then also a kind of a young person's fearlessness

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<v Speaker 2>in deciding what is scary. So there is a scene

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<v Speaker 2>in the movie where a character is fatally attacked by

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<v Speaker 2>pillows and mattresses that fall from the ceiling. I think

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<v Speaker 2>that is an image that if an adult were to

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<v Speaker 2>come up with it, they might think, no, that's silly,

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<v Speaker 2>that's not scary. That doesn't work. It just doesn't fit

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<v Speaker 2>the language of what is a threat in horror movies.

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<v Speaker 2>But I think I read this idea also came from

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<v Speaker 2>from the director's daughter. You know, she was afraid of

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<v Speaker 2>like being attacked by mattresses from the sky, and in

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<v Speaker 2>the movie it they just they just do it. That's

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<v Speaker 2>a scene.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think she mentioned in the interview

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<v Speaker 1>that it came from or maybe your father did that.

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<v Speaker 1>It came in part from going out to the countryside

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<v Speaker 1>and having to sleep on futons and then fold them

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<v Speaker 1>up during the day, and as a child, like the

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<v Speaker 1>futon is so big and it's kind of heavy, and

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<v Speaker 1>it's kind of falling on you, so it kind of

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<v Speaker 1>feeds into this idea.

0:12:39.880 --> 0:12:42.080
<v Speaker 2>I never would have thought of that, but yeah.

0:12:41.679 --> 0:12:43.680
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean that's that's really the beauty of it. Like,

0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:46.520
<v Speaker 1>these are all things that grown ups would not have

0:12:46.600 --> 0:12:49.640
<v Speaker 1>thought of. They come from the mind of children, and

0:12:49.720 --> 0:12:54.439
<v Speaker 1>the child's mind is capable of such wonders and such horrors.

0:12:54.480 --> 0:12:59.040
<v Speaker 1>You know that. It's one of the joys of parenthood

0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:02.640
<v Speaker 1>is getting to to be on the receiving end of

0:13:02.679 --> 0:13:06.880
<v Speaker 1>so many wild and creative ideas that they just come

0:13:07.000 --> 0:13:09.240
<v Speaker 1>up with on their own, you know, because they have

0:13:09.320 --> 0:13:11.080
<v Speaker 1>to this innate creativity.

0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:14.240
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, to see to see the wild mental leaps and

0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:17.200
<v Speaker 2>the strange connections that a young brain makes that you

0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:20.760
<v Speaker 2>just you're seeing into something that your brain may once

0:13:20.800 --> 0:13:23.280
<v Speaker 2>have been capable of but is no longer like the

0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:26.440
<v Speaker 2>pruning has cut you off from from that kind of

0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:29.280
<v Speaker 2>connection across mental distance.

0:13:29.720 --> 0:13:31.520
<v Speaker 1>So this, again, this is a huge part of the film.

0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:34.120
<v Speaker 1>We'll keep coming back to this as we discuss the

0:13:34.440 --> 0:13:36.480
<v Speaker 1>making of the film and also get into the plot.

0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:41.600
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, I'm glad that we're finally covering House. It's

0:13:41.640 --> 0:13:44.520
<v Speaker 1>a film that has been on the Weird House Cinema

0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:48.040
<v Speaker 1>list for I mean really since the beginning. I mean

0:13:48.040 --> 0:13:49.920
<v Speaker 1>that's just if when you think of weird films and

0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:53.680
<v Speaker 1>you get into listings of weird films, it's always up there.

0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:58.120
<v Speaker 1>There's a poster or or a recreation of the poster

0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:01.800
<v Speaker 1>for this film in the the front window of Videodrome,

0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:05.560
<v Speaker 1>the movie rental place here in Atlanta. So you know,

0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:08.480
<v Speaker 1>it's always been on the list, and today we're finally

0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:10.680
<v Speaker 1>talking about it. I guess I'm gonna stick with the

0:14:10.679 --> 0:14:13.040
<v Speaker 1>Mount everest of Hunted House Films for my elevator pitch.

0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:14.840
<v Speaker 1>Do you have any anything to add to that?

0:14:14.920 --> 0:14:21.080
<v Speaker 2>Joe Worst Summer vacation ever. Seven high school friends go

0:14:21.160 --> 0:14:25.280
<v Speaker 2>out for a leisurely visit to a countryside manor somewhere

0:14:25.280 --> 0:14:29.960
<v Speaker 2>in Japan and get eaten by various household appliances.

0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:32.280
<v Speaker 1>All right, well, let's go ahead and listen to at

0:14:32.360 --> 0:14:35.280
<v Speaker 1>least part of the trailer audio here. I'm not sure

0:14:35.320 --> 0:14:37.360
<v Speaker 1>it necessarily makes sense to listen to the whole thing,

0:14:37.400 --> 0:14:39.720
<v Speaker 1>but we definitely want to get just a little taste

0:14:39.760 --> 0:14:43.600
<v Speaker 1>of that music, a little taste, especially of the title.

0:14:44.560 --> 0:15:13.640
<v Speaker 1>So let's have a listen. See that squin I see

0:15:13.720 --> 0:15:20.400
<v Speaker 1>in your Rise where tomorrow as Hi, my heart as

0:15:20.520 --> 0:15:25.960
<v Speaker 1>a bell, ringing blow at the touch of the leans

0:15:26.640 --> 0:15:27.120
<v Speaker 1>down the.

0:15:27.320 --> 0:15:34.120
<v Speaker 2>Rainbow, come slide with loud row, skateball and as they

0:15:34.280 --> 0:15:35.080
<v Speaker 2>got clo.

0:15:40.120 --> 0:16:06.960
<v Speaker 1>Cocaaia cosa. Oh all right now, if you want to

0:16:07.120 --> 0:16:10.320
<v Speaker 1>run out and watch House before we get into any

0:16:10.320 --> 0:16:13.320
<v Speaker 1>further discussion here, well, lucky for you, House is widely

0:16:13.360 --> 0:16:17.400
<v Speaker 1>available in pretty much any format you might desire here

0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:20.040
<v Speaker 1>in the States. You can currently stream it on Max

0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:24.000
<v Speaker 1>unless I think it's still there It's also available on

0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:27.080
<v Speaker 1>Blu Ray and DVD from the Criterion Collection. And that's

0:16:27.080 --> 0:16:29.360
<v Speaker 1>how I watched it. I rented it from Videodrome and

0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:31.560
<v Speaker 1>watched it on Blu Ray. And I'll refer back to

0:16:31.600 --> 0:16:42.360
<v Speaker 1>some of the special features as we perceive. All Right, Well,

0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:46.200
<v Speaker 1>let's get into the people who made this film, starting

0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:50.600
<v Speaker 1>once more at the top with Nuwahiko Obayashi again director.

0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:54.360
<v Speaker 1>He also plays husband in this producer, director of special effects.

0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:57.480
<v Speaker 1>He lived nineteen thirty eight through twenty twenty. He was

0:16:57.520 --> 0:17:01.880
<v Speaker 1>a Japanese director, screenwriter, and editor known for his work

0:17:02.120 --> 0:17:07.280
<v Speaker 1>in experimental cinema of the nineteen sixties TV commercials, reportedly

0:17:07.320 --> 0:17:10.760
<v Speaker 1>by the thousands and often involving the sort of Western

0:17:10.880 --> 0:17:15.800
<v Speaker 1>celebrity appearances that were parodied in two thousand and threes

0:17:15.840 --> 0:17:16.879
<v Speaker 1>lost in translation.

0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:22.200
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so where you might have like a celebrity famous

0:17:22.200 --> 0:17:25.880
<v Speaker 2>in English language movies and TV come in and kind

0:17:25.880 --> 0:17:29.320
<v Speaker 2>of deliver some strange, out of context lines for a

0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:32.160
<v Speaker 2>soda commercial in Japan or something exactly.

0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:33.960
<v Speaker 1>And if you look up at images of him, you'll

0:17:34.000 --> 0:17:36.159
<v Speaker 1>find a lot of old images of him, like standing

0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:40.240
<v Speaker 1>around with various celebrities from the West. Now, this film

0:17:40.359 --> 0:17:44.320
<v Speaker 1>nineteen seventy Seven's House was his first feature film and

0:17:44.480 --> 0:17:49.440
<v Speaker 1>intentionally off kilter, highly weird, experimental horror comedy. I guess

0:17:49.440 --> 0:17:51.440
<v Speaker 1>you might call it, but you can describe it many

0:17:51.480 --> 0:17:55.280
<v Speaker 1>other ways as well. Initially didn't land all that well

0:17:55.520 --> 0:17:59.600
<v Speaker 1>with especially the Japanese critics and in the industry, but

0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:02.640
<v Speaker 1>it's going developed a cult following in Japan and abroad,

0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:06.720
<v Speaker 1>and today it's celebrated as just a complete cinematic freak

0:18:06.720 --> 0:18:11.200
<v Speaker 1>out and stands tall amid the pantheon of global psychatronics cinema.

0:18:11.240 --> 0:18:15.840
<v Speaker 2>As long as you're sticking to coherent narrative films, it

0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:17.720
<v Speaker 2>is one of the weirdest ever made.

0:18:18.160 --> 0:18:19.680
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and I do want to stress that it. Yeah,

0:18:19.720 --> 0:18:21.440
<v Speaker 1>it does have a plot that you can follow. It's

0:18:21.440 --> 0:18:25.760
<v Speaker 1>not one of these You can definitely describe it as

0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:31.280
<v Speaker 1>art house to a certain extent. Ty West the horror director,

0:18:31.320 --> 0:18:33.400
<v Speaker 1>has a little bit on the Criterion collection disc where

0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:36.840
<v Speaker 1>he talks about it being an art horror film, which

0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:40.240
<v Speaker 1>he says, you see little of these days, in part

0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:43.320
<v Speaker 1>because studios want to bring ironically someone in from the

0:18:43.359 --> 0:18:48.240
<v Speaker 1>commercial world to direct a very cookie cutter horror film

0:18:48.240 --> 0:18:50.120
<v Speaker 1>that kind of matches up with the style of everything

0:18:50.119 --> 0:18:53.760
<v Speaker 1>else and doesn't stand out. But you do still see

0:18:53.760 --> 0:18:57.040
<v Speaker 1>some art horror films like Slip Through, and there's some

0:18:57.080 --> 0:18:59.760
<v Speaker 1>great examples of that for sure, But yeah, this is

0:18:59.760 --> 0:19:01.719
<v Speaker 1>a very artistic vision here. Well.

0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:04.600
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I think horror films are often thought of as

0:19:04.640 --> 0:19:07.160
<v Speaker 2>a cash grab, and in many cases they are because

0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:11.040
<v Speaker 2>horror films are, for the most part, relatively cheap to make,

0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:15.080
<v Speaker 2>and they tend to gross a lot more than their budgets.

0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:17.000
<v Speaker 2>But you know, something that might be true of a

0:19:17.000 --> 0:19:18.920
<v Speaker 2>lot of entries in a genre is of course never

0:19:18.960 --> 0:19:20.080
<v Speaker 2>true of all right.

0:19:20.200 --> 0:19:23.320
<v Speaker 1>Right, So again, there's a great interview with Obayashi and

0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:26.840
<v Speaker 1>his daughter on the Criterion collection disc and I highly

0:19:26.880 --> 0:19:29.840
<v Speaker 1>recommend folks to check that out. But because it also

0:19:29.920 --> 0:19:32.680
<v Speaker 1>has a lot of interesting stills, behind the scenes photos

0:19:32.720 --> 0:19:35.720
<v Speaker 1>and so forth, And they run through several aspects of

0:19:35.760 --> 0:19:38.359
<v Speaker 1>the making of and the reception of the film, and

0:19:38.400 --> 0:19:39.800
<v Speaker 1>I just want to go through a few things that

0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:41.760
<v Speaker 1>really stood out to me and I think are important

0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:44.840
<v Speaker 1>for understanding how this film came together and then how

0:19:44.880 --> 0:19:49.600
<v Speaker 1>it was interpreted. So he says that at the time,

0:19:50.280 --> 0:19:52.680
<v Speaker 1>so we would be dealing with I think at the time,

0:19:52.760 --> 0:19:56.840
<v Speaker 1>like mid seventies Japan. He said that cinema was pretty

0:19:56.920 --> 0:19:59.679
<v Speaker 1>much in decline, in that young people did not go

0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:03.760
<v Speaker 1>to them movies. TV was what was really in and

0:20:03.800 --> 0:20:05.840
<v Speaker 1>even his daughter, who would apparently go with him to

0:20:05.920 --> 0:20:08.200
<v Speaker 1>the theater all the time, would comment that Japanese films

0:20:08.200 --> 0:20:12.320
<v Speaker 1>were boring, Like when he asked her what kind of

0:20:12.359 --> 0:20:14.560
<v Speaker 1>film Shouldaddy make, she would be like, Oh, don't make

0:20:15.000 --> 0:20:18.360
<v Speaker 1>a movie, Daddy, Japanese films are boring. So a lot

0:20:18.359 --> 0:20:21.320
<v Speaker 1>of what he's doing is definitely trying to create something different,

0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:22.000
<v Speaker 1>something new.

0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:24.159
<v Speaker 2>Bummer shut down by your child.

0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:28.159
<v Speaker 1>But he says that a lot of aspiring filmmakers at

0:20:28.160 --> 0:20:31.520
<v Speaker 1>the time, like himself, didn't want to do commercials, but

0:20:31.880 --> 0:20:34.160
<v Speaker 1>he thought differently. He seems to have thought differently about

0:20:34.160 --> 0:20:36.640
<v Speaker 1>a lot of things. He points out that the big

0:20:36.640 --> 0:20:39.440
<v Speaker 1>thing is there was money in commercials, and the key

0:20:39.440 --> 0:20:41.760
<v Speaker 1>here is not that you would make a lot of money,

0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:43.600
<v Speaker 1>and I think that may have also been true, but

0:20:43.760 --> 0:20:46.760
<v Speaker 1>more to the point, you could actually work with a budget.

0:20:46.960 --> 0:20:50.360
<v Speaker 1>So again, like the Japanese cinematic world, according to him,

0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:52.359
<v Speaker 1>was sort of shrinking at the time. You couldn't get

0:20:52.400 --> 0:20:55.320
<v Speaker 1>these big budgets, but you could go into doing these

0:20:55.320 --> 0:20:59.440
<v Speaker 1>commercials and there was money there. He says that ultimately

0:20:59.480 --> 0:21:02.960
<v Speaker 1>the content might be meaningless, but you could experiment, you

0:21:03.000 --> 0:21:05.280
<v Speaker 1>could chase the visual expression of the thing.

0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:08.400
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and you see a lot of directors who eventually

0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:11.080
<v Speaker 2>end up making movies in all cultures. It's an American

0:21:11.119 --> 0:21:14.600
<v Speaker 2>cinema two that you know, they start in commercials and

0:21:14.720 --> 0:21:16.840
<v Speaker 2>also music videos. That used to be a big thing

0:21:16.880 --> 0:21:19.399
<v Speaker 2>because it was a place to just like work on techniques.

0:21:19.520 --> 0:21:23.439
<v Speaker 2>You know, whatever the actual content is, you're just experimenting

0:21:23.480 --> 0:21:28.680
<v Speaker 2>with ways of showing things and learning the craft that way. Yeah.

0:21:28.800 --> 0:21:33.760
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, He speaks in the interview of turning experimentation into expression,

0:21:34.280 --> 0:21:36.280
<v Speaker 1>and that really seems to have been a big part

0:21:36.280 --> 0:21:38.320
<v Speaker 1>of his IMO at the time. Certainly in the production

0:21:38.400 --> 0:21:43.000
<v Speaker 1>of House, which didn't even have any storyboards. They intentionally

0:21:43.040 --> 0:21:46.040
<v Speaker 1>they did not do storyboards for it. They would just

0:21:46.200 --> 0:21:50.159
<v Speaker 1>try things out and just like throw everything against the

0:21:50.200 --> 0:21:52.360
<v Speaker 1>wall and see what they could get. I believe it's

0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:55.399
<v Speaker 1>Tie West and the extra that points out that, like

0:21:55.440 --> 0:22:00.399
<v Speaker 1>they use just basically every in camera technique imaginable film.

0:22:00.840 --> 0:22:03.520
<v Speaker 2>That makes sense because I would say that the visual

0:22:03.600 --> 0:22:07.200
<v Speaker 2>style of the finished product is incredibly chaotic. There are

0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:12.280
<v Speaker 2>just tons of different techniques on display, sometimes seemingly at random.

0:22:13.200 --> 0:22:14.880
<v Speaker 2>I want to talk about this later when we get

0:22:14.880 --> 0:22:19.240
<v Speaker 2>into discussing the plot, the sometimes the violation of cinematic

0:22:19.280 --> 0:22:24.040
<v Speaker 2>norms that takes place throughout the movie, but also in

0:22:24.119 --> 0:22:27.040
<v Speaker 2>terms of special effects, in terms of editing techniques, like

0:22:27.119 --> 0:22:30.600
<v Speaker 2>it all just is just crazy different visual stuff happening

0:22:30.600 --> 0:22:34.120
<v Speaker 2>all the time that does not feel part of an

0:22:34.160 --> 0:22:38.320
<v Speaker 2>attempt to select a particular visual texture that like a

0:22:38.320 --> 0:22:41.400
<v Speaker 2>lot of films do, Like they just have totally different

0:22:41.440 --> 0:22:44.119
<v Speaker 2>looking effects and styles happening back to back.

0:22:44.640 --> 0:22:48.399
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. He mentions like having great admiration for filmmakers like Krosawa,

0:22:48.760 --> 0:22:53.800
<v Speaker 1>but then also wondering what would irritate Carrossow, pursuing that

0:22:53.840 --> 0:23:01.119
<v Speaker 1>line of thinking, that's great. So anyway, Toho Studios famously

0:23:01.200 --> 0:23:04.320
<v Speaker 1>was inspired by Jaws for this one. This is often

0:23:04.359 --> 0:23:05.879
<v Speaker 1>just thrown out there. It's like this was this was

0:23:05.920 --> 0:23:07.679
<v Speaker 1>an attempt to catch it on Jows. Well sort of

0:23:07.800 --> 0:23:11.560
<v Speaker 1>kind of, at least from Toho's position. Established studio again

0:23:11.600 --> 0:23:13.840
<v Speaker 1>realizes they need to they need to do something fresh,

0:23:13.880 --> 0:23:15.520
<v Speaker 1>and they look over and they say, oh, well, this

0:23:15.600 --> 0:23:19.879
<v Speaker 1>Steven Spielberg guy just made like this enormously successful shark movie,

0:23:20.000 --> 0:23:22.879
<v Speaker 1>huge hit from the mind of a young emerging talent.

0:23:23.280 --> 0:23:25.920
<v Speaker 1>Let's get one of those young emerging talents and get

0:23:25.920 --> 0:23:27.399
<v Speaker 1>them to make us a Jaws.

0:23:28.040 --> 0:23:31.280
<v Speaker 2>And of course, Jaws did lead to numerous ripoffs and

0:23:31.320 --> 0:23:34.040
<v Speaker 2>copycats in the American market and all around the world.

0:23:34.119 --> 0:23:36.920
<v Speaker 2>I mean, you can find the Italian Jaws ripoffs, American

0:23:37.000 --> 0:23:39.720
<v Speaker 2>Jaws ripoffs, they're they're popping off all over the place.

0:23:39.840 --> 0:23:41.640
<v Speaker 2>Jaws made a lot of money, and much like when

0:23:41.680 --> 0:23:43.679
<v Speaker 2>Star Wars made a lot of money, it spawned an

0:23:43.800 --> 0:23:46.880
<v Speaker 2>endless series of copycats. So did Jaws. So you would

0:23:46.880 --> 0:23:49.800
<v Speaker 2>get Jaws with a bear Jaws. Other people would just

0:23:49.840 --> 0:23:52.760
<v Speaker 2>do shark you know, shark copycat movies, Jaws with a

0:23:52.840 --> 0:23:55.600
<v Speaker 2>killer whale. Uh, there are so many of these.

0:23:55.920 --> 0:23:58.160
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And Obiasci points out that that's how the grown

0:23:58.240 --> 0:24:01.280
<v Speaker 1>up mind works, especially like the corporate mind is. Like

0:24:01.920 --> 0:24:03.600
<v Speaker 1>shark attack films are in, let's do a bear attack.

0:24:03.680 --> 0:24:06.040
<v Speaker 1>Let's do it, you know whatever, animal attack. And that's

0:24:06.119 --> 0:24:07.960
<v Speaker 1>the reason he turned to his ten year old daughter

0:24:08.359 --> 0:24:12.120
<v Speaker 1>for this fresh inspiration, like what what does she want

0:24:12.160 --> 0:24:14.760
<v Speaker 1>me to make a movie about? And so she gives

0:24:14.800 --> 0:24:17.760
<v Speaker 1>him this list of ideas. He adds this, you know,

0:24:17.840 --> 0:24:20.439
<v Speaker 1>basic ghost story premise because he says, you can't have

0:24:20.480 --> 0:24:22.800
<v Speaker 1>the house eating people for no reason. It's got to

0:24:22.840 --> 0:24:25.280
<v Speaker 1>be a story reason. And then he hands this off

0:24:25.320 --> 0:24:27.119
<v Speaker 1>to the screenwriter and they have a script.

0:24:27.359 --> 0:24:30.080
<v Speaker 2>In a way, it's so beautiful just to imagine taking

0:24:30.119 --> 0:24:33.720
<v Speaker 2>all of your, like your kid's weirdest, most messed up

0:24:33.760 --> 0:24:36.399
<v Speaker 2>ideas and just saying that's gonna it's in the movie.

0:24:36.480 --> 0:24:38.600
<v Speaker 2>In the style of the Key and Peel sketch for

0:24:38.600 --> 0:24:41.280
<v Speaker 2>Gremlins too, It's just very much it's in the movie.

0:24:41.800 --> 0:24:45.880
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. So it's impressive that the screenplay was green lit

0:24:45.880 --> 0:24:48.119
<v Speaker 1>by Toho. They're like, all right, let's do it. But

0:24:48.160 --> 0:24:50.240
<v Speaker 1>there was still apparently a long run up to actually

0:24:50.240 --> 0:24:51.640
<v Speaker 1>shooting the movie. I think it was like a couple

0:24:51.680 --> 0:24:56.200
<v Speaker 1>of years. And so during this time they produced and

0:24:56.240 --> 0:25:01.200
<v Speaker 1>sold the soundtrack, They produced and sold a novelation, there

0:25:01.240 --> 0:25:03.800
<v Speaker 1>was a radio play of it. I was really surprised

0:25:03.800 --> 0:25:06.720
<v Speaker 1>by all of this. I'm often not cute into all

0:25:06.760 --> 0:25:10.880
<v Speaker 1>of the gears of getting you know, the film from

0:25:10.920 --> 0:25:14.560
<v Speaker 1>the screenplay stage to the production and release stage, but

0:25:14.880 --> 0:25:17.240
<v Speaker 1>you know, it sounds like Obyashi put a lot of

0:25:17.240 --> 0:25:19.360
<v Speaker 1>effort in just like all right, let's do all these things.

0:25:19.520 --> 0:25:23.719
<v Speaker 1>Sort of to ensure that Toho keeps it greenlit and

0:25:23.720 --> 0:25:25.760
<v Speaker 1>and knows that it's coming. He talks about like printing

0:25:25.840 --> 0:25:29.080
<v Speaker 1>up business cards with the movie poster on it and

0:25:29.119 --> 0:25:31.160
<v Speaker 1>handing them out and saying Toho is making this movie,

0:25:31.160 --> 0:25:34.359
<v Speaker 1>TOAs making this movie, and so forth. And I also

0:25:34.400 --> 0:25:37.240
<v Speaker 1>have to to say that, like in the interview and

0:25:37.280 --> 0:25:39.919
<v Speaker 1>the various photos, it's like it's very clear that Obyashi

0:25:40.080 --> 0:25:44.040
<v Speaker 1>was a very flashy, very creative, you know again it's

0:25:44.280 --> 0:25:47.879
<v Speaker 1>experimental and establishment bucking young director, but also one who

0:25:48.000 --> 0:25:51.199
<v Speaker 1>seemed to be very personable with cast and crew, to

0:25:51.280 --> 0:25:53.640
<v Speaker 1>the point that he has shares this story about how

0:25:54.040 --> 0:25:57.960
<v Speaker 1>the lighting team ends up really coming around to him

0:25:58.280 --> 0:26:01.240
<v Speaker 1>because he addressed them by their names, and they this

0:26:01.320 --> 0:26:04.720
<v Speaker 1>had never happened before in the production of Toho films.

0:26:04.720 --> 0:26:06.800
<v Speaker 1>They were just they were never addressed by name, and like,

0:26:06.920 --> 0:26:09.280
<v Speaker 1>so he brought an entirely different vibe to the production.

0:26:09.880 --> 0:26:12.119
<v Speaker 1>And he also says that he made a point of

0:26:12.160 --> 0:26:14.920
<v Speaker 1>wearing a different outfit every day in order to sort

0:26:14.920 --> 0:26:16.960
<v Speaker 1>of keep the vibe up. So there are all these

0:26:17.080 --> 0:26:19.960
<v Speaker 1>interesting photos of him in various flashy outfits. He's often

0:26:20.000 --> 0:26:22.160
<v Speaker 1>got sunglasses on, very hip hoocking dude.

0:26:22.720 --> 0:26:26.040
<v Speaker 2>I think I read something about how in order to

0:26:26.920 --> 0:26:29.840
<v Speaker 2>get people in the feeling of a scene in the movie,

0:26:29.920 --> 0:26:32.440
<v Speaker 2>he would like play music while they were shooting.

0:26:32.720 --> 0:26:34.960
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Yeah, it would kind of like, I think, dance

0:26:35.000 --> 0:26:38.520
<v Speaker 1>with everyone, that sort of thing. Now. Obyashi was born

0:26:38.640 --> 0:26:41.720
<v Speaker 1>in Hiroshima, and all of his childhood friends, he says,

0:26:41.760 --> 0:26:45.080
<v Speaker 1>died as a result of the bombing, and he also

0:26:45.160 --> 0:26:47.280
<v Speaker 1>makes a point of of, you know, pointing out that

0:26:47.560 --> 0:26:51.440
<v Speaker 1>he incorporates elements of this into this picture as well

0:26:51.440 --> 0:26:55.080
<v Speaker 1>into the anti war themes and other movies that he

0:26:55.080 --> 0:26:58.520
<v Speaker 1>would go on to direct. So he speaks of the

0:26:59.000 --> 0:27:01.879
<v Speaker 1>in this interview, he talked about the youth in this film.

0:27:02.440 --> 0:27:04.760
<v Speaker 1>The Seven Girls, as we'll get into that are a key.

0:27:05.600 --> 0:27:08.040
<v Speaker 1>So he was about forty at the time, and he

0:27:08.119 --> 0:27:10.840
<v Speaker 1>talks about like the young people being too young to

0:27:11.280 --> 0:27:13.720
<v Speaker 1>really know what war is and as a result to

0:27:13.800 --> 0:27:17.600
<v Speaker 1>fully appreciate the joy of peace. And I thought this

0:27:17.760 --> 0:27:20.720
<v Speaker 1>was really interesting. I have to hear this after watching

0:27:20.720 --> 0:27:24.719
<v Speaker 1>the film, because yeah, you think about the tension in

0:27:24.760 --> 0:27:27.199
<v Speaker 1>this movie that's president most harror movies, like the space

0:27:27.240 --> 0:27:31.720
<v Speaker 1>between and leading up to the horrible things, and there

0:27:31.800 --> 0:27:37.240
<v Speaker 1>is like this unnatural, almost sickeningly sweet aspect to the sweetness,

0:27:38.080 --> 0:27:42.000
<v Speaker 1>like it's artificial sweetener leading up to those moments that

0:27:42.080 --> 0:27:46.200
<v Speaker 1>you know were coming. And it absolutely works in house

0:27:46.320 --> 0:27:49.480
<v Speaker 1>like it like I felt myself, you know, you know,

0:27:49.520 --> 0:27:52.040
<v Speaker 1>getting chill bumps because I knew something terrible was going

0:27:52.080 --> 0:27:54.320
<v Speaker 1>to happen, which I have to say wasn't what I

0:27:54.440 --> 0:27:56.800
<v Speaker 1>quite expected from the movie. Like I was expecting you know,

0:27:57.000 --> 0:28:01.280
<v Speaker 1>psychotronic weirdness and craziness and and all that, and I

0:28:01.440 --> 0:28:04.719
<v Speaker 1>didn't really expect the scary parts to be scary or

0:28:04.760 --> 0:28:06.480
<v Speaker 1>to feel that the tension leading.

0:28:06.320 --> 0:28:09.800
<v Speaker 2>Up to them. Yeah, well, there is a I would

0:28:09.800 --> 0:28:13.280
<v Speaker 2>say this movie is almost always in some ways trying

0:28:13.280 --> 0:28:16.560
<v Speaker 2>to subvert its own tone. So there are scenes that

0:28:17.320 --> 0:28:21.719
<v Speaker 2>are very ominous in what's happening, or they're conveying dark

0:28:22.000 --> 0:28:26.040
<v Speaker 2>or sad or scary information. And a lot of these

0:28:26.080 --> 0:28:29.000
<v Speaker 2>scenes will have things about like the sights and sounds

0:28:29.000 --> 0:28:31.640
<v Speaker 2>of the scene that are lighthearted and funny, like it'll

0:28:31.680 --> 0:28:36.080
<v Speaker 2>play jolly, sort of happy music while something really sad

0:28:36.240 --> 0:28:40.880
<v Speaker 2>or scary is happening. And then it'll do the opposite too,

0:28:41.000 --> 0:28:43.680
<v Speaker 2>something very light hearted is happening on screen, but there

0:28:43.720 --> 0:28:46.320
<v Speaker 2>will be things about it that make it very ominous

0:28:46.680 --> 0:28:47.720
<v Speaker 2>and unsettling.

0:28:48.120 --> 0:28:52.400
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, as mentioned earlier, critics hated it

0:28:52.440 --> 0:28:55.120
<v Speaker 1>at the time, many didn't even review it, and those

0:28:55.160 --> 0:28:58.080
<v Speaker 1>that did often were just very savage about it all.

0:28:58.600 --> 0:29:01.200
<v Speaker 1>But is he stressed in the interview, young people loved it.

0:29:01.520 --> 0:29:04.560
<v Speaker 1>He says like, like ten through thirteen were the ages

0:29:04.600 --> 0:29:07.120
<v Speaker 1>of people that were going out and seeing this movie.

0:29:07.080 --> 0:29:09.080
<v Speaker 2>And too young for this movie. I don't know, I

0:29:09.120 --> 0:29:09.400
<v Speaker 2>don't know.

0:29:09.440 --> 0:29:11.960
<v Speaker 1>We had an off mike discussion like when is the

0:29:12.000 --> 0:29:16.520
<v Speaker 1>appropriate age to see House? And I I haven't no answers,

0:29:16.600 --> 0:29:19.680
<v Speaker 1>but hard to say ten to thirteen. I guess at

0:29:19.760 --> 0:29:23.000
<v Speaker 1>least in the late seventies in Japan. But anyway, Yeah,

0:29:23.040 --> 0:29:26.720
<v Speaker 1>young people loved it, made it a success in a way,

0:29:26.880 --> 0:29:31.360
<v Speaker 1>kind of to the disappointment of the studio establishment. And

0:29:31.400 --> 0:29:33.920
<v Speaker 1>then ultimately some of the people who loved it were

0:29:34.000 --> 0:29:37.680
<v Speaker 1>future filmmakers. The people who loved it were future film critics,

0:29:38.000 --> 0:29:40.560
<v Speaker 1>and so it would eventually be held up as one

0:29:40.600 --> 0:29:45.000
<v Speaker 1>of the great Japanese horror movies and ultimately, like we've

0:29:45.040 --> 0:29:49.720
<v Speaker 1>been saying, one of the great weird films of global cinema. So, Obiyoshi,

0:29:49.720 --> 0:29:53.320
<v Speaker 1>you've followed up House with a long filmography that ultimately

0:29:53.360 --> 0:29:57.480
<v Speaker 1>broadened his mainstream appeal, including several less nutty coming of

0:29:57.520 --> 0:30:00.920
<v Speaker 1>age movies, but he didn't abandon horror. His subsequent movies

0:30:00.960 --> 0:30:04.280
<v Speaker 1>also include nineteen eighty two's Cute Devil, nineteen eighty three's

0:30:04.400 --> 0:30:08.480
<v Speaker 1>Legend of the Cat Monster, nineteen eighty sevens The Forbidden Classroom,

0:30:08.800 --> 0:30:13.800
<v Speaker 1>and nineteen eighty eight's The Discarnates. The same year as House,

0:30:14.000 --> 0:30:16.360
<v Speaker 1>in seventy seventy, also made The Visitor in the Eye.

0:30:16.400 --> 0:30:21.280
<v Speaker 1>This was a live action manga adaptation, and his twenty

0:30:21.320 --> 0:30:25.760
<v Speaker 1>seventeen anti war film Hanagatami was actually forty years in

0:30:25.800 --> 0:30:28.240
<v Speaker 1>the making. He was actually working on the script for

0:30:28.320 --> 0:30:33.040
<v Speaker 1>that film with the screenwriter Katsura right before House. His

0:30:33.160 --> 0:30:36.680
<v Speaker 1>last film was twenty nineteen's Labyrinth of Cinema, and again.

0:30:36.760 --> 0:30:42.040
<v Speaker 1>He died in twenty twenty. Now his daughter is Chigumi Ogashi.

0:30:42.760 --> 0:30:45.640
<v Speaker 1>She actually appears in the movie. She's the shoe store girl.

0:30:46.400 --> 0:30:49.840
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, yeah. There's a scene outside like a cobbler's shop,

0:30:49.880 --> 0:30:53.120
<v Speaker 2>shoemaker shop, and there is an old man and the

0:30:53.160 --> 0:30:56.320
<v Speaker 2>girl like hammering on some shoe soles. I think, I

0:30:56.320 --> 0:30:59.640
<v Speaker 2>think this is where mister Togo, the teacher in the

0:30:59.680 --> 0:31:02.120
<v Speaker 2>movie it's a bucket stuck on his butt and has

0:31:02.160 --> 0:31:03.160
<v Speaker 2>to go to the hospital.

0:31:03.600 --> 0:31:06.320
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, in one of the goof here, just like Monty

0:31:06.360 --> 0:31:10.400
<v Speaker 1>python S sequences that occur in the film. Yeah, it's

0:31:10.440 --> 0:31:17.720
<v Speaker 1>just complete nuttiness, complete slapstick Charlie Chaplin esque and then

0:31:17.800 --> 0:31:20.800
<v Speaker 1>some I guess ye, but yeah, keep a lookout for her.

0:31:21.240 --> 0:31:24.080
<v Speaker 2>And bucket butt scene is Yeah, it's powerful.

0:31:25.200 --> 0:31:27.720
<v Speaker 1>Almost as good as the banana scene. Later on, we'll

0:31:27.760 --> 0:31:30.920
<v Speaker 1>get to that, okay, and then the screenplay proper I

0:31:31.000 --> 0:31:34.160
<v Speaker 1>mentioned Katsura. This is Chiho Katsura, who lived nineteen twenty

0:31:34.240 --> 0:31:39.400
<v Speaker 1>nine through twenty twenty so. He was a Japanese screenwriter, novelist, translator,

0:31:39.440 --> 0:31:42.600
<v Speaker 1>and film critic whose work, based on what I could

0:31:42.600 --> 0:31:45.400
<v Speaker 1>see of his available filmography, included a great deal of

0:31:45.600 --> 0:31:48.240
<v Speaker 1>Japanese pink he erotic films, but he also worked in

0:31:48.280 --> 0:31:51.520
<v Speaker 1>other genres, including at least a couple of family films.

0:31:51.840 --> 0:31:55.640
<v Speaker 1>He worked with Obashi on several mainstream films, including again

0:31:55.720 --> 0:32:00.160
<v Speaker 1>twenty seventeen's Hanaga Tommy. All right, but now we should

0:32:00.200 --> 0:32:04.360
<v Speaker 1>mentioned that really on the acting front, we have seven

0:32:04.800 --> 0:32:09.520
<v Speaker 1>core characters. These are the seven girls. Their names are

0:32:09.800 --> 0:32:17.560
<v Speaker 1>gorgeous kung Fu Fantasy prof or Professor Mac, which is

0:32:17.560 --> 0:32:19.480
<v Speaker 1>short for stomach because she likes food.

0:32:19.680 --> 0:32:21.840
<v Speaker 2>Oh I didn't, I didn't get Mac.

0:32:22.080 --> 0:32:25.920
<v Speaker 1>It took a while for me to put that together. Okay, Mac, Melody,

0:32:26.400 --> 0:32:30.120
<v Speaker 1>and sweet, and they are all exactly what their names imply.

0:32:30.840 --> 0:32:34.280
<v Speaker 2>Right, So they're named after their trades. So Gorgeous is

0:32:34.280 --> 0:32:37.240
<v Speaker 2>supposed to be beautiful. Kung Fu is the jock of

0:32:37.280 --> 0:32:39.920
<v Speaker 2>the group. She can like she can do sports and

0:32:40.120 --> 0:32:44.200
<v Speaker 2>kung fu, and she's very decisive and active. Fantasy is

0:32:44.200 --> 0:32:47.800
<v Speaker 2>a day dreamer. She's Gorgeous's best friend, and she likes

0:32:47.840 --> 0:32:51.480
<v Speaker 2>to I don't know, she's often daydreaming, though most of

0:32:51.520 --> 0:32:54.840
<v Speaker 2>the things in the movie where it's like is she daydreaming? No,

0:32:54.920 --> 0:33:00.720
<v Speaker 2>they're actually happening. Prof is very smart and logical, and

0:33:00.760 --> 0:33:03.479
<v Speaker 2>she often has a book in her hand. Mac is

0:33:03.520 --> 0:33:07.120
<v Speaker 2>always hungry to a ridiculous extent, Like I think literally

0:33:07.160 --> 0:33:09.800
<v Speaker 2>every single line she says in the movie is like

0:33:09.960 --> 0:33:12.440
<v Speaker 2>I am eating now, yummy, you know, I want I

0:33:12.480 --> 0:33:13.320
<v Speaker 2>want a watermelon.

0:33:14.480 --> 0:33:17.040
<v Speaker 1>She just has a great metabolism, though I have to stress, like,

0:33:17.080 --> 0:33:20.000
<v Speaker 1>it's not like she's overweight or depicted as such, Like

0:33:20.040 --> 0:33:21.360
<v Speaker 1>she just is hungry all the time.

0:33:21.600 --> 0:33:25.880
<v Speaker 2>Mac Mac loves food and Melody loves music. She plays

0:33:25.920 --> 0:33:28.440
<v Speaker 2>the guitar. I think we see her with a violin case,

0:33:28.480 --> 0:33:32.080
<v Speaker 2>and she plays the piano. There's a there's a very

0:33:32.160 --> 0:33:35.400
<v Speaker 2>unfortunate piano scene where she gets her fingers bitten off.

0:33:35.680 --> 0:33:38.960
<v Speaker 2>And then there is Sweet, who is You might think

0:33:38.960 --> 0:33:41.360
<v Speaker 2>Sweet is the one who is into desserts, but no,

0:33:41.480 --> 0:33:44.440
<v Speaker 2>that's Mac. Sweet is named so because she is friendly

0:33:44.560 --> 0:33:46.200
<v Speaker 2>and like gentle and kind.

0:33:46.680 --> 0:33:49.040
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, still, it's kind of like the Seven Dwarfs, right,

0:33:49.280 --> 0:33:52.240
<v Speaker 1>Like their names, yeah tell you who they are for

0:33:52.280 --> 0:33:58.560
<v Speaker 1>the most part, except what is Doc. Yeah, I don't

0:33:58.560 --> 0:34:01.840
<v Speaker 1>know what Doc Steal is, But yeah, these these gals

0:34:01.960 --> 0:34:04.880
<v Speaker 1>names all make sense. And and apparently the number seven

0:34:05.000 --> 0:34:08.040
<v Speaker 1>was was important Togo actually because like teams of seven

0:34:08.520 --> 0:34:14.120
<v Speaker 1>are or were common in Japan. Now. In casting the

0:34:14.160 --> 0:34:17.760
<v Speaker 1>Seven Girls, he says that, like he pretty much depended

0:34:17.800 --> 0:34:20.200
<v Speaker 1>on just casting girls that he'd worked with in his

0:34:20.239 --> 0:34:23.600
<v Speaker 1>commercial work, so a lot of them were, you know,

0:34:23.719 --> 0:34:30.080
<v Speaker 1>models with very limited acting experience. There's basically basically gorgeous.

0:34:30.120 --> 0:34:33.279
<v Speaker 1>I think it's the only one who had had an

0:34:33.280 --> 0:34:35.759
<v Speaker 1>acting career that was already like emotion, but it was

0:34:35.800 --> 0:34:40.279
<v Speaker 1>still still very early. So he but he says, like

0:34:40.320 --> 0:34:42.160
<v Speaker 1>this is also an important part of the vibe, Like

0:34:42.200 --> 0:34:46.040
<v Speaker 1>the acting from these girls is kind of amateurish and

0:34:46.239 --> 0:34:51.120
<v Speaker 1>it doesn't feel polished or professional, but that, like other

0:34:51.160 --> 0:34:54.279
<v Speaker 1>aspects of the film are intentional, Like that's part of

0:34:54.320 --> 0:34:55.600
<v Speaker 1>the intended fabric of the thing.

0:34:56.080 --> 0:34:57.960
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, there are scenes in the movie that have an

0:34:57.960 --> 0:35:00.960
<v Speaker 2>almost sketch comedy kind to feel, if you know what

0:35:01.000 --> 0:35:05.359
<v Speaker 2>I mean, Like characters kind of like stumbling over each

0:35:05.360 --> 0:35:08.480
<v Speaker 2>other with their lines, talking over other people's lines, and

0:35:08.560 --> 0:35:13.600
<v Speaker 2>like sometimes maybe it seems like they're improvising, but it

0:35:14.640 --> 0:35:17.160
<v Speaker 2>is clearly part of the fabric of the movie. It's

0:35:16.960 --> 0:35:21.600
<v Speaker 2>what they're trying to create. I think somehow it simultaneously

0:35:21.680 --> 0:35:25.680
<v Speaker 2>makes the movie funnier but also makes the characters somehow

0:35:25.680 --> 0:35:29.000
<v Speaker 2>feel more vulnerable when they are threatened by the evil

0:35:29.040 --> 0:35:30.000
<v Speaker 2>magic of the house.

0:35:30.680 --> 0:35:34.319
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Absolutely, and in a way that maybe comparable to

0:35:34.520 --> 0:35:39.719
<v Speaker 1>how sometimes your b horror movies are more terrifying, in

0:35:39.840 --> 0:35:42.840
<v Speaker 1>that they feel more like it's documentary footage, you know,

0:35:43.000 --> 0:35:46.640
<v Speaker 1>like they're not actors, and it can, Yeah, it can

0:35:46.680 --> 0:35:50.080
<v Speaker 1>sort of warp your expectations and experience of watching it.

0:35:50.719 --> 0:35:55.080
<v Speaker 1>So anyway, I'm not going to list all seven actresses

0:35:55.120 --> 0:35:57.920
<v Speaker 1>who play the seven Girls. A lot of them again

0:35:58.000 --> 0:36:00.719
<v Speaker 1>were new to acting and didn't necessary, you know, stick

0:36:00.760 --> 0:36:03.440
<v Speaker 1>around for more acting or maybe only have a handful

0:36:03.440 --> 0:36:07.200
<v Speaker 1>of credits. But the key exception is the actor who

0:36:07.200 --> 0:36:12.160
<v Speaker 1>plays Gorgeous. This is Kamiko Ikigami born nineteen fifty nine,

0:36:12.400 --> 0:36:15.359
<v Speaker 1>American born Japanese actress. She'd been acting for a few

0:36:15.440 --> 0:36:17.920
<v Speaker 1>years at this point, having made her TV and film

0:36:17.920 --> 0:36:22.080
<v Speaker 1>debuts in seventy five. Her subsequent films include nineteen seventy

0:36:22.160 --> 0:36:25.360
<v Speaker 1>nine's The Man Who Stole the Sun, The Acclaim, nineteen

0:36:25.400 --> 0:36:29.040
<v Speaker 1>eighty three drama Yokiro, for which she was nominated for

0:36:29.080 --> 0:36:32.680
<v Speaker 1>a Japanese Academy Award, and nineteen ninety three's Lone Wolf

0:36:32.719 --> 0:36:34.400
<v Speaker 1>and Cub The Final Conflict.

0:36:34.920 --> 0:36:37.920
<v Speaker 2>Now, the seven main girls are sort of an ensemble

0:36:38.120 --> 0:36:40.799
<v Speaker 2>of heroes, but I'd say there I'd also say there

0:36:40.800 --> 0:36:43.360
<v Speaker 2>are sort of two main protagonists of the movie, and

0:36:43.360 --> 0:36:46.080
<v Speaker 2>that is Gorgeous, but also her best friend Fantasy.

0:36:46.719 --> 0:36:51.120
<v Speaker 1>Fantasy, Yeah, Fantasy is very key. Komiko Oba born nineteen

0:36:51.160 --> 0:36:54.160
<v Speaker 1>sixty plays this role. I'm also a huge fan of

0:36:54.239 --> 0:36:58.759
<v Speaker 1>kung Fu. I thought Mickey Jimbo born nineteen sixty was

0:36:58.800 --> 0:36:59.440
<v Speaker 1>great in this.

0:37:01.520 --> 0:37:02.520
<v Speaker 2>Ooh, you're so cool.

0:37:02.880 --> 0:37:06.000
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, she is so cool, and she can kick ghosts.

0:37:06.400 --> 0:37:09.320
<v Speaker 2>She can, she does. In fact, she can kick ghosts

0:37:09.320 --> 0:37:11.280
<v Speaker 2>even without her head attached to her body.

0:37:12.680 --> 0:37:15.560
<v Speaker 1>But ultimately, yeah, it's an ensemble and all the girls

0:37:15.560 --> 0:37:23.120
<v Speaker 1>are great. They're all wonderful. I love their caricatures. It's fabulous. Yeah,

0:37:23.160 --> 0:37:24.719
<v Speaker 1>but again, most of them didn't have a lot of

0:37:24.760 --> 0:37:25.560
<v Speaker 1>acting experience.

0:37:25.640 --> 0:37:25.879
<v Speaker 2>Really.

0:37:25.920 --> 0:37:29.080
<v Speaker 1>The most established actor in the whole mix is the

0:37:29.120 --> 0:37:33.560
<v Speaker 1>actor playing the Auntie who they are visiting. Often credit

0:37:33.719 --> 0:37:39.719
<v Speaker 1>is Auntie Carrie House, so I guess her last name

0:37:39.760 --> 0:37:44.880
<v Speaker 1>is House anyway, played by Yoko Minamita. She lived nineteen

0:37:44.920 --> 0:37:47.920
<v Speaker 1>thirty three through two thousand and nine, a Japanese actress,

0:37:47.960 --> 0:37:51.440
<v Speaker 1>best known for this film, at least internationally, but with

0:37:51.480 --> 0:37:54.279
<v Speaker 1>credits going back to nineteen fifty two. So she was

0:37:54.320 --> 0:37:57.600
<v Speaker 1>a very established actor, but at the time, according to

0:37:57.640 --> 0:38:00.600
<v Speaker 1>the director, had trouble getting work in cinema, befitting her

0:38:00.600 --> 0:38:03.360
<v Speaker 1>status and her talent. Again, so like cinema seemed to

0:38:03.400 --> 0:38:07.279
<v Speaker 1>be down at the time in Japan, so but it

0:38:07.320 --> 0:38:08.840
<v Speaker 1>was it was still it was a big deal that

0:38:08.920 --> 0:38:11.919
<v Speaker 1>she took this role, not only because she had such

0:38:12.440 --> 0:38:14.839
<v Speaker 1>she was an established star, but Also, it was key

0:38:14.920 --> 0:38:16.800
<v Speaker 1>that she took the role of an older woman, according

0:38:16.800 --> 0:38:19.719
<v Speaker 1>to Obyashi, because in Japanese cinema, certainly at the time

0:38:20.080 --> 0:38:22.400
<v Speaker 1>and maybe still this is still the case, there was

0:38:22.440 --> 0:38:25.160
<v Speaker 1>no going back for an actor or actress once you

0:38:25.280 --> 0:38:28.759
<v Speaker 1>took an older person's role. Apparently it wasn't this wasn't

0:38:28.760 --> 0:38:31.759
<v Speaker 1>even necessarily like a double standard for women, as men

0:38:32.000 --> 0:38:36.120
<v Speaker 1>also couldn't keep playing younger characters as they aged.

0:38:36.160 --> 0:38:39.120
<v Speaker 2>If like they had taken a role previously in which

0:38:39.120 --> 0:38:41.280
<v Speaker 2>it was acknowledged they were playing an older character.

0:38:41.640 --> 0:38:44.919
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, like, once you take that older lady role, it's

0:38:45.000 --> 0:38:48.560
<v Speaker 1>like that's it. Now, now you play old ladies. There's

0:38:48.560 --> 0:38:50.160
<v Speaker 1>no sort of like midpoint where you can kind of

0:38:50.160 --> 0:38:53.160
<v Speaker 1>play both roles. But I have to say, she's tremendous

0:38:53.160 --> 0:38:53.360
<v Speaker 1>in this.

0:38:53.680 --> 0:38:58.080
<v Speaker 2>Oh, she's so good. She's so crazy. Yes, there's a

0:38:58.120 --> 0:39:01.560
<v Speaker 2>really great scene where she's eating some food I don't

0:39:01.560 --> 0:39:04.120
<v Speaker 2>remember what she's she's munching on something and then just

0:39:04.200 --> 0:39:06.200
<v Speaker 2>kind of like pops her mouth open and yeah, she

0:39:06.239 --> 0:39:08.319
<v Speaker 2>has an eyeball that lives in her mouth and she

0:39:08.560 --> 0:39:10.399
<v Speaker 2>kind of looks around at people with it and then

0:39:10.400 --> 0:39:12.600
<v Speaker 2>closes her mouth like te.

0:39:13.480 --> 0:39:15.640
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, there are times where she breaks the fourth wall,

0:39:15.880 --> 0:39:17.719
<v Speaker 1>and I mean you just kind of expect her to

0:39:17.760 --> 0:39:19.600
<v Speaker 1>craw out of the television at you at that point.

0:39:19.840 --> 0:39:21.040
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, she's great.

0:39:21.600 --> 0:39:24.080
<v Speaker 1>And really the only other main actor I would want

0:39:24.120 --> 0:39:27.160
<v Speaker 1>to mention is the cat and or cats. We don't

0:39:27.200 --> 0:39:30.840
<v Speaker 1>know how many cats played Blanche. You know, often you

0:39:30.880 --> 0:39:34.080
<v Speaker 1>have multiple cats in a role. But really, for the

0:39:34.080 --> 0:39:36.560
<v Speaker 1>most part, I was just struck by what a great

0:39:36.800 --> 0:39:42.239
<v Speaker 1>feline performance this is. Feline actors are notoriously difficult to

0:39:42.280 --> 0:39:45.920
<v Speaker 1>work with, and even in the best of cat related movies,

0:39:45.960 --> 0:39:48.520
<v Speaker 1>often look like they really would prefer to be out

0:39:49.000 --> 0:39:52.000
<v Speaker 1>of the shot and are more interested in like scurrying

0:39:52.040 --> 0:39:52.560
<v Speaker 1>off screen.

0:39:53.360 --> 0:39:55.560
<v Speaker 2>We were looking at some of those Blowfeld shots where

0:39:55.600 --> 0:39:58.000
<v Speaker 2>the cat looks like it's trying to be somewhere else.

0:39:58.239 --> 0:40:00.960
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so it's a lot of that obvious working with

0:40:01.000 --> 0:40:03.759
<v Speaker 1>cats is difficult, but there are plenty of shots in

0:40:03.800 --> 0:40:06.440
<v Speaker 1>this film where yeah, it's like Blanche just looks like

0:40:06.960 --> 0:40:08.160
<v Speaker 1>she's completely at ease.

0:40:08.200 --> 0:40:08.359
<v Speaker 2>Here.

0:40:08.880 --> 0:40:11.600
<v Speaker 1>Beautiful cat too, absolutely beautiful white cat, very.

0:40:11.560 --> 0:40:15.000
<v Speaker 2>Fluffy love Blanche. Hey, you didn't mention him, but there.

0:40:15.040 --> 0:40:17.239
<v Speaker 2>You also had a credit note for the guy who

0:40:17.320 --> 0:40:18.920
<v Speaker 2>like operates the Ramen stand.

0:40:19.560 --> 0:40:22.560
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, the guy credited as Ramen Trucker is a

0:40:22.800 --> 0:40:26.680
<v Speaker 1>Sraman trucker trucker. I yeah, okay, so maybe I don't

0:40:26.680 --> 0:40:28.520
<v Speaker 1>know if this is the I'm not sure exactly where

0:40:28.520 --> 0:40:31.680
<v Speaker 1>he shows up. But this is a guy named Shiochi

0:40:31.680 --> 0:40:36.319
<v Speaker 1>Heroes who lived nineteen Eighteeneen through nineteen ninety. Just a

0:40:36.320 --> 0:40:38.840
<v Speaker 1>bit player in a one time stunt man. But he

0:40:38.880 --> 0:40:41.279
<v Speaker 1>played King Kong in nineteen sixty three. He's King Kong

0:40:41.400 --> 0:40:42.200
<v Speaker 1>versus Godzilla.

0:40:42.360 --> 0:40:45.640
<v Speaker 2>So he's the guy, you don't there's a scene where

0:40:45.680 --> 0:40:49.360
<v Speaker 2>mister Togo, he's supposed to be coming to He doesn't

0:40:49.400 --> 0:40:51.719
<v Speaker 2>know that they're in trouble, but he they're waiting, the

0:40:51.760 --> 0:40:53.800
<v Speaker 2>girls are waiting for him to come to the rescue

0:40:53.840 --> 0:40:56.279
<v Speaker 2>at the house. And then we cut away to him

0:40:56.320 --> 0:40:58.640
<v Speaker 2>and he's like at a Ramen card eating Ramen. And

0:40:58.680 --> 0:41:01.080
<v Speaker 2>this is the guy I guess operating the Ramen cart.

0:41:01.280 --> 0:41:04.000
<v Speaker 2>I believe, so yeah, And we see him like stuff

0:41:04.040 --> 0:41:06.560
<v Speaker 2>a huge mass of noodles into his mouth and then

0:41:06.640 --> 0:41:09.120
<v Speaker 2>grin at the camera with the noodles in his mouth.

0:41:09.360 --> 0:41:20.400
<v Speaker 1>Yes, all right, now come into the music. The music

0:41:20.480 --> 0:41:26.480
<v Speaker 1>is important in house. A's say. Kobyashi has the composer credit.

0:41:26.560 --> 0:41:30.000
<v Speaker 1>He lived nineteen thirty three through twenty twenty one Japanese

0:41:30.000 --> 0:41:33.000
<v Speaker 1>composer in and occasional actor, and in fact he is

0:41:33.040 --> 0:41:36.640
<v Speaker 1>in this acting as well as the watermelon salesman.

0:41:36.880 --> 0:41:39.400
<v Speaker 2>That is an insanely weird role to go to somebody

0:41:39.400 --> 0:41:42.400
<v Speaker 2>who's not primarily an actor, like that is a weird,

0:41:42.760 --> 0:41:43.560
<v Speaker 2>weird role.

0:41:43.960 --> 0:41:47.880
<v Speaker 1>It is very memorable. Apparently it took some convincing to

0:41:47.880 --> 0:41:51.040
<v Speaker 1>bring him onto the project, but Obyashi was insistent that look,

0:41:51.320 --> 0:41:55.000
<v Speaker 1>a ghost story needs the sweetest, most beautiful music in

0:41:55.120 --> 0:41:57.360
<v Speaker 1>order to land properly, and that's why I need you

0:41:57.400 --> 0:41:59.839
<v Speaker 1>on the picture. And he was like, okay, okay, I'll

0:41:59.880 --> 0:42:01.560
<v Speaker 1>do but I also want to act in it. I'll

0:42:01.560 --> 0:42:04.239
<v Speaker 1>do it. But then he was like, you know, you

0:42:04.320 --> 0:42:07.239
<v Speaker 1>really need some youthful energy in this as well. So

0:42:07.280 --> 0:42:09.480
<v Speaker 1>it's like, I'll work on these themes and all, but

0:42:09.680 --> 0:42:12.879
<v Speaker 1>I think you should also bring in this Japanese rock

0:42:12.960 --> 0:42:17.000
<v Speaker 1>band so that they can like recreate some of these

0:42:17.000 --> 0:42:21.440
<v Speaker 1>themes and breathe additional life into the picture. And that

0:42:21.560 --> 0:42:25.600
<v Speaker 1>is where the rock band Godaigo comes into the picture here.

0:42:26.280 --> 0:42:29.000
<v Speaker 1>So this is a Japanese rock band, I believe named

0:42:29.040 --> 0:42:32.400
<v Speaker 1>after the ninety sixth Emperor of Japan. They were mostly

0:42:32.440 --> 0:42:34.879
<v Speaker 1>active in the seventies and eighties, but I think are

0:42:35.160 --> 0:42:37.520
<v Speaker 1>still around to varying degrees, like I see him doing

0:42:37.560 --> 0:42:40.760
<v Speaker 1>press and all. They were notable for supplying the music

0:42:40.800 --> 0:42:45.839
<v Speaker 1>for the Japanese TV series Monkey and This, by the way,

0:42:45.880 --> 0:42:48.200
<v Speaker 1>is the Japanese TV adaptation of the Chinese novel of

0:42:48.280 --> 0:42:51.080
<v Speaker 1>Journey into the West that I think. Actually, it also

0:42:51.160 --> 0:42:55.040
<v Speaker 1>got some air outside of Japan, like I think I've

0:42:55.040 --> 0:42:57.440
<v Speaker 1>read that it aired in Australia, for example, so a

0:42:57.960 --> 0:43:00.000
<v Speaker 1>lot of people even outside of Japan have fun memory

0:43:00.200 --> 0:43:03.719
<v Speaker 1>of this show. And also I believe there is a

0:43:03.719 --> 0:43:05.880
<v Speaker 1>scene in the movie where we see the band just

0:43:05.920 --> 0:43:10.120
<v Speaker 1>hanging around. There's like five of them, and two of

0:43:10.160 --> 0:43:12.319
<v Speaker 1>them I think two of them are Americans.

0:43:12.920 --> 0:43:16.600
<v Speaker 2>Hmmm. Okay, I vaguely recalled this happening, but I don't

0:43:16.600 --> 0:43:18.360
<v Speaker 2>remember when in the movie it is. Maybe it'll be

0:43:18.400 --> 0:43:19.399
<v Speaker 2>in my plot notes here.

0:43:19.760 --> 0:43:21.200
<v Speaker 1>I think it might be in one of those sort

0:43:21.200 --> 0:43:25.000
<v Speaker 1>of Sesame Street esque sequences where we see this kind

0:43:25.000 --> 0:43:30.239
<v Speaker 1>of like idealistic town. Okay, yeah, but anyway, these are

0:43:30.280 --> 0:43:32.840
<v Speaker 1>the folks involved in the music, and the music in

0:43:33.040 --> 0:43:38.080
<v Speaker 1>house is absolutely bonkers, bordering on and seemingly just intentionally

0:43:38.120 --> 0:43:43.360
<v Speaker 1>irritating at times even bordering on madness and yeah, and

0:43:43.440 --> 0:43:46.840
<v Speaker 1>other times just super sweet or happy, go lucky or

0:43:46.920 --> 0:43:50.279
<v Speaker 1>loaded with this kind of resilient seventies hippie vibes, you know,

0:43:50.400 --> 0:43:54.560
<v Speaker 1>like the hippie dream is degraded, but the music is

0:43:54.600 --> 0:43:56.200
<v Speaker 1>really insistent that it's still going.

0:43:56.760 --> 0:44:00.520
<v Speaker 2>There are like pop rock anthems that feel very strange

0:44:00.560 --> 0:44:03.680
<v Speaker 2>for the for what's going on with the scene. There

0:44:03.840 --> 0:44:07.759
<v Speaker 2>is a main theme that I assume was composed by

0:44:08.320 --> 0:44:10.919
<v Speaker 2>by Kobayashi. I don't know for sure, but the main

0:44:11.080 --> 0:44:14.240
<v Speaker 2>house theme that just plays over and over and over

0:44:14.320 --> 0:44:17.080
<v Speaker 2>in all these different ways, and that you know, the

0:44:17.160 --> 0:44:19.960
<v Speaker 2>dun Dun dundune, it like takes on a kind of

0:44:20.000 --> 0:44:22.880
<v Speaker 2>evil magic of its own. It's like the it's like

0:44:22.960 --> 0:44:26.720
<v Speaker 2>the music is in some way responsible for the wicked

0:44:26.760 --> 0:44:28.880
<v Speaker 2>magic that is taking place on screen.

0:44:29.640 --> 0:44:32.680
<v Speaker 1>Absolutely, and on that note, let's get into the wicked

0:44:32.719 --> 0:44:33.880
<v Speaker 1>magic of House.

0:44:34.640 --> 0:44:37.759
<v Speaker 2>I love the animated title at the beginning, so there's like,

0:44:37.960 --> 0:44:40.479
<v Speaker 2>of course we get the Toho logo, but then there's

0:44:40.520 --> 0:44:43.200
<v Speaker 2>like a blue box on a black background with pink

0:44:43.239 --> 0:44:47.840
<v Speaker 2>and green text inside it that says a movie.

0:44:48.320 --> 0:44:52.279
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Ob Yashi says that this was key because he

0:44:52.320 --> 0:44:54.800
<v Speaker 1>had to remind everyone, this is the essence of cinema.

0:44:54.840 --> 0:44:57.080
<v Speaker 1>You can't dismiss it. This is a movie.

0:44:57.880 --> 0:44:59.400
<v Speaker 2>I admit it. I admit it.

0:44:59.400 --> 0:45:02.799
<v Speaker 1>It's a movie. But it's kind of telling because I think,

0:45:02.880 --> 0:45:04.319
<v Speaker 1>like some of the critics were like, this is not

0:45:04.360 --> 0:45:06.960
<v Speaker 1>a movie, this is just a series of commercials, this

0:45:07.120 --> 0:45:10.200
<v Speaker 1>is excrement, and so like even from the get go,

0:45:10.280 --> 0:45:13.360
<v Speaker 1>he's like, this is a movie. I believe in the vision.

0:45:13.840 --> 0:45:16.040
<v Speaker 2>So after it says a movie, we see some like

0:45:16.120 --> 0:45:19.839
<v Speaker 2>little white blobs jiggling like jello in space, and then

0:45:19.920 --> 0:45:24.040
<v Speaker 2>the little white jello smudges turn into letters that spell

0:45:24.280 --> 0:45:27.799
<v Speaker 2>house in English, and then the letters pop and a

0:45:27.920 --> 0:45:29.759
<v Speaker 2>voice comes on and says.

0:45:29.880 --> 0:45:34.839
<v Speaker 1>Howse Obayashi also stresses that giving a Japanese film a

0:45:34.920 --> 0:45:38.000
<v Speaker 1>foreign language title, which is the case here, like the

0:45:38.080 --> 0:45:41.880
<v Speaker 1>Japanese title for House is house. He says, this simply

0:45:41.960 --> 0:45:43.560
<v Speaker 1>was not done at the time. It was really kind

0:45:43.560 --> 0:45:45.719
<v Speaker 1>of taboo, and so he had to do it.

0:45:46.320 --> 0:45:49.960
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I was wondering what the cultural significance is of

0:45:50.120 --> 0:45:53.839
<v Speaker 2>using English specifically. Now I know, in say, if it's

0:45:53.840 --> 0:45:57.080
<v Speaker 2>an English language movie, you might have a title in

0:45:57.120 --> 0:46:01.680
<v Speaker 2>another language that signals some thing For example, I think

0:46:01.719 --> 0:46:04.880
<v Speaker 2>of a horror movie called Oculus. You know, that's like

0:46:04.960 --> 0:46:09.560
<v Speaker 2>a Latin title that I don't know. Something about using

0:46:09.680 --> 0:46:12.880
<v Speaker 2>Latin in your title suggests kind of antiquity, something that

0:46:13.000 --> 0:46:17.040
<v Speaker 2>is ancient and maybe kind of foreign and scary. I

0:46:17.080 --> 0:46:20.560
<v Speaker 2>don't know what the connotations of using English specifically in

0:46:20.600 --> 0:46:23.600
<v Speaker 2>your title would be here. But when I first saw

0:46:23.600 --> 0:46:25.080
<v Speaker 2>the movie, I didn't even think about it.

0:46:25.480 --> 0:46:28.279
<v Speaker 1>I didn't either, But yeah, he points out that, yeah,

0:46:28.360 --> 0:46:31.640
<v Speaker 1>people hated this idea, so you shouldn't do it. This

0:46:31.680 --> 0:46:34.920
<v Speaker 1>isn't done. But like I say, he bucks those trends.

0:46:35.000 --> 0:46:37.440
<v Speaker 1>So he's like, yeah, I'm gonna call it house, but

0:46:37.480 --> 0:46:39.600
<v Speaker 1>we're not done with the credit sequence. Credit sequence gets

0:46:39.719 --> 0:46:40.720
<v Speaker 1>keeps getting more amazing.

0:46:40.800 --> 0:46:43.920
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, then you've got like the white Jello house.

0:46:44.080 --> 0:46:47.080
<v Speaker 2>And then the O in house grows teeth and turns red,

0:46:47.440 --> 0:46:50.480
<v Speaker 2>and then a woman screams. Then the teeth turn into

0:46:50.920 --> 0:46:54.960
<v Speaker 2>red lipstick lips, and then the lipstick lips open to

0:46:55.000 --> 0:46:58.160
<v Speaker 2>reveal shark teeth and an eyeball in the back of

0:46:58.160 --> 0:47:01.239
<v Speaker 2>the throat, and then a piano starts linking on the soundtrack,

0:47:01.360 --> 0:47:05.120
<v Speaker 2>and then the O lips bite down on they bite

0:47:05.160 --> 0:47:07.400
<v Speaker 2>down on something and then they spit out a severed

0:47:07.440 --> 0:47:10.160
<v Speaker 2>human hand, and then we finally cut to the action,

0:47:10.280 --> 0:47:13.680
<v Speaker 2>and what we see at first is a woman filmed

0:47:13.719 --> 0:47:16.640
<v Speaker 2>behind what looks like a green filter, and she's wearing

0:47:16.640 --> 0:47:19.719
<v Speaker 2>a white sheet like a hooded cloak, and she is

0:47:19.760 --> 0:47:23.560
<v Speaker 2>surrounded by what looks like beakers and glass chemistry equipment,

0:47:23.680 --> 0:47:26.799
<v Speaker 2>but also candles in ornate holders, so it's a very

0:47:26.880 --> 0:47:30.200
<v Speaker 2>weird shot. And then in a reverse shot, we see

0:47:30.200 --> 0:47:33.640
<v Speaker 2>a girl in school uniform taking her photo. She gives

0:47:33.680 --> 0:47:35.799
<v Speaker 2>a thumbs up, she says okay, and then the girl

0:47:35.840 --> 0:47:38.120
<v Speaker 2>in the photo throws off her cloak and walks to

0:47:38.200 --> 0:47:40.880
<v Speaker 2>the window of the room and we sort of zoom

0:47:40.920 --> 0:47:43.640
<v Speaker 2>out of the frame within the picture to just be

0:47:43.960 --> 0:47:46.759
<v Speaker 2>to just see one picture now. And this other girl

0:47:46.840 --> 0:47:48.840
<v Speaker 2>is also in a school uniform, so she had like

0:47:48.880 --> 0:47:52.080
<v Speaker 2>a costume on. And these are our two of our

0:47:52.120 --> 0:47:54.200
<v Speaker 2>main characters, I would say the two most important of

0:47:54.239 --> 0:47:58.040
<v Speaker 2>our characters, Gorgeous and Fantasy. Gorgeous was the one who

0:47:58.080 --> 0:48:00.400
<v Speaker 2>was posing in the photo with the cloak over head,

0:48:00.640 --> 0:48:03.719
<v Speaker 2>and Fantasy was the one taking the photo. And they're

0:48:03.760 --> 0:48:07.200
<v Speaker 2>talking about how summer vacation is coming up, and Gorgeous

0:48:07.320 --> 0:48:10.840
<v Speaker 2>is going to spend summer vacation at the Fabulous Villa

0:48:10.960 --> 0:48:16.080
<v Speaker 2>owned by her fabulous dad, which is in Karuizawa. And

0:48:16.360 --> 0:48:18.719
<v Speaker 2>I looked this up because I didn't know. Karuizawa is

0:48:18.800 --> 0:48:22.280
<v Speaker 2>a mountain resort town that has long been a popular

0:48:22.320 --> 0:48:27.200
<v Speaker 2>summer travel destination in Japan and for international visitors as well.

0:48:27.719 --> 0:48:30.800
<v Speaker 2>It seems like it's kind of a beautiful forested mountain

0:48:30.920 --> 0:48:33.800
<v Speaker 2>environment that gets like a nice cool weather in the summer,

0:48:33.840 --> 0:48:36.239
<v Speaker 2>and like people travel from all over to go there.

0:48:36.600 --> 0:48:39.279
<v Speaker 2>We also learned that Gorgeous's father has been away in

0:48:39.440 --> 0:48:43.120
<v Speaker 2>Italy and he is supposed to be coming back tomorrow.

0:48:44.000 --> 0:48:49.680
<v Speaker 2>A later scene reveals that Gorgeous's father is a film composer,

0:48:50.160 --> 0:48:53.120
<v Speaker 2>and that he is a rich and successful film composer,

0:48:53.480 --> 0:48:57.919
<v Speaker 2>and he's been away working for somebody named Leoni, who

0:48:57.960 --> 0:49:01.080
<v Speaker 2>says that her father's music is better than Morricone's. So

0:49:01.120 --> 0:49:04.080
<v Speaker 2>I guess he they they're saying he's working for Sergio Leoni.

0:49:04.600 --> 0:49:07.200
<v Speaker 1>All right, sounds good, I'll buy it.

0:49:07.680 --> 0:49:12.919
<v Speaker 2>I wonder what went into that decision. Why anyway, let's see. Oh,

0:49:12.920 --> 0:49:15.400
<v Speaker 2>but we also learned that so Gorgeous is going to

0:49:15.440 --> 0:49:19.200
<v Speaker 2>the villa and Fantasy and their other five friends. The

0:49:19.239 --> 0:49:22.719
<v Speaker 2>six girls together are going to go to some kind

0:49:22.719 --> 0:49:26.480
<v Speaker 2>of camp for the summer. They're going to a camp

0:49:26.560 --> 0:49:31.080
<v Speaker 2>by the seaside that is run by the sister of

0:49:31.239 --> 0:49:35.239
<v Speaker 2>their teacher, mister Togo. So it's mister Togo's sisters in

0:49:35.960 --> 0:49:39.640
<v Speaker 2>kind of complicated yeah, but ultimately unimportant, right because they

0:49:39.640 --> 0:49:43.880
<v Speaker 2>don't go there. So Gorgeous and Fantasy are best friends

0:49:43.880 --> 0:49:47.520
<v Speaker 2>and they kind of tease each other. Fantasy Gorgeous teases

0:49:47.560 --> 0:49:51.440
<v Speaker 2>Fantasy for having a crush on mister Togo. Fantasy teases

0:49:51.520 --> 0:49:53.959
<v Speaker 2>Gorgeous for looking like a witch in a horror movie

0:49:54.040 --> 0:49:56.000
<v Speaker 2>when she was dressed up in the in the cloak

0:49:56.040 --> 0:49:59.560
<v Speaker 2>in the picture. They have a conversation with their Jim teacher,

0:49:59.560 --> 0:50:04.040
<v Speaker 2>who is a currently getting married to mister Togo. I think, yes, yes, Okay.

0:50:04.719 --> 0:50:07.400
<v Speaker 2>Then there's kind of a montage of Fantasy and Gorgeous

0:50:07.440 --> 0:50:10.040
<v Speaker 2>being best friends. There are a lot of montages in

0:50:10.040 --> 0:50:13.360
<v Speaker 2>this movie. Now, while this movie represents a lot of

0:50:13.480 --> 0:50:17.799
<v Speaker 2>kind of lighthearted scenes of you know, just like teenagers

0:50:17.800 --> 0:50:21.080
<v Speaker 2>being friends, there it also represents I think a lot

0:50:21.120 --> 0:50:24.920
<v Speaker 2>of the dark side and frustration of being a young person.

0:50:25.640 --> 0:50:27.919
<v Speaker 2>And so there's a scene where, like Gorgeous goes home

0:50:27.960 --> 0:50:30.680
<v Speaker 2>to meet her father and he's home earlier than expected,

0:50:30.680 --> 0:50:32.400
<v Speaker 2>so at first she's very happy to see him. It

0:50:32.440 --> 0:50:36.120
<v Speaker 2>seems they have a good relationship, but we learn that Gorgeous'

0:50:36.239 --> 0:50:40.399
<v Speaker 2>mom died eight years ago and today her father has

0:50:40.400 --> 0:50:43.880
<v Speaker 2>some news he needs to share. A woman enters the

0:50:43.880 --> 0:50:46.440
<v Speaker 2>frame at the house in a flowing white dress with

0:50:46.480 --> 0:50:49.480
<v Speaker 2>a silk scarf blowing in the breeze, and her presence

0:50:49.520 --> 0:50:53.600
<v Speaker 2>feels very almost ethereal. There's kind of a diaphanous quality

0:50:53.680 --> 0:50:56.040
<v Speaker 2>to the way she's represented on film whenever we see her.

0:50:56.040 --> 0:50:59.919
<v Speaker 2>And this character is named Rioko Emma, and the father

0:51:00.280 --> 0:51:03.439
<v Speaker 2>informs Gorgeous that she is going to be your mom now,

0:51:04.280 --> 0:51:06.799
<v Speaker 2>and he says several things to kind of try to

0:51:06.840 --> 0:51:09.480
<v Speaker 2>soften the news. I guess he's like, she's surprisingly good

0:51:09.520 --> 0:51:11.719
<v Speaker 2>at cooking and other things too. You won't have to

0:51:11.760 --> 0:51:14.360
<v Speaker 2>mend my shirts anymore. But we can just see that

0:51:14.480 --> 0:51:16.879
<v Speaker 2>is like not the kind of appeal that Gorgeous wants

0:51:16.880 --> 0:51:20.640
<v Speaker 2>to hear. Gorgeous is hurt by this because it seems

0:51:20.680 --> 0:51:24.640
<v Speaker 2>that she hasn't really properly grieved for her mother's death,

0:51:24.680 --> 0:51:26.959
<v Speaker 2>even though it was a long time ago, and she's

0:51:27.000 --> 0:51:29.760
<v Speaker 2>not ready to accept a new member of the family.

0:51:30.640 --> 0:51:33.239
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Yeah, this portion of the film reminds me a

0:51:33.280 --> 0:51:37.000
<v Speaker 1>little bit of what we'd get later in Jim Henson's Labyrinth,

0:51:37.040 --> 0:51:38.960
<v Speaker 1>you know, with Sarah and sort of you know, the

0:51:40.280 --> 0:51:42.600
<v Speaker 1>young woman's angst and so forth, and I imagine you

0:51:42.600 --> 0:51:44.160
<v Speaker 1>see that in a lot of other movies as well.

0:51:44.719 --> 0:51:46.680
<v Speaker 1>But the other thing, the main thing I want to

0:51:46.680 --> 0:51:49.520
<v Speaker 1>stress is that I think it's essential to note that

0:51:49.680 --> 0:51:51.960
<v Speaker 1>this is, in many respects the most normal part of

0:51:51.960 --> 0:51:54.040
<v Speaker 1>the film. Right, this is the real world set up

0:51:54.080 --> 0:51:56.759
<v Speaker 1>to the speculative elements to come. So it would be

0:51:56.800 --> 0:52:00.120
<v Speaker 1>the most boring part of your average cookie cutter horror movie.

0:52:00.280 --> 0:52:05.760
<v Speaker 1>And yet in house it's full of experimentals and varied

0:52:05.800 --> 0:52:08.879
<v Speaker 1>film techniques. I especially love the shooting through a kind

0:52:08.920 --> 0:52:11.320
<v Speaker 1>of what is it like a glass mirror lattice work?

0:52:11.680 --> 0:52:14.239
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, very weird. And also I would say it

0:52:14.320 --> 0:52:17.879
<v Speaker 2>is strange in how fearless it is in depicting the

0:52:17.960 --> 0:52:22.400
<v Speaker 2>intense emotions of a teenager. So like after this interaction

0:52:22.440 --> 0:52:25.480
<v Speaker 2>where she has she has this bad reaction to meeting Rioko,

0:52:26.360 --> 0:52:28.560
<v Speaker 2>gorgeous goes back to her room, which is crazy, by

0:52:28.560 --> 0:52:31.200
<v Speaker 2>the way, it has like purple walls with huge flowers

0:52:31.239 --> 0:52:33.799
<v Speaker 2>painted all over them, and she like, you know, she's

0:52:33.800 --> 0:52:37.279
<v Speaker 2>got a piano in her room. Uh, and she and

0:52:37.360 --> 0:52:40.400
<v Speaker 2>she weirdly like suddenly seems very at peace in her

0:52:40.480 --> 0:52:43.359
<v Speaker 2>room despite having just run away from this family news

0:52:43.360 --> 0:52:46.719
<v Speaker 2>that caused her so much distress. But then she is

0:52:47.120 --> 0:52:50.160
<v Speaker 2>acting kind of like silly and dreamy, and she speaks

0:52:50.160 --> 0:52:52.960
<v Speaker 2>to a framed portrait of her mom and goes through

0:52:52.960 --> 0:52:56.600
<v Speaker 2>a box of old family photos, remembering like good times

0:52:56.640 --> 0:52:58.600
<v Speaker 2>with her father, when he was proud of her, when

0:52:58.600 --> 0:53:01.960
<v Speaker 2>she wanted a sports competition. And then she's just shown

0:53:02.080 --> 0:53:05.400
<v Speaker 2>drawing x's over her dad's face in the photos and saying,

0:53:05.480 --> 0:53:07.200
<v Speaker 2>I'll bully dad. I hate him.

0:53:07.480 --> 0:53:10.880
<v Speaker 1>Wow. Yeah, it's a time of intense emotions.

0:53:11.160 --> 0:53:14.560
<v Speaker 2>But also in the sequence she remembers her mom, she

0:53:14.640 --> 0:53:18.279
<v Speaker 2>remembers her in a bridal costume, similar to how she

0:53:18.360 --> 0:53:21.840
<v Speaker 2>cloaked herself in the in the Chemistry Lab photo earlier. Actually,

0:53:22.520 --> 0:53:25.520
<v Speaker 2>and in she sees sort of a picture of her

0:53:25.560 --> 0:53:28.960
<v Speaker 2>mother with her auntie, and she says, I wonder how

0:53:29.000 --> 0:53:32.680
<v Speaker 2>auntie is. The auntie in the photo is somehow kind

0:53:32.680 --> 0:53:35.520
<v Speaker 2>of animated, even though she's in a still photograph, and

0:53:35.640 --> 0:53:37.400
<v Speaker 2>she is holding a white cat.

0:53:37.640 --> 0:53:38.880
<v Speaker 1>Oh, that'll be important.

0:53:39.160 --> 0:53:43.640
<v Speaker 2>Also here we should mention just that the presence of

0:53:43.800 --> 0:53:46.800
<v Speaker 2>music in this movie does not feel like no, I

0:53:46.800 --> 0:53:49.840
<v Speaker 2>mean all movie. Most movies have music, but the presence

0:53:49.880 --> 0:53:52.960
<v Speaker 2>of music in this movie does not feel normal. There's

0:53:53.040 --> 0:53:57.280
<v Speaker 2>kind of a constant soundtrack playing running under nearly every

0:53:57.360 --> 0:54:00.520
<v Speaker 2>scene that makes everything feel like a monta or a

0:54:00.560 --> 0:54:02.080
<v Speaker 2>flashback or something.

0:54:02.280 --> 0:54:04.719
<v Speaker 1>That's a great point. And then there are choices made

0:54:04.800 --> 0:54:09.080
<v Speaker 1>later on, like visually stylistically that also give you that feel.

0:54:09.600 --> 0:54:12.160
<v Speaker 1>Is this the present? Is this the past? What's going on?

0:54:12.480 --> 0:54:15.440
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? Now, next, at school, we meet our gang of

0:54:15.440 --> 0:54:19.520
<v Speaker 2>student heroines, and again they're each named for something about them. Again,

0:54:19.520 --> 0:54:23.160
<v Speaker 2>they are gorgeous, her best friend Fantasy, who's always daydreaming.

0:54:23.400 --> 0:54:26.560
<v Speaker 2>Prof who wears glasses, is a nerd. She's logical, she

0:54:26.560 --> 0:54:30.280
<v Speaker 2>has a book, Melody who's holding a guitar and loves music,

0:54:30.840 --> 0:54:33.840
<v Speaker 2>Mac who loves food and is shown with a donut,

0:54:34.680 --> 0:54:37.960
<v Speaker 2>Sweet who is very nice and friendly. And Kung Fu,

0:54:38.120 --> 0:54:41.400
<v Speaker 2>who is the jock and does martial arts. When we

0:54:41.440 --> 0:54:44.680
<v Speaker 2>first meet her, she jumps up and karate chops of

0:54:44.760 --> 0:54:47.879
<v Speaker 2>volleyball that is flying toward the group, and everybody says

0:54:47.920 --> 0:54:52.799
<v Speaker 2>you're so cool, kung Fu. Also, when we first meet them,

0:54:52.880 --> 0:54:54.920
<v Speaker 2>it's just a weird scene. They're like they're in a

0:54:54.960 --> 0:54:59.120
<v Speaker 2>school courtyard and there are just bubbles floating through the air. Also,

0:54:59.280 --> 0:55:02.440
<v Speaker 2>there is a in the school courtyard with a copy

0:55:02.560 --> 0:55:04.560
<v Speaker 2>of the Venus de Milo in the middle of it,

0:55:04.600 --> 0:55:06.879
<v Speaker 2>like the armless you know venus just there.

0:55:07.360 --> 0:55:08.520
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.

0:55:08.680 --> 0:55:10.759
<v Speaker 2>So they're talking about how they're all about to go

0:55:10.800 --> 0:55:13.440
<v Speaker 2>on vacation to the you know, the seaside inn of

0:55:13.800 --> 0:55:17.800
<v Speaker 2>mister Togo's sister for ten days, and they're bummed because

0:55:17.840 --> 0:55:20.000
<v Speaker 2>Gorgeous can't go with them. She's going to the country

0:55:20.000 --> 0:55:24.000
<v Speaker 2>with her dad instead. But mister Togo shows up in

0:55:24.080 --> 0:55:27.680
<v Speaker 2>this weird tiny car and he's like, bad news, my

0:55:27.760 --> 0:55:30.600
<v Speaker 2>sister's gonna have a baby. We cannot go vacationing by

0:55:30.600 --> 0:55:32.799
<v Speaker 2>the sea. But I was just thinking, did he not

0:55:32.960 --> 0:55:34.320
<v Speaker 2>know this was going to happen?

0:55:34.640 --> 0:55:38.800
<v Speaker 1>I know she didn't get a lot of advanced notice

0:55:38.800 --> 0:55:40.319
<v Speaker 1>from the sister. I guess yeah.

0:55:40.360 --> 0:55:44.120
<v Speaker 2>And the girls bully mister Togo for this. I think

0:55:44.120 --> 0:55:47.000
<v Speaker 2>he says, don't bully me. But there's a new plan.

0:55:47.120 --> 0:55:50.640
<v Speaker 2>Gorgeous suggests that they all come to her Auntie's house

0:55:50.719 --> 0:55:53.600
<v Speaker 2>in her mom's old hometown. And so we see Gorgeous

0:55:53.640 --> 0:55:56.080
<v Speaker 2>writing a letter to her aunt informing her that all

0:55:56.080 --> 0:55:58.279
<v Speaker 2>of her friends are coming, and she says, I know

0:55:58.400 --> 0:56:02.440
<v Speaker 2>we've only met once. Please don't think I'm strange. Is

0:56:02.880 --> 0:56:04.919
<v Speaker 2>the aunt going to think you're strange? Gorgeous, I don't

0:56:04.920 --> 0:56:10.560
<v Speaker 2>know this aunt. Yeah, but she says, you know, she

0:56:11.200 --> 0:56:13.520
<v Speaker 2>wants to spend time with her aunt like she used

0:56:13.520 --> 0:56:16.680
<v Speaker 2>to spend with her mom. Somewhere around here, she just

0:56:16.719 --> 0:56:20.520
<v Speaker 2>happens to run into a fluffy white cat, and she says,

0:56:20.560 --> 0:56:23.480
<v Speaker 2>cute kitty, where are you from?

0:56:23.800 --> 0:56:25.160
<v Speaker 1>And instantly adopts the cat.

0:56:25.360 --> 0:56:28.439
<v Speaker 2>Yaw. The cat is part of the yes and named

0:56:28.440 --> 0:56:30.960
<v Speaker 2>it Blanche. So Blanche is the name of the white cat.

0:56:31.239 --> 0:56:33.880
<v Speaker 2>We see it sitting on top of the mailbox outside

0:56:33.920 --> 0:56:36.560
<v Speaker 2>Gorgeous's apartment, and she gets a letter back from her

0:56:36.600 --> 0:56:39.480
<v Speaker 2>aunt saying, oh, yes, come see me and bring all

0:56:39.560 --> 0:56:42.120
<v Speaker 2>your friends. So we know Gorgeous is going to go

0:56:42.239 --> 0:56:44.359
<v Speaker 2>visit her aunt and take all her friends with her.

0:56:44.400 --> 0:56:47.640
<v Speaker 2>And we also here get a scene of Rioko, Gorgeous's

0:56:47.719 --> 0:56:51.600
<v Speaker 2>dad's new wife, announcing her plan to go later go

0:56:51.680 --> 0:56:53.799
<v Speaker 2>after Gorgeous and her friends go to the aunt's house

0:56:54.080 --> 0:56:56.360
<v Speaker 2>she's going to go there and meet her so that

0:56:56.440 --> 0:56:58.160
<v Speaker 2>she can get to know her and talk to her

0:56:58.160 --> 0:57:00.960
<v Speaker 2>one on one. She says, this is my first trial

0:57:01.000 --> 0:57:03.880
<v Speaker 2>in becoming her mother. And again she's got this scarf

0:57:03.920 --> 0:57:05.919
<v Speaker 2>on her neck blowing in the wind in a way

0:57:05.960 --> 0:57:07.839
<v Speaker 2>that makes it I don't know, it just looks kind

0:57:07.880 --> 0:57:11.759
<v Speaker 2>of doomed or vulnerable somehow, like someone it's suggesting like

0:57:11.800 --> 0:57:15.520
<v Speaker 2>a grabbing of her by the neck or something. Yeah. Yeah, Oh,

0:57:15.560 --> 0:57:17.400
<v Speaker 2>And then the very next scene we get is so

0:57:18.680 --> 0:57:22.000
<v Speaker 2>off the wall. It's this crazy musical number outside a

0:57:22.040 --> 0:57:25.200
<v Speaker 2>cobbler's workshop. There's a guy working on shoes with a

0:57:25.240 --> 0:57:27.160
<v Speaker 2>pipe and a cap. There's a young lady in the

0:57:27.240 --> 0:57:30.520
<v Speaker 2>leather apron. This is the director's daughter. There's a donkey

0:57:30.560 --> 0:57:35.280
<v Speaker 2>in the background or maybe a miniature pony. Uh, and yeah,

0:57:35.360 --> 0:57:38.000
<v Speaker 2>it's just nuts. So like mister Togo comes down to

0:57:38.120 --> 0:57:40.720
<v Speaker 2>this scene but like falls down the stairs and gets

0:57:40.760 --> 0:57:44.440
<v Speaker 2>a metal bucket stuck on his butt and announces he

0:57:44.480 --> 0:57:46.800
<v Speaker 2>will have to go to the hospital for his butt bucket.

0:57:47.240 --> 0:57:50.600
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, this scene is yeah, it has strong sesame street vibes.

0:57:50.640 --> 0:57:54.400
<v Speaker 1>And then it goes into just utter ridiculous slapstick territory.

0:57:55.440 --> 0:57:58.480
<v Speaker 1>It's in many ways, yeah, out of keeping with the

0:57:58.560 --> 0:58:01.560
<v Speaker 1>tone so far, but also perfectly in line with the

0:58:01.600 --> 0:58:04.680
<v Speaker 1>tone of house. Yep, it's hard to describe.

0:58:05.000 --> 0:58:08.320
<v Speaker 2>There's a child drumming on mister Togo's bucket while he's

0:58:08.320 --> 0:58:09.120
<v Speaker 2>on the phone.

0:58:09.400 --> 0:58:12.080
<v Speaker 1>This would seem to be aggravating the condition, or I

0:58:12.120 --> 0:58:13.840
<v Speaker 1>don't know, I'm relieving it. I'm not sure.

0:58:14.280 --> 0:58:17.840
<v Speaker 2>So without mister I guess mister Togo was going to

0:58:18.000 --> 0:58:20.640
<v Speaker 2>accompany them somehow, I didn't fully understand this.

0:58:21.200 --> 0:58:22.240
<v Speaker 1>He was gonna be chaperone.

0:58:22.280 --> 0:58:24.520
<v Speaker 2>I okay, he's going to chaperone this trip to the

0:58:24.560 --> 0:58:28.120
<v Speaker 2>ant's house, I guess. But so instead they have to

0:58:28.160 --> 0:58:30.440
<v Speaker 2>go without him. So the girls are at a train

0:58:30.560 --> 0:58:34.600
<v Speaker 2>station and they're getting on the train and they're like, oh,

0:58:34.640 --> 0:58:37.800
<v Speaker 2>who are all these cowboys and rock stars? Or actually no,

0:58:37.960 --> 0:58:40.520
<v Speaker 2>they don't comment on it. I'm just wondering. There's Yeah,

0:58:40.760 --> 0:58:43.760
<v Speaker 2>the train is full of Oh maybe this is where

0:58:43.800 --> 0:58:47.080
<v Speaker 2>we see Godaigo. I don't know. But there are cowboys,

0:58:47.160 --> 0:58:50.680
<v Speaker 2>there are nuns, there are sailors. The train is full

0:58:50.840 --> 0:58:53.840
<v Speaker 2>of all different kinds. Oh, el Topo's on there, I think.

0:58:53.920 --> 0:58:58.080
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, it's like this vision of I don't know,

0:58:58.400 --> 0:59:02.360
<v Speaker 1>like a very non conformist Japanese society. I don't know

0:59:02.360 --> 0:59:06.320
<v Speaker 1>what it is, like why they're cowboys getting off these trains.

0:59:06.320 --> 0:59:08.400
<v Speaker 2>And blanches on the train too. They let cats on

0:59:08.440 --> 0:59:13.440
<v Speaker 2>this train. Somebody while they're traveling with the cats just

0:59:13.520 --> 0:59:16.040
<v Speaker 2>happens to say, any old cat can open a door,

0:59:16.520 --> 0:59:18.720
<v Speaker 2>only a witch cat can close a door.

0:59:19.240 --> 0:59:22.480
<v Speaker 1>Ah, that'll be key. And also, if you haven't guessed already,

0:59:22.520 --> 0:59:28.160
<v Speaker 1>this is definitely a witch cat.

0:59:32.520 --> 0:59:35.520
<v Speaker 2>Now Here, we get some backstory that's very important to

0:59:35.560 --> 0:59:38.360
<v Speaker 2>the film, but I want to stress how strange the

0:59:38.480 --> 0:59:44.640
<v Speaker 2>delivery of this character information is so Gorgeous starts explaining

0:59:44.680 --> 0:59:46.920
<v Speaker 2>to her friends that her aunt and her mother they

0:59:46.920 --> 0:59:49.680
<v Speaker 2>were sisters and they loved each other very much, and

0:59:49.720 --> 0:59:52.880
<v Speaker 2>Gorgeous once traveled with her mother to meet her aunt

0:59:52.920 --> 0:59:55.400
<v Speaker 2>when she was six, but she hasn't seen her since.

0:59:56.160 --> 1:00:00.800
<v Speaker 2>And then like a film strip starts and again I

1:00:00.800 --> 1:00:03.720
<v Speaker 2>want to say, there's no way I could identify that

1:00:03.760 --> 1:00:06.720
<v Speaker 2>they could be watching a film strip on the train.

1:00:07.200 --> 1:00:10.160
<v Speaker 2>But we're watching a film strip with like CPA tones,

1:00:10.680 --> 1:00:13.360
<v Speaker 2>and it's like the girls are watching it too, and

1:00:13.400 --> 1:00:17.360
<v Speaker 2>they're sort of riffing on what happens in the film.

1:00:17.600 --> 1:00:22.320
<v Speaker 2>So as we see this stuff. I guess gorgeous narrates,

1:00:22.320 --> 1:00:25.560
<v Speaker 2>I think, or somebody narrates A long time ago, Japan

1:00:25.720 --> 1:00:28.560
<v Speaker 2>was in a big war. This is Auntie's house. Her

1:00:28.640 --> 1:00:31.480
<v Speaker 2>late father was a doctor. This is my grandma, this

1:00:31.560 --> 1:00:34.320
<v Speaker 2>is my mom. Isn't she cute? And then one says

1:00:34.400 --> 1:00:37.840
<v Speaker 2>she looks like you? And then we see the ant

1:00:37.960 --> 1:00:40.960
<v Speaker 2>and her fiance, and her fiance is a very dashing

1:00:41.000 --> 1:00:44.200
<v Speaker 2>young man. One of the friends calls out, he's so handsome.

1:00:44.720 --> 1:00:46.480
<v Speaker 2>They say he was a doctor and he was going

1:00:46.480 --> 1:00:49.640
<v Speaker 2>to run the local hospital. And the friends asked, you

1:00:49.720 --> 1:00:51.880
<v Speaker 2>mean they didn't get married, and she says, no, they

1:00:51.880 --> 1:00:55.280
<v Speaker 2>couldn't get married because of the war. So we learned

1:00:55.320 --> 1:00:58.919
<v Speaker 2>that her auntie's fiance gets drafted to serve in World

1:00:59.000 --> 1:01:01.800
<v Speaker 2>War two, but he makes a pinky promise that he

1:01:01.840 --> 1:01:04.720
<v Speaker 2>will come back, and she promises to wait for him,

1:01:04.800 --> 1:01:08.440
<v Speaker 2>and we see the auntie and her fiance kiss, and

1:01:08.480 --> 1:01:10.680
<v Speaker 2>then he has to go away to war, and then

1:01:10.720 --> 1:01:13.760
<v Speaker 2>the film burns up and someone shouts a kiss of fire.

1:01:14.560 --> 1:01:16.600
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, there's such a strange and wonderful energy to this

1:01:16.680 --> 1:01:20.960
<v Speaker 1>part of the film, with the optimistic and youthful responses

1:01:21.040 --> 1:01:24.040
<v Speaker 1>to this story. They're being presented with and the way

1:01:24.040 --> 1:01:27.440
<v Speaker 1>they're riffing on it, So you know, they're amazing and

1:01:27.440 --> 1:01:31.280
<v Speaker 1>they're to be envied because they see mostly the beauty

1:01:31.320 --> 1:01:34.120
<v Speaker 1>and the romance in this story and they feel it intensely,

1:01:35.080 --> 1:01:37.720
<v Speaker 1>and they're not you know, it's not like they don't

1:01:38.160 --> 1:01:41.280
<v Speaker 1>understand the tragedy, but and they're not getting the tragedy,

1:01:41.320 --> 1:01:45.240
<v Speaker 1>but they can't fully understand it, and or their understanding

1:01:45.320 --> 1:01:48.920
<v Speaker 1>of the tragedy is overpowered by their youthful enthusiasm for

1:01:49.000 --> 1:01:50.720
<v Speaker 1>the romantic elements of the tale.

1:01:50.880 --> 1:01:54.040
<v Speaker 2>I think, yeah, that's exactly right. But then the backstory

1:01:54.080 --> 1:01:56.960
<v Speaker 2>goes on. So after the Kiss of Fire, we learned

1:01:57.000 --> 1:02:00.800
<v Speaker 2>that her fiance never returns from the war. We see

1:02:00.840 --> 1:02:05.160
<v Speaker 2>him revealed sitting in an almost comical looking in how

1:02:05.200 --> 1:02:08.400
<v Speaker 2>strange it is. He's like shown sitting in the cockpit

1:02:08.440 --> 1:02:12.280
<v Speaker 2>of a crashing airplane, just expressionless as the airplane goes down.

1:02:13.440 --> 1:02:16.640
<v Speaker 2>And then we later see after the war, Gorgeous's mom

1:02:16.760 --> 1:02:20.240
<v Speaker 2>marrying her father, posing for the photo that we saw earlier.

1:02:20.320 --> 1:02:23.120
<v Speaker 2>So she's in her wedding garments and the auntie is

1:02:23.280 --> 1:02:27.600
<v Speaker 2>beside her holding her white cat, looking unhappy and unfulfilled.

1:02:28.280 --> 1:02:31.120
<v Speaker 2>After this gorgeous, explains that her aunt has been living

1:02:31.160 --> 1:02:33.440
<v Speaker 2>alone in the house for many years and that she

1:02:33.560 --> 1:02:37.680
<v Speaker 2>gives piano lessons to the neighbors for money. And then

1:02:37.760 --> 1:02:40.440
<v Speaker 2>somehow suddenly they are on a bus instead of a train.

1:02:41.880 --> 1:02:45.640
<v Speaker 2>Just a abrupt transition, the bus stops, the girls get off,

1:02:45.720 --> 1:02:48.680
<v Speaker 2>and they are in a cartoon landscape. So they cross

1:02:48.760 --> 1:02:53.720
<v Speaker 2>these different types of backgrounds, a valley with mountains, a

1:02:53.760 --> 1:02:58.479
<v Speaker 2>cable bridge spanning a wide rocky stream. There's a path

1:02:58.480 --> 1:03:02.040
<v Speaker 2>through a forest where sweets. She's afraid of ghosts. Prof

1:03:02.160 --> 1:03:05.360
<v Speaker 2>says ghosts don't exist, and Kung Fu implies that she

1:03:05.400 --> 1:03:08.720
<v Speaker 2>will use martial arts on any ghosts that appear. Perfect.

1:03:09.280 --> 1:03:12.920
<v Speaker 2>Also through this whole track, Mac is just relentlessly announcing

1:03:12.960 --> 1:03:16.040
<v Speaker 2>the consumption of food, just yelling like, yummy, this tastes good.

1:03:17.800 --> 1:03:19.760
<v Speaker 2>One of the last things before they get to the

1:03:19.840 --> 1:03:24.800
<v Speaker 2>house is the watermelon vendor scene, which is tremendous. They

1:03:24.880 --> 1:03:27.840
<v Speaker 2>come across like a watermelon stand and they remove a

1:03:27.880 --> 1:03:31.480
<v Speaker 2>watermelon from the shelf of the stand, and then behind

1:03:31.720 --> 1:03:35.360
<v Speaker 2>the watermelon is the face of the vendor which is shaped,

1:03:35.400 --> 1:03:38.880
<v Speaker 2>which is very round and shaped like a watermelon, making

1:03:38.920 --> 1:03:42.160
<v Speaker 2>this bizarre expression, and then he comes out and acts

1:03:42.200 --> 1:03:44.080
<v Speaker 2>bizarre at them. I don't know how to Rob, how

1:03:44.080 --> 1:03:45.480
<v Speaker 2>would you describe this encounter.

1:03:46.160 --> 1:03:49.960
<v Speaker 1>It's mad cap for sure, yea. And I guess it

1:03:50.040 --> 1:03:52.640
<v Speaker 1>is worth noting that at heart, this is a very

1:03:53.480 --> 1:03:55.680
<v Speaker 1>that this is certainly a hard trope, like this is

1:03:55.760 --> 1:03:58.760
<v Speaker 1>the guy that on the way to the haunted place,

1:03:59.200 --> 1:04:01.200
<v Speaker 1>whose role is to either say, don't you go to

1:04:01.240 --> 1:04:05.439
<v Speaker 1>that haunted place, or as we see here commenting after

1:04:05.440 --> 1:04:07.600
<v Speaker 1>the kids have gone, I can't believe they're going to

1:04:07.600 --> 1:04:10.800
<v Speaker 1>that haunted place. He fulfills that role while also being

1:04:10.800 --> 1:04:14.160
<v Speaker 1>this wacky character who is selling watermelons.

1:04:14.680 --> 1:04:17.600
<v Speaker 2>So the girls go on up to the house and

1:04:17.640 --> 1:04:20.040
<v Speaker 2>it's on top of a hill with walls grown over

1:04:20.120 --> 1:04:23.160
<v Speaker 2>by vines. They're owls diving around in the middle of

1:04:23.200 --> 1:04:26.880
<v Speaker 2>the day, and the gates creak open for them. Blanche

1:04:26.960 --> 1:04:31.600
<v Speaker 2>runs inside and Gorgeous's aunt greets them. She is seated

1:04:31.680 --> 1:04:34.840
<v Speaker 2>in a wheelchair, her hair has turned white, and she

1:04:34.920 --> 1:04:38.560
<v Speaker 2>wears these cool Ringo Star sunglasses and she's holding the

1:04:38.600 --> 1:04:40.840
<v Speaker 2>cat now. And I just want to point out it's

1:04:40.880 --> 1:04:42.680
<v Speaker 2>like the girls, as far as I could tell, there

1:04:42.720 --> 1:04:45.360
<v Speaker 2>was no point at which they question this cat magic.

1:04:45.640 --> 1:04:49.800
<v Speaker 2>Oh Blanche, the cat was Auntie's cat, and it came

1:04:50.000 --> 1:04:53.400
<v Speaker 2>to fetch gorgeous in the city. And now they're all here,

1:04:53.560 --> 1:04:55.439
<v Speaker 2>and that's just not remarked upon.

1:04:55.840 --> 1:04:58.160
<v Speaker 1>No, they just roll with it completely. This is the

1:04:58.200 --> 1:04:59.920
<v Speaker 1>cat who lives here. I don't know where the ca

1:05:00.440 --> 1:05:03.200
<v Speaker 1>that traveled with us went. This is this is Blanche.

1:05:03.560 --> 1:05:05.760
<v Speaker 2>Also, one of them tries to take a picture and

1:05:05.920 --> 1:05:08.560
<v Speaker 2>Blanch the cat shoots green rays out of her eyes.

1:05:08.600 --> 1:05:10.560
<v Speaker 2>This will not be the last time Blanche shoots green

1:05:10.640 --> 1:05:13.080
<v Speaker 2>laser laser beams out of her eyes. But it makes

1:05:13.120 --> 1:05:15.760
<v Speaker 2>the camera fly in the air and smash on the ground,

1:05:15.840 --> 1:05:17.720
<v Speaker 2>and one of the girls yells sexy.

1:05:19.080 --> 1:05:21.520
<v Speaker 1>I need to point out that even when Blanche is

1:05:21.560 --> 1:05:25.240
<v Speaker 1>not necessarily on screen, even when Blanche is not necessarily

1:05:25.280 --> 1:05:29.120
<v Speaker 1>doing that creepy green eye sparkle thing, we often just

1:05:29.160 --> 1:05:34.360
<v Speaker 1>get random meals in the soundtrack of the film, which

1:05:34.400 --> 1:05:36.600
<v Speaker 1>just keeps you on edge and like somehow keeps the

1:05:36.640 --> 1:05:40.280
<v Speaker 1>weirdness level up. No matter what's happening, you're just gonna

1:05:40.320 --> 1:05:44.240
<v Speaker 1>get some randomyows in there and eventually musical meals.

1:05:44.680 --> 1:05:47.800
<v Speaker 2>That's all right, Like now mix the thing.

1:05:48.560 --> 1:05:48.760
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.

1:05:48.920 --> 1:05:52.560
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Also, I should mention even though they didn't buy

1:05:52.560 --> 1:05:55.120
<v Speaker 2>a watermelon from the watermelon stand in the previous scene.

1:05:55.280 --> 1:05:58.080
<v Speaker 2>Suddenly Max shows up with a huge watermelon and her

1:05:58.080 --> 1:06:00.880
<v Speaker 2>friends accuse her of stealing it, which he's like.

1:06:00.840 --> 1:06:02.640
<v Speaker 1>I paid for it, and I trust Mac. I don't

1:06:02.640 --> 1:06:03.760
<v Speaker 1>think Mac would steal.

1:06:03.680 --> 1:06:05.600
<v Speaker 2>I don't think Mac would steel. She paid for it.

1:06:06.200 --> 1:06:09.520
<v Speaker 2>She's got some watermelon money in her wallet specifically for

1:06:09.560 --> 1:06:12.720
<v Speaker 2>an occasion like this. So they go inside the house

1:06:12.760 --> 1:06:14.760
<v Speaker 2>and they learned that Antie can make her lights come

1:06:14.800 --> 1:06:17.760
<v Speaker 2>on by talking to them. That's cool, m h. And

1:06:17.800 --> 1:06:19.720
<v Speaker 2>they're like sort of having a they're getting a tour

1:06:19.760 --> 1:06:22.960
<v Speaker 2>of the place, and the chandelier attacks them. It drops

1:06:23.040 --> 1:06:26.920
<v Speaker 2>crystal shards that impale a lizard on the floor, and

1:06:26.960 --> 1:06:29.680
<v Speaker 2>then it starts dropping more crystal shards, but Kung Fu

1:06:29.840 --> 1:06:32.200
<v Speaker 2>flies in the air and attacks the shards.

1:06:32.520 --> 1:06:34.600
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and then Blanche eats one of the lizards.

1:06:35.000 --> 1:06:39.800
<v Speaker 2>Okay, And then Melody the musical friend is told about

1:06:39.800 --> 1:06:42.240
<v Speaker 2>a grand piano in the house and she goes to play,

1:06:42.840 --> 1:06:45.520
<v Speaker 2>but like when she gets to it's strapped with cobwebs.

1:06:46.240 --> 1:06:48.560
<v Speaker 2>They remark that there are so many pictures of the

1:06:48.600 --> 1:06:49.959
<v Speaker 2>cat in the house.

1:06:50.040 --> 1:06:52.600
<v Speaker 1>And there are indeed so many pictures of the cat

1:06:52.680 --> 1:06:55.680
<v Speaker 1>it's a constant delight to see all of the Blanche

1:06:55.720 --> 1:06:59.920
<v Speaker 1>are the Blanche iconography, as well as the various incarnation

1:07:00.320 --> 1:07:01.680
<v Speaker 1>of this cat in this house.

1:07:02.400 --> 1:07:04.400
<v Speaker 2>There's so many weird things in the house that we

1:07:04.440 --> 1:07:06.880
<v Speaker 2>can't even We're going to reach a point where we're

1:07:06.880 --> 1:07:09.880
<v Speaker 2>going to have to stop doing a sort of one

1:07:09.920 --> 1:07:12.480
<v Speaker 2>of this minute plot recap and get just focus on

1:07:12.520 --> 1:07:15.760
<v Speaker 2>some specific things. But like one thing is they find

1:07:15.760 --> 1:07:18.040
<v Speaker 2>a skeleton in the house, and they're like, oh, yeah,

1:07:18.120 --> 1:07:20.320
<v Speaker 2>grandfather used to treat patients in this room.

1:07:20.920 --> 1:07:24.280
<v Speaker 1>Will this skeleton eventually dance randomly of its own power?

1:07:24.360 --> 1:07:28.000
<v Speaker 2>Yes, it will perhaps, Yeah, And Auntie explains how she

1:07:28.080 --> 1:07:30.200
<v Speaker 2>used to give piano lessons, but you know, nobody comes

1:07:30.200 --> 1:07:32.960
<v Speaker 2>here anymore. So she's been very lonely all these years.

1:07:33.000 --> 1:07:35.280
<v Speaker 2>But now that she has all these girls in the house,

1:07:35.440 --> 1:07:38.760
<v Speaker 2>she is very glad. Something a little ominous about the

1:07:38.760 --> 1:07:42.520
<v Speaker 2>way in which she expresses her gladness. So they decide

1:07:42.560 --> 1:07:45.000
<v Speaker 2>to help Antie out around the house, and they split

1:07:45.080 --> 1:07:46.840
<v Speaker 2>up the jobs. Of course, Mac is going to do

1:07:46.880 --> 1:07:50.479
<v Speaker 2>the cooking and Sweet offers to do the cleaning. There

1:07:50.560 --> 1:07:53.360
<v Speaker 2>is a moment in here where they're like moving around

1:07:53.360 --> 1:07:55.640
<v Speaker 2>the house and somebody gets a cat thrown at them

1:07:55.680 --> 1:07:57.360
<v Speaker 2>from off screen. I think it's Anti.

1:07:57.640 --> 1:08:01.360
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I think the cat quote unquote umps into Anti's lap,

1:08:01.400 --> 1:08:03.240
<v Speaker 1>but clearly if there was somebody just out of the

1:08:03.240 --> 1:08:06.280
<v Speaker 1>shot gently throwing the cat into her lap.

1:08:06.200 --> 1:08:08.720
<v Speaker 2>Just riding around getting cats thrown at her, talking to

1:08:08.800 --> 1:08:12.600
<v Speaker 2>her appliances and furniture. At some point, we learn that

1:08:12.640 --> 1:08:15.320
<v Speaker 2>Mac wants to chill the watermelon in the fridge, but

1:08:15.400 --> 1:08:18.120
<v Speaker 2>the fridge doesn't work, so Anti suggests they put it

1:08:18.160 --> 1:08:22.360
<v Speaker 2>down the well, which they do and just randomly somewhere

1:08:22.400 --> 1:08:24.720
<v Speaker 2>around here, Anti looks at Mac and says, Mac, you

1:08:24.760 --> 1:08:29.720
<v Speaker 2>sure look tasty. Now, this is just one place to mention.

1:08:29.800 --> 1:08:31.479
<v Speaker 2>I could have said it earlier. I could have said

1:08:31.520 --> 1:08:36.519
<v Speaker 2>it at any point. There is a very chaotic editing

1:08:36.600 --> 1:08:41.040
<v Speaker 2>and transition style to this movie. The rhythm of cuts

1:08:41.080 --> 1:08:45.360
<v Speaker 2>and the way one shot transitions to another. These things

1:08:45.400 --> 1:08:48.719
<v Speaker 2>do not feel normal for Japanese cinema, or for any

1:08:48.760 --> 1:08:51.040
<v Speaker 2>cinema that I know of, So I don't think it's

1:08:51.080 --> 1:08:53.479
<v Speaker 2>a cultural thing. I think it is a unique, too

1:08:53.640 --> 1:08:58.840
<v Speaker 2>house thing, just one example among many many weird things.

1:08:59.040 --> 1:09:01.960
<v Speaker 2>There are sudden cross dissolves, you know where like so

1:09:02.040 --> 1:09:04.280
<v Speaker 2>it'll kind of like fade out and then fade back

1:09:04.320 --> 1:09:08.400
<v Speaker 2>in on something on the screen, and normally in a

1:09:08.400 --> 1:09:12.679
<v Speaker 2>movie that indicates a transition forward in time, but here

1:09:12.920 --> 1:09:16.040
<v Speaker 2>the movie uses cross dissolves when the action seems to

1:09:16.080 --> 1:09:18.400
<v Speaker 2>be totally continuous, same time in place.

1:09:19.080 --> 1:09:20.880
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's one of the many things that makes viewing

1:09:20.920 --> 1:09:23.840
<v Speaker 1>this film feel very psychedelic. It feels like some sort

1:09:23.880 --> 1:09:25.520
<v Speaker 1>of sort of an altered experience.

1:09:26.040 --> 1:09:29.840
<v Speaker 2>It's violating like norms of cinematic storytelling that you don't

1:09:29.880 --> 1:09:34.240
<v Speaker 2>even normally think of, that you wouldn't usually notice our norms,

1:09:34.280 --> 1:09:36.720
<v Speaker 2>and like you only notice them once somebody does them

1:09:36.760 --> 1:09:38.360
<v Speaker 2>differently than they're usually done.

1:09:38.720 --> 1:09:42.360
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Like I say, he's all about bucking the trends

1:09:42.400 --> 1:09:44.760
<v Speaker 1>and same way he can do to irritate Kirosawa.

1:09:46.520 --> 1:09:50.559
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So, so we're about to get to a scene,

1:09:50.560 --> 1:09:53.680
<v Speaker 2>the watermelon Head scene, which I think a lot of

1:09:53.720 --> 1:09:56.479
<v Speaker 2>critics and film historians people who celebrate this movie have

1:09:56.560 --> 1:10:00.200
<v Speaker 2>sort of noted as a transition point in the film

1:10:01.200 --> 1:10:04.120
<v Speaker 2>that like things take on, just that things just get

1:10:04.240 --> 1:10:07.720
<v Speaker 2>different starting at what's about to happen. And so I

1:10:07.720 --> 1:10:10.360
<v Speaker 2>think this should also be the point where we stop

1:10:10.439 --> 1:10:13.639
<v Speaker 2>trying to recount what happens, just moment by moment, because

1:10:13.680 --> 1:10:17.559
<v Speaker 2>it would be crazy and impossible to do here. But

1:10:18.040 --> 1:10:21.040
<v Speaker 2>to begin, we're going to talk about the watermelon head scene.

1:10:21.479 --> 1:10:24.760
<v Speaker 2>So after supper Mac disappears, she says she's going to

1:10:24.800 --> 1:10:28.040
<v Speaker 2>go get the watermelon out of the well, and she

1:10:28.280 --> 1:10:31.200
<v Speaker 2>doesn't come back after a while, and so Fantasy goes

1:10:31.240 --> 1:10:33.920
<v Speaker 2>to look for her, and out in the garden by

1:10:33.960 --> 1:10:37.559
<v Speaker 2>the well, there's a beautiful multicolor sunset. There's soft focus

1:10:37.600 --> 1:10:39.760
<v Speaker 2>on the camera, like we are within a day dream,

1:10:39.800 --> 1:10:42.160
<v Speaker 2>which kind of makes sense because this is Fantasy going

1:10:42.160 --> 1:10:44.599
<v Speaker 2>to do this. She daydreams a lot, though it's strange

1:10:44.640 --> 1:10:48.120
<v Speaker 2>because this is definitely really happening. So it's almost like

1:10:48.800 --> 1:10:52.200
<v Speaker 2>even Fantasy's regular life is like a day dream. You know,

1:10:52.240 --> 1:10:56.080
<v Speaker 2>it's using the cinematic conventions of showing a dream.

1:10:56.360 --> 1:10:58.519
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's like we're in a really nice yogurt commercial

1:10:58.600 --> 1:10:59.160
<v Speaker 1>or something, you know.

1:11:00.439 --> 1:11:05.360
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Yeah. And so Fantasy starts pulling up the watermelon

1:11:05.439 --> 1:11:08.120
<v Speaker 2>from the well. It's tied to a rope and she

1:11:08.280 --> 1:11:11.760
<v Speaker 2>retrieves it and it's, you know, it's a round thing.

1:11:11.800 --> 1:11:14.160
<v Speaker 2>But then she turns it over and realizes, oh, this

1:11:14.320 --> 1:11:17.439
<v Speaker 2>is not a watermelon. It's Max's head and mac now

1:11:17.600 --> 1:11:20.640
<v Speaker 2>has sort of blue skin like a vampire and I

1:11:20.640 --> 1:11:21.880
<v Speaker 2>think fangs.

1:11:22.320 --> 1:11:26.559
<v Speaker 1>Oh my god, and it's alive or undead or something,

1:11:26.600 --> 1:11:30.519
<v Speaker 1>and it's it's horrifying. It's quite frightening. And the build

1:11:30.600 --> 1:11:33.439
<v Speaker 1>up to it has been exceptional, like everything's just super

1:11:33.479 --> 1:11:38.320
<v Speaker 1>sweet again, yogurt commercial, yogurt commercial, and then just absolute horror.

1:11:38.479 --> 1:11:41.360
<v Speaker 2>The head talks and then it starts flying around in

1:11:41.360 --> 1:11:44.000
<v Speaker 2>the air, and then it bites Fantasy on the butt,

1:11:44.320 --> 1:11:47.160
<v Speaker 2>and then it vomits blood and then it goes back

1:11:47.200 --> 1:11:52.040
<v Speaker 2>down in the well. Excellent, what a roller coaster. Yeah,

1:11:52.080 --> 1:11:54.680
<v Speaker 2>So Fantasy goes back and reports what happened, and her

1:11:54.720 --> 1:11:57.280
<v Speaker 2>friends go to see the head, but when they get there,

1:11:57.360 --> 1:11:59.479
<v Speaker 2>there is no head to be found. It's only a

1:11:59.520 --> 1:12:04.200
<v Speaker 2>regular old watermelon, which they decide to eat. Also, Auntie

1:12:04.240 --> 1:12:06.519
<v Speaker 2>is here, and she like she stands up right out

1:12:06.520 --> 1:12:09.360
<v Speaker 2>of her wheelchair and explains, you girls gave me energy,

1:12:09.439 --> 1:12:12.880
<v Speaker 2>and then grins into the camera while eating a slice

1:12:12.880 --> 1:12:16.880
<v Speaker 2>of watermelon. Also, this is the scene where she sort

1:12:16.880 --> 1:12:19.400
<v Speaker 2>of shows off to Fantasy and I think nobody else

1:12:19.439 --> 1:12:21.920
<v Speaker 2>that she does have a third eyeball inside her mouth.

1:12:22.280 --> 1:12:25.280
<v Speaker 1>Yes, yes, all's a wonderfully creepy sequence.

1:12:25.920 --> 1:12:29.280
<v Speaker 2>So there's all kinds of just like little little vignettes

1:12:29.320 --> 1:12:32.920
<v Speaker 2>of the various characters getting freaked out by stuff. So

1:12:32.960 --> 1:12:36.360
<v Speaker 2>like Sweet is cleaning the floors as she gets lured

1:12:36.360 --> 1:12:38.839
<v Speaker 2>to a room with a doll that has green laser

1:12:38.880 --> 1:12:43.320
<v Speaker 2>eyes like blanch does, and it whispers her name. Gorgeous

1:12:43.400 --> 1:12:46.360
<v Speaker 2>is taking a bath and she gets creeped on by

1:12:46.400 --> 1:12:49.639
<v Speaker 2>like wet black hair that comes up from some unknown

1:12:49.680 --> 1:12:54.120
<v Speaker 2>creature out of the waters, horrifying kung Fu in a

1:12:54.160 --> 1:12:57.400
<v Speaker 2>much funnier sequence, is attacked by flying wooden logs like

1:12:57.439 --> 1:13:00.439
<v Speaker 2>she's splitting wood, and then the logs start attack her

1:13:00.600 --> 1:13:04.360
<v Speaker 2>and she defeats them with karate chops. Yeah, there's one

1:13:04.360 --> 1:13:07.760
<v Speaker 2>point here where Auntie says She's like, one time I

1:13:07.800 --> 1:13:10.479
<v Speaker 2>was excited to go to a restaurant in town, and

1:13:10.520 --> 1:13:14.919
<v Speaker 2>now I'm excited like that again. And then she climbs

1:13:14.960 --> 1:13:17.440
<v Speaker 2>inside the refrigerator and disappears.

1:13:17.720 --> 1:13:20.559
<v Speaker 1>Oh my god, this sequence is so creepy. It's shot

1:13:20.600 --> 1:13:22.360
<v Speaker 1>in a way in such a way that the other

1:13:22.439 --> 1:13:25.639
<v Speaker 1>characters in the room with her don't see her suddenly

1:13:25.680 --> 1:13:28.479
<v Speaker 1>go into the refrigerator, but we do. And then I

1:13:28.520 --> 1:13:32.679
<v Speaker 1>think she re emerges in the foreground of the shot

1:13:32.920 --> 1:13:36.560
<v Speaker 1>and may break the fourth wall here. I can't recall specifically,

1:13:36.600 --> 1:13:38.960
<v Speaker 1>but she does break the fourth wall at various points,

1:13:39.600 --> 1:13:42.400
<v Speaker 1>as if to say, like, yeah, it's me, Auntie, I'm

1:13:42.400 --> 1:13:43.400
<v Speaker 1>gonna eat these kids.

1:13:43.600 --> 1:13:47.080
<v Speaker 2>Yep, yep, dancing with the skeleton, eating a severed hand,

1:13:48.360 --> 1:13:50.920
<v Speaker 2>dropping a fried fish into a fish bowl and it

1:13:50.960 --> 1:13:53.559
<v Speaker 2>comes back to life. I think we see her dancing

1:13:53.560 --> 1:13:54.880
<v Speaker 2>in the rafters of the house.

1:13:55.160 --> 1:13:56.520
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Yeah.

1:13:56.560 --> 1:13:59.479
<v Speaker 2>There's also a sequence where Melody the musical friend goes

1:13:59.520 --> 1:14:02.439
<v Speaker 2>to play the piano again, and she of course plays

1:14:02.439 --> 1:14:05.080
<v Speaker 2>the house theme, you know, the Maybe we can get

1:14:05.080 --> 1:14:06.479
<v Speaker 2>a little sample of that, because you got to know

1:14:06.520 --> 1:14:15.559
<v Speaker 2>what it sounds like. Sometime around here, while like you know,

1:14:15.640 --> 1:14:20.280
<v Speaker 2>Melody's playing the piano and stuff, gorgeous sort of what

1:14:20.320 --> 1:14:21.920
<v Speaker 2>would you say happens to her. She kind of gets

1:14:21.960 --> 1:14:25.959
<v Speaker 2>possessed by the house. She's like looking in the mirror

1:14:26.120 --> 1:14:28.880
<v Speaker 2>and she starts putting on her aunt's makeup, and she

1:14:29.000 --> 1:14:35.920
<v Speaker 2>sees herself as her aunt with fangs and like like

1:14:36.080 --> 1:14:38.720
<v Speaker 2>she's looking in a mirror and the mirror shatters, and

1:14:38.720 --> 1:14:43.760
<v Speaker 2>then Gorgeous's actual face shatters, revealing animated fire inside. I

1:14:43.800 --> 1:14:46.200
<v Speaker 2>think the ghosts have taken her over.

1:14:46.680 --> 1:14:49.720
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's a It's another fabulous sequence. This one I

1:14:49.760 --> 1:14:53.720
<v Speaker 1>think was inspired by just the director's daughter saying, hey,

1:14:53.720 --> 1:14:57.040
<v Speaker 1>what if my reflection attacked me, wouldn't that be scary?

1:14:57.400 --> 1:15:00.840
<v Speaker 1>And of course they've taken that in a applied you know,

1:15:00.960 --> 1:15:04.200
<v Speaker 1>the ghost story logic to it, and yeah, absolutely wonderful.

1:15:04.439 --> 1:15:06.559
<v Speaker 2>Somewhere around here is also the scene we talked about

1:15:06.600 --> 1:15:11.280
<v Speaker 2>earlier where their friend's sweet she's been cleaning the house up.

1:15:11.360 --> 1:15:15.040
<v Speaker 2>She gets attacked by falling pillows and sentient mattresses from

1:15:15.080 --> 1:15:19.880
<v Speaker 2>heaven and seemingly killed and then also maybe transformed into

1:15:19.960 --> 1:15:25.920
<v Speaker 2>a large doll by the evil possessed mattresses. There's one

1:15:25.960 --> 1:15:30.559
<v Speaker 2>part around here where somebody imagines Togo, a mister Togo,

1:15:30.760 --> 1:15:33.200
<v Speaker 2>their teacher, as like a prince on a white horse.

1:15:33.240 --> 1:15:36.000
<v Speaker 2>They're like, he's coming, he'll be here, He's gonna save us.

1:15:36.760 --> 1:15:40.000
<v Speaker 2>But it's so funny every time they're like these repeated

1:15:40.040 --> 1:15:43.320
<v Speaker 2>cuts back to whatever mister Togo is doing. I think

1:15:43.360 --> 1:15:45.840
<v Speaker 2>he is trying to find them, but he never does.

1:15:47.200 --> 1:15:50.440
<v Speaker 2>They show him like stuck in traffic in this incredibly

1:15:50.560 --> 1:15:54.080
<v Speaker 2>tiny like what is this car of his? Is it

1:15:54.120 --> 1:15:55.760
<v Speaker 2>like some kind of dune buggy or.

1:15:56.160 --> 1:15:59.000
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, but yeah, he's he's trying to find them.

1:15:59.040 --> 1:16:02.599
<v Speaker 1>He's having no luck, and spoiler is eventually turned into

1:16:02.600 --> 1:16:03.480
<v Speaker 1>a pile of bananas.

1:16:03.840 --> 1:16:05.720
<v Speaker 2>God, that's a crazy seat. Well, okay, we should just

1:16:05.760 --> 1:16:08.240
<v Speaker 2>say what happens in that scene. Then this is a

1:16:08.240 --> 1:16:10.600
<v Speaker 2>little bit later, so we're jumping around in time. But

1:16:11.040 --> 1:16:15.599
<v Speaker 2>eventually mister Togo he stops for rama and he eats ramen.

1:16:15.640 --> 1:16:18.040
<v Speaker 2>At this Ramen card, we see him driving around in

1:16:18.080 --> 1:16:20.640
<v Speaker 2>the woods at night like a complete bumpkin and just

1:16:20.680 --> 1:16:22.760
<v Speaker 2>trying to like find the house and being like, there's

1:16:22.800 --> 1:16:25.679
<v Speaker 2>no house here, And then I guess he eventually does

1:16:25.720 --> 1:16:28.880
<v Speaker 2>get close because he meets the watermelon vendor, which we

1:16:28.920 --> 1:16:31.599
<v Speaker 2>know is just down the hill from the house. Mister

1:16:31.640 --> 1:16:34.080
<v Speaker 2>Togo goes up to the watermelon vendor and says, do

1:16:34.160 --> 1:16:38.479
<v Speaker 2>you know where the house is? The house? Watermelon vendor says,

1:16:38.520 --> 1:16:42.000
<v Speaker 2>the girls they were eaten. Do you like watermelons? Mister

1:16:42.040 --> 1:16:47.880
<v Speaker 2>Togo says no, watermelon vendor says what. Then he says bananas.

1:16:48.640 --> 1:16:52.080
<v Speaker 2>Watermelon vendor collapses into a pile of bones, his skull

1:16:52.200 --> 1:16:55.479
<v Speaker 2>floats and then emids smoke, and then mister Togo runs

1:16:55.520 --> 1:16:59.519
<v Speaker 2>away screaming banana banana, and then later it is revealed

1:16:59.560 --> 1:17:02.400
<v Speaker 2>that by the morning he has transformed into a pile

1:17:02.479 --> 1:17:04.240
<v Speaker 2>of ben in as inside his car.

1:17:05.640 --> 1:17:09.000
<v Speaker 1>Yes, that is what happens, and I don't know what

1:17:09.040 --> 1:17:12.200
<v Speaker 1>it means how it really factors into the rest of

1:17:12.280 --> 1:17:15.880
<v Speaker 1>the plot, but I guess defies to say he was

1:17:15.960 --> 1:17:19.479
<v Speaker 1>unsuccessful in being the white Night for the Smoothie.

1:17:19.720 --> 1:17:21.960
<v Speaker 2>Now, all this while the girls are trapped in the house.

1:17:22.000 --> 1:17:24.080
<v Speaker 2>They try to escape, but they've been like locked in.

1:17:24.160 --> 1:17:26.080
<v Speaker 2>They try to call for help, but there's just like

1:17:26.160 --> 1:17:30.280
<v Speaker 2>weird stuff going on on the phone. Melody is attacked

1:17:30.320 --> 1:17:32.559
<v Speaker 2>by the piano while playing it, so she's like playing

1:17:32.600 --> 1:17:34.920
<v Speaker 2>the house theme, and then the piano suddenly bites all

1:17:34.960 --> 1:17:38.160
<v Speaker 2>of her fingers off, and then it proceeds to eat

1:17:38.240 --> 1:17:42.800
<v Speaker 2>her whole body in this mind rending cartoon musical number

1:17:42.800 --> 1:17:45.479
<v Speaker 2>where the piano is like chomping on her and there

1:17:45.520 --> 1:17:48.839
<v Speaker 2>are like various human organs and body parts just sticking

1:17:48.880 --> 1:17:51.360
<v Speaker 2>out all over it, like you know, like a leg

1:17:51.520 --> 1:17:54.479
<v Speaker 2>hanging out of a monster's mouth. And then Melody is

1:17:54.520 --> 1:17:58.800
<v Speaker 2>also still laughing as she's being devoured. Yeah, absolutely delirious,

1:17:59.080 --> 1:18:03.240
<v Speaker 2>Yeah gorgeous. Now sort of possessed by the evil ghost

1:18:03.280 --> 1:18:06.759
<v Speaker 2>magic of the house is dressed up like a pale bride.

1:18:06.840 --> 1:18:09.000
<v Speaker 2>In fact, I think she's supposed to look like her mother.

1:18:09.960 --> 1:18:11.880
<v Speaker 2>She's sort of become her mother in a way, but

1:18:11.960 --> 1:18:16.479
<v Speaker 2>she's also become her aunt, and we see her sort

1:18:16.479 --> 1:18:20.880
<v Speaker 2>of moving around accompanied by Prof and Kung Fu. At

1:18:20.920 --> 1:18:23.759
<v Speaker 2>some point here, Prof gets absorbed by reading this book

1:18:24.200 --> 1:18:26.280
<v Speaker 2>that I think is the aunt's diary. It's a book

1:18:26.360 --> 1:18:30.080
<v Speaker 2>that contains lore, and through reading this book, Prof will

1:18:30.080 --> 1:18:32.840
<v Speaker 2>get more of the backstory that explains what happened at

1:18:32.840 --> 1:18:38.000
<v Speaker 2>the house. Oh but meanwhile she's Prof is like looking

1:18:38.040 --> 1:18:42.559
<v Speaker 2>at this book and just yelling like unscientific, illogical. At

1:18:42.560 --> 1:18:45.639
<v Speaker 2>the same time, Kung Fu is staring into this giant

1:18:45.680 --> 1:18:50.520
<v Speaker 2>steampunk grandfather clock and sees an undead version of Sweet

1:18:50.520 --> 1:18:53.960
<v Speaker 2>inside it, and the clock is reeking rivulets of blood

1:18:54.000 --> 1:18:55.120
<v Speaker 2>down its glass front.

1:18:56.200 --> 1:18:58.679
<v Speaker 1>This is probably a good point, is any to mention

1:18:58.800 --> 1:19:02.559
<v Speaker 1>that Oh yash she again was the head of special

1:19:02.560 --> 1:19:05.559
<v Speaker 1>effects on this film, and said in the interview that, like,

1:19:05.600 --> 1:19:09.719
<v Speaker 1>they actually could have used Toho's in house special effects

1:19:09.720 --> 1:19:12.559
<v Speaker 1>people who were quite good. You know, they'd worked on

1:19:12.840 --> 1:19:16.120
<v Speaker 1>various pictures, Godzilla movies and so forth. But he said

1:19:16.120 --> 1:19:18.080
<v Speaker 1>they didn't want to go that route because they didn't

1:19:18.120 --> 1:19:20.800
<v Speaker 1>want the special effects to be too believable, like they

1:19:20.880 --> 1:19:24.920
<v Speaker 1>needed to have a certain unreality to them, and I

1:19:24.920 --> 1:19:27.240
<v Speaker 1>guess even an enhanced unreality.

1:19:27.840 --> 1:19:30.960
<v Speaker 2>Yes, yes, yes, I mean the clock scene looks very

1:19:31.000 --> 1:19:35.559
<v Speaker 2>frightening and looks great. There are other parts that don't

1:19:35.640 --> 1:19:38.320
<v Speaker 2>look realistic at all, but I love the style. There

1:19:38.640 --> 1:19:42.160
<v Speaker 2>is one part where after Melody gets eaten by the piano,

1:19:42.560 --> 1:19:46.639
<v Speaker 2>we just see severed, bloody, disembodied fingers playing the piano

1:19:46.760 --> 1:19:48.520
<v Speaker 2>and still playing the house theme.

1:19:48.439 --> 1:19:51.479
<v Speaker 1>Except meal style. Right, This is when it starts being

1:19:51.479 --> 1:19:51.920
<v Speaker 1>like a meal.

1:19:52.280 --> 1:19:57.479
<v Speaker 2>Oh, I think that's right. Yeah, yeah. We learn more

1:19:57.479 --> 1:20:00.840
<v Speaker 2>from the Diary of gorgeouses on. We learned that, you know,

1:20:00.920 --> 1:20:03.120
<v Speaker 2>she was waiting for her fiance to come home from

1:20:03.120 --> 1:20:06.160
<v Speaker 2>the war in denial that he had died. And she

1:20:06.360 --> 1:20:08.880
<v Speaker 2>mentions that all of the young girls in the town

1:20:08.920 --> 1:20:13.040
<v Speaker 2>are gone now and she is all alone. Hmmm. And

1:20:13.080 --> 1:20:15.920
<v Speaker 2>then suddenly, while they're like reading this learning about it,

1:20:15.960 --> 1:20:18.880
<v Speaker 2>a giant head bursts into the room with them, and

1:20:18.920 --> 1:20:21.160
<v Speaker 2>it is the head of Gorgeous and she says, I'm

1:20:21.160 --> 1:20:24.439
<v Speaker 2>in my aunt's world now, and then she morphs into

1:20:24.439 --> 1:20:26.880
<v Speaker 2>a giant pair of lips, and one of the girls

1:20:26.960 --> 1:20:31.879
<v Speaker 2>yells huge lips, and the lips revealed that Auntie actually

1:20:31.960 --> 1:20:36.240
<v Speaker 2>died many years ago, and she became after she died,

1:20:36.320 --> 1:20:40.040
<v Speaker 2>and she became a jealous, vengeful ghost. I think the

1:20:40.120 --> 1:20:43.559
<v Speaker 2>idea is she so longed for her fiance, she wanted

1:20:43.600 --> 1:20:46.599
<v Speaker 2>to marry him and couldn't accept that he had died

1:20:46.640 --> 1:20:49.799
<v Speaker 2>in the war. So now instead she is this vengeful

1:20:49.840 --> 1:20:52.960
<v Speaker 2>ghost that eats all of the unmarried girls who come

1:20:53.120 --> 1:20:57.320
<v Speaker 2>to her house. So I think the suggestion is this

1:20:57.360 --> 1:20:59.160
<v Speaker 2>may have been what happened to all of the girls

1:20:59.200 --> 1:21:03.640
<v Speaker 2>in town who are getting piano lessons, just one by one. Yeah,

1:21:03.680 --> 1:21:05.960
<v Speaker 2>And she says that when she eats them is the

1:21:05.960 --> 1:21:08.720
<v Speaker 2>only time that she can wear her bridle gown. And

1:21:08.760 --> 1:21:11.160
<v Speaker 2>then she says, now it's your turn, just let me

1:21:11.240 --> 1:21:11.680
<v Speaker 2>eat you.

1:21:12.600 --> 1:21:14.760
<v Speaker 1>So yes, at this point that, like the poster art

1:21:14.920 --> 1:21:18.680
<v Speaker 1>has come to get, the promise is fulfilled. House is

1:21:18.680 --> 1:21:19.800
<v Speaker 1>a house that eats people.

1:21:20.000 --> 1:21:22.240
<v Speaker 2>So there's a bunch more stuff that happens. The girls

1:21:22.240 --> 1:21:26.160
<v Speaker 2>are attacked by various flying household objects. I do you

1:21:26.200 --> 1:21:29.240
<v Speaker 2>want to emphasize the house theme and how much it

1:21:29.320 --> 1:21:32.280
<v Speaker 2>is like just the objects one would find in a

1:21:32.320 --> 1:21:35.599
<v Speaker 2>domestic residence are all turned evil in the movie. Everything

1:21:35.920 --> 1:21:40.520
<v Speaker 2>that would be in a house, appliances, furniture, just household

1:21:40.560 --> 1:21:43.479
<v Speaker 2>items are all now monsters that attack the girls.

1:21:44.040 --> 1:21:45.760
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I mean we've talked about this un stuff to

1:21:45.760 --> 1:21:47.840
<v Speaker 1>blow your mind before, some of these ideas about house

1:21:48.760 --> 1:21:53.599
<v Speaker 1>significantly old household objects can kind of become animated and

1:21:53.640 --> 1:21:54.639
<v Speaker 1>so forth. Yeah.

1:21:54.760 --> 1:21:58.679
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, So, while they're being attacked by the house prof

1:21:59.000 --> 1:22:02.479
<v Speaker 2>at some point that in order to escape they must

1:22:02.520 --> 1:22:06.559
<v Speaker 2>destroy Blanch the Cat, or perhaps destroy an image of

1:22:07.400 --> 1:22:10.080
<v Speaker 2>an image of Blanch the Cat which is on the wall,

1:22:10.640 --> 1:22:13.040
<v Speaker 2>and so Kung Fu is like, right, got my orders,

1:22:13.040 --> 1:22:14.920
<v Speaker 2>and she tries to carry out this attack on the

1:22:14.960 --> 1:22:18.160
<v Speaker 2>image of the cat, but she is in turn attacked

1:22:18.200 --> 1:22:20.800
<v Speaker 2>by an overhead lamp, which latches onto her skull and

1:22:20.840 --> 1:22:27.320
<v Speaker 2>electrocutes her, and then like the lamp seems to suck

1:22:27.439 --> 1:22:31.479
<v Speaker 2>Kung Fu into a psychic vortex where she perceives floating,

1:22:31.960 --> 1:22:35.920
<v Speaker 2>rotating body parts and hears the voices of her dead friends.

1:22:36.400 --> 1:22:40.040
<v Speaker 2>But somehow she snaps out of this vortex and the

1:22:40.160 --> 1:22:42.920
<v Speaker 2>upper half of her body seems to have been destroyed,

1:22:43.080 --> 1:22:46.360
<v Speaker 2>but her disembodied legs fly out of the lamp and

1:22:46.439 --> 1:22:49.000
<v Speaker 2>kick the image of the cat on the wall, which

1:22:49.080 --> 1:22:52.200
<v Speaker 2>vomits blood and freaks out and leaps up in pain,

1:22:52.760 --> 1:22:55.879
<v Speaker 2>which in turn causes Gorgeous to gush blood and scream

1:22:55.960 --> 1:22:57.719
<v Speaker 2>like a vampire dowsed in holy water.

1:22:58.240 --> 1:22:59.840
<v Speaker 1>And when the cat leaps up, it's kind of like

1:23:00.040 --> 1:23:03.840
<v Speaker 1>animated lightning cat. It's really all this has to be

1:23:03.920 --> 1:23:06.800
<v Speaker 1>seen to be understood. We can describe it to you,

1:23:07.280 --> 1:23:09.960
<v Speaker 1>but you just have to experience it. It's even crazier

1:23:10.000 --> 1:23:13.040
<v Speaker 1>than we made it sound here. It's also like, yes,

1:23:13.120 --> 1:23:15.920
<v Speaker 1>there's lots of blood going on here, but it's also

1:23:16.560 --> 1:23:18.160
<v Speaker 1>and it is gory. But I don't want to like

1:23:18.240 --> 1:23:20.120
<v Speaker 1>oversell that and say, like, oh, this is just a

1:23:20.120 --> 1:23:23.680
<v Speaker 1>real gorefest. It's not. Because it's so weird and there

1:23:23.760 --> 1:23:27.519
<v Speaker 1>is this unreality to the effects. It exists in its

1:23:27.560 --> 1:23:28.160
<v Speaker 1>own dimension.

1:23:28.560 --> 1:23:30.840
<v Speaker 2>It's hard to describe what comes next. There's a lot

1:23:30.840 --> 1:23:34.360
<v Speaker 2>of like there's like cat images vomiting blood, lots of

1:23:34.360 --> 1:23:41.839
<v Speaker 2>things vomiting blood. People drowning in blood, yeah, floating on blood, floating.

1:23:42.080 --> 1:23:46.599
<v Speaker 2>There's all this blood. And then finally it seems that

1:23:46.720 --> 1:23:49.720
<v Speaker 2>all of the girls are devoured by the house and

1:23:49.800 --> 1:23:53.400
<v Speaker 2>that Gorgeous is something altered. She is somehow merged with

1:23:53.520 --> 1:23:57.840
<v Speaker 2>Auntie and whatever comfort you know she offers to her

1:23:57.880 --> 1:24:01.960
<v Speaker 2>friends is a prelude to eating yourself. So they weird

1:24:01.960 --> 1:24:04.519
<v Speaker 2>to understand that all of the girls are have their

1:24:04.520 --> 1:24:07.439
<v Speaker 2>souls eaten by the house. But then, oh man, the

1:24:07.479 --> 1:24:11.799
<v Speaker 2>movie has such a stinger. The next day. Remember remember

1:24:13.000 --> 1:24:15.040
<v Speaker 2>Gorgeous's new step mom Rioko.

1:24:15.680 --> 1:24:17.080
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, she's scarf.

1:24:17.439 --> 1:24:19.880
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, with the scarf she's driving through the country or

1:24:19.880 --> 1:24:21.400
<v Speaker 2>scarf blowing in the wind. She said she was going

1:24:21.439 --> 1:24:24.200
<v Speaker 2>to go to the house to uh, to catch up

1:24:24.240 --> 1:24:25.559
<v Speaker 2>with Gorgeous, you know, to get.

1:24:25.439 --> 1:24:25.960
<v Speaker 1>To know her.

1:24:26.720 --> 1:24:30.000
<v Speaker 2>Uh. And she she comes to no, wait maybe she

1:24:30.560 --> 1:24:33.320
<v Speaker 2>wait do we learn whether she and the father had

1:24:33.320 --> 1:24:35.640
<v Speaker 2>actually gotten married yet? I think maybe they had not.

1:24:35.800 --> 1:24:37.439
<v Speaker 2>I think they were going to get married.

1:24:37.640 --> 1:24:39.760
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I think this is still like she's like, I'm

1:24:39.760 --> 1:24:42.680
<v Speaker 1>gonna go patch things up with her, you know beforehand.

1:24:43.040 --> 1:24:46.680
<v Speaker 2>Yes. Uh. So she she's driving through the country, she

1:24:46.760 --> 1:24:49.240
<v Speaker 2>finds the house. She walks by the watermelon stand where

1:24:49.240 --> 1:24:52.920
<v Speaker 2>we see mister Togo has turned into bananas. Uh. And

1:24:52.960 --> 1:24:57.960
<v Speaker 2>then she goes up to the ant's house. This bittersweet

1:24:58.040 --> 1:25:01.840
<v Speaker 2>kind of beatlesy pop song is played. She wanders through

1:25:01.880 --> 1:25:05.559
<v Speaker 2>the garden and it's very dreamlike and ethereal. And she

1:25:05.640 --> 1:25:08.439
<v Speaker 2>meets Gorgeous at the house and is invited inside, and

1:25:08.479 --> 1:25:11.599
<v Speaker 2>she asks, Gorgeous, where are your friends? And Gorgeous says,

1:25:11.640 --> 1:25:15.000
<v Speaker 2>they're still sleeping, but they'll be up soon when they're hungry.

1:25:15.680 --> 1:25:18.960
<v Speaker 2>They get up when they're hungry, and then Rioko bursts

1:25:19.000 --> 1:25:19.840
<v Speaker 2>into flames.

1:25:20.720 --> 1:25:25.040
<v Speaker 1>Amazing, just absolutely amazing, like legitimately creepy and amazing.

1:25:25.400 --> 1:25:27.519
<v Speaker 2>Oh and then there's like a monologue at the end,

1:25:27.560 --> 1:25:30.200
<v Speaker 2>which I feel like I should just relate. I don't

1:25:30.200 --> 1:25:33.679
<v Speaker 2>see exactly how it connects, but it says, even after

1:25:33.720 --> 1:25:36.679
<v Speaker 2>the flesh perishes, one can live in the hearts of others,

1:25:36.720 --> 1:25:40.240
<v Speaker 2>together with the feelings one has for them. Therefore, the

1:25:40.320 --> 1:25:43.600
<v Speaker 2>story of love must be told many times so that

1:25:43.680 --> 1:25:47.200
<v Speaker 2>the spirits of lovers may live forever, forever, the one

1:25:47.240 --> 1:25:50.240
<v Speaker 2>thing that never perishes. The only promise is love.

1:25:50.520 --> 1:25:53.719
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I don't fully understand. It reminds me a little

1:25:53.760 --> 1:25:56.920
<v Speaker 1>bit of the how on the nineties Outer Limits. You'll

1:25:56.920 --> 1:25:59.080
<v Speaker 1>have the narration voice come on at the end, and

1:25:59.520 --> 1:26:03.400
<v Speaker 1>something up in ways that sometimes feel a little disconnected

1:26:03.400 --> 1:26:06.120
<v Speaker 1>from what you just watched. But I don't know, maybe

1:26:06.120 --> 1:26:08.920
<v Speaker 1>something's lost in translation here. Or maybe it is, like

1:26:09.040 --> 1:26:11.680
<v Speaker 1>so much of this film intended to be a bit

1:26:11.760 --> 1:26:15.080
<v Speaker 1>off kilter and intended to make you scratch your head.

1:26:15.160 --> 1:26:18.960
<v Speaker 2>So that's how again. Truly one of the weirdest films

1:26:19.040 --> 1:26:22.120
<v Speaker 2>ever made, widely recognized as such, and I have to

1:26:22.160 --> 1:26:26.120
<v Speaker 2>concur with that opinion. It is there's not really anything

1:26:26.200 --> 1:26:26.519
<v Speaker 2>like it.

1:26:26.880 --> 1:26:29.920
<v Speaker 1>Agreed, it is a masterpiece. This is a masterpiece of

1:26:29.960 --> 1:26:34.840
<v Speaker 1>weird cinema. Highly recommend it again. Luckily, it's pretty easy

1:26:34.880 --> 1:26:37.559
<v Speaker 1>to get your hands on if you're interested in watching it,

1:26:37.840 --> 1:26:40.800
<v Speaker 1>and it's definitely worth watching it. I mean, have it

1:26:40.800 --> 1:26:42.880
<v Speaker 1>on in the background if nothing else, but I think

1:26:42.920 --> 1:26:47.320
<v Speaker 1>you'll be sucked in. It's hard to casually watch this movie.

1:26:47.000 --> 1:26:51.280
<v Speaker 1>I watched it by myself and I kept catching myself

1:26:51.360 --> 1:26:54.280
<v Speaker 1>like making faces, you know, like my jaw literally dropping

1:26:54.600 --> 1:26:56.040
<v Speaker 1>at some of the sequences.

1:26:56.479 --> 1:26:59.360
<v Speaker 2>It's like a dream that a cat had about being

1:26:59.360 --> 1:26:59.800
<v Speaker 2>a human.

1:27:00.560 --> 1:27:03.440
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it might be. It's as good of an explanation

1:27:03.479 --> 1:27:06.759
<v Speaker 1>as any Well, there you have a house. It's great

1:27:06.800 --> 1:27:09.439
<v Speaker 1>to have finally discussed this film on Weird House Cinema.

1:27:09.439 --> 1:27:11.760
<v Speaker 1>I felt like it was faded to happen at some

1:27:11.840 --> 1:27:14.400
<v Speaker 1>point or another, and we hadn't covered a Japanese film

1:27:14.479 --> 1:27:17.200
<v Speaker 1>and a spell there, so it was good to cover

1:27:17.240 --> 1:27:19.960
<v Speaker 1>another one here. Obviously, we'd love to hear from everyone

1:27:19.960 --> 1:27:23.160
<v Speaker 1>out there. Do you have thoughts on House, memories of

1:27:23.200 --> 1:27:25.200
<v Speaker 1>seeing it for the first time, hearing about it for

1:27:25.240 --> 1:27:28.280
<v Speaker 1>the first time? Writ in, We would love to hear

1:27:28.320 --> 1:27:30.920
<v Speaker 1>from you. As always, will remind you that Stuff to

1:27:30.920 --> 1:27:33.599
<v Speaker 1>Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast with core

1:27:33.680 --> 1:27:35.920
<v Speaker 1>episodes and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed

1:27:35.960 --> 1:27:38.719
<v Speaker 1>on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside

1:27:38.760 --> 1:27:40.759
<v Speaker 1>most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film

1:27:40.960 --> 1:27:43.920
<v Speaker 1>on Weird House Cinema. Go to letterbox dot com. That's

1:27:44.000 --> 1:27:46.160
<v Speaker 1>l E T T e r box d dot com.

1:27:46.200 --> 1:27:48.680
<v Speaker 1>Look us up. Our username is weird House. We have

1:27:48.880 --> 1:27:51.760
<v Speaker 1>all the movies we've covered listed there, and sometimes you

1:27:51.760 --> 1:27:55.240
<v Speaker 1>can get a peek ahead at what's coming up next. Also, hey,

1:27:55.240 --> 1:27:57.000
<v Speaker 1>if you just want to support the show, we'll go

1:27:57.040 --> 1:27:59.040
<v Speaker 1>ahead and hammer this home again. One of the best

1:27:59.080 --> 1:28:01.120
<v Speaker 1>things you can do is wherever you get your podcast,

1:28:01.200 --> 1:28:04.400
<v Speaker 1>make sure you have subscribed and that you're receiving downloads.

1:28:04.479 --> 1:28:06.320
<v Speaker 1>That helps us out, that keeps the show alive.

1:28:06.680 --> 1:28:10.440
<v Speaker 2>Here's thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.

1:28:10.840 --> 1:28:12.400
<v Speaker 2>If you would like to get in touch with us

1:28:12.400 --> 1:28:14.920
<v Speaker 2>with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1:28:14.920 --> 1:28:16.840
<v Speaker 2>a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1:28:17.040 --> 1:28:19.719
<v Speaker 2>you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1:28:19.720 --> 1:28:27.360
<v Speaker 2>your Mind dot com.

1:28:27.479 --> 1:28:30.439
<v Speaker 3>Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1:28:30.520 --> 1:28:33.320
<v Speaker 3>more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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<v Speaker 3>Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.