Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 2: And this is Joe McCormick. And today we're bringing you
Speaker 2: an older episode of Weird House Cinema. This was our
Speaker 2: feature on the nineteen seventy seven horror film House. Oh boy,
Speaker 2: what a good time this was.
Speaker 1: Oh this is one of the towering giants of weird Cinema.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's anything else to say. Let's listen
Speaker 2: to House.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: My name is Rob Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: Today on Weird House Cinema, we're tackling what might be
Speaker 1: by many measures, I think by my measure, the ultimate
Speaker 1: Haunted house movie. In another Haunted House property, nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: one's Hell House, a novel by Richard Mavison. This was
Speaker 1: later made into the Legend of Hell House in seventy three.
Speaker 1: There's a description of the Belasco House, this haunted house
Speaker 1: that's key to the plot, and it's described as quote
Speaker 1: the mount everest of haunted houses due to the intense
Speaker 1: sanity warping powers that it holds over anyone who attempts
Speaker 1: to make it through the night there to complete the journey. Now,
Speaker 1: there are various great haunted House films out there, and
Speaker 1: I feel like the best of them excel in connecting
Speaker 1: with something very ancient in the human psyche, right, the
Speaker 1: essence of the damned place, a location that is so
Speaker 1: just fundamentally physically or spiritually polluted that to venture into it,
Speaker 1: to be there, to take place there, is to just
Speaker 1: absolutely warp your identity and connection to reality. So there
Speaker 1: are haunted House movies that tackle this in a very
Speaker 1: serious fashion, and you might argue that they tackle it
Speaker 1: more seriously than the movie we're talking about here today,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven's House. But when the chips are down
Speaker 1: and House is firing on all cylinders, I think it
Speaker 1: absolutely delivers on all the goods. It absolutely checks off
Speaker 1: all the boxes. For my money. Right now, I'm going
Speaker 1: to say that House is the Mount Everest of Haunted
Speaker 1: house movies.
Speaker 2: It's got to be up there, and like Mount Everest,
Speaker 2: it may cause a kind of altitude sickness, maybe a
Speaker 2: sense of dizziness, a visions of other figures climbing up
Speaker 2: the mountain with you that may or may not be there.
Speaker 2: It is a weird, baffling, life changing experience. House is
Speaker 2: one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen, but that's
Speaker 2: not an observation unique to me. It is widely regarded
Speaker 2: as like one of the great weird movies of all time,
Speaker 2: And yeah, I think it also qualifies in the subgenre
Speaker 2: of weirdest and most interesting haunted house movies. Though it's
Speaker 2: different than than a lot of haunted house movies because
Speaker 2: a lot of haunted house movies, like you're pointing out,
Speaker 2: are about a house that's been pollute, a house that
Speaker 2: has been sort of like made into a place of
Speaker 2: evil because of something evil that happened there, you know,
Speaker 2: like a person, an evil person does something wicked inside
Speaker 2: the house, and then that evil infects the house and
Speaker 2: so forth. But the difference I would point out is
Speaker 2: that the evil in those cases seems to be spurred
Speaker 2: by human wrongdoing, and in House nineteen seventy seven, I
Speaker 2: don't know if I'd say that's the case. Instead, it's
Speaker 2: hard to say where the evil comes from. The person
Speaker 2: who occupies the evil. Haunted House doesn't seem to have
Speaker 2: initially been an evil or bad person, but someone who
Speaker 2: suffers a kind of unfortunate fate and is transformed by
Speaker 2: forces unnamed into a type of monster. And in that transformation,
Speaker 2: it's like the house comes with her, you know, like
Speaker 2: she in the house urge into one being that is
Speaker 2: fully just an expression of monstrousness and magical predation.
Speaker 1: It's like tragedy plus time equals house. That's like, you know,
Speaker 1: like you're saying, she's not an evil person, and she had,
Speaker 1: she went through a great tragedy, but it's like over
Speaker 1: time that is like spiritually fermented into this new shape,
Speaker 1: and that shape is is hungry and in many respects evil.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's a tragedy plus time plus cat equals house
Speaker 2: because the cat? What is the role of the cat
Speaker 2: in this movie? Could we last October? Did an episode
Speaker 2: or a series of episodes about monster cats of Japan
Speaker 2: that was October, wasn't it?
Speaker 1: I believe it was?
Speaker 2: Yes, Yeah, like the Bakin echo and stuff. There there
Speaker 2: are a number of different sort of cat ghosts or
Speaker 2: evil cat monster entities cat yo kai in Japanese lore,
Speaker 2: and we talked about a few of them, shape shifting cats,
Speaker 2: cats that the cats that might lurk out in the
Speaker 2: wilderness and be some kind of monster. I don't know
Speaker 2: if the cat in this movie is exactly supposed to
Speaker 2: be supposed to correspond to one of these cat monster archetypes,
Speaker 2: but what a presence it is. It feels kind of
Speaker 2: like maybe all of the evil in the movie comes
Speaker 2: from the cat. And it's not clear where the cat
Speaker 2: comes from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the cat is somehow key to it is like
Speaker 1: a nexus point or a physical incarnation. It's uncertain. I
Speaker 1: mean as as I feel, like, you know, scary supernatural
Speaker 1: things should be, they're difficult for us mortals to fathom.
Speaker 1: But we Yeah, we have this fabulous cat at the
Speaker 1: center of everything here. And I think it also this
Speaker 1: is what serves to make House not only a great
Speaker 1: haunted house movie, but also a great cat movie. Like
Speaker 1: all the cat stuff is completely on point and very cute,
Speaker 1: very cute cat, very cute flu fere.
Speaker 2: This movie got me thinking about what it what it
Speaker 2: is meant to say about a character when a character
Speaker 2: often has a cat in their lap. So this is
Speaker 2: the thing. Actually I mostly associate with villains in films
Speaker 2: like Blowfeld and the James Bond movies. Is this villain
Speaker 2: who In the early James Bond movies, I think you
Speaker 2: don't even ever see his face. You just see the
Speaker 2: lower half of his body. He's a man who's presiding
Speaker 2: over this evil, shadowy criminal empire known as Specter, and
Speaker 2: he has all these henchmen going out and doing things
Speaker 2: for him. But when you see the lower half of
Speaker 2: his body, he has a fluffy, very flufy white cat
Speaker 2: in his lap and he pets the cat while you know,
Speaker 2: demanding updates from his assassins. And then later in the
Speaker 2: James Bond movies, you do actually see the face of
Speaker 2: blofeld So. And he's played by various different actors, but
Speaker 2: in one movie, for example, he's played by Donald Pleasance.
Speaker 2: And so you know we were sharing before coming in here,
Speaker 2: like images of Donald Pleasants holding a white cat, much
Speaker 2: like blanch the cat in house. What does the cat mean?
Speaker 2: Why is the cat in the villain's lap, and what
Speaker 2: what associations are we supposed to make from seeing that image?
Speaker 1: I mean, in the case of Blowfeld, I guess kind
Speaker 1: of you know, it's the idea of like a regal
Speaker 1: sort of lap creature, but also maybe a commentary on
Speaker 1: the nature of the cat. You know, the cat has
Speaker 1: its own air about it. Though it's weird that owning
Speaker 1: the cat is villainous in these Bond movies, and yet
Speaker 1: James Bond kicks a cat. I would think that that
Speaker 1: is me and that's the And also like the forgot
Speaker 1: was this? I forget which one this was? This may
Speaker 1: be the one that actually takes place in Japan part
Speaker 1: in the time anyway, but there's a whole bit where
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, Blowfeld has a double, which one is
Speaker 1: a real Blowfeld? Better kick the cat to find out
Speaker 1: which master it scurries to, And it's like, I don't
Speaker 1: even know if that would work, Like is that really
Speaker 1: going to be the cat's number one? Moved like to
Speaker 1: go back to a safe lap. I think the cat
Speaker 1: may just go hide under something.
Speaker 2: I think there is something to be signaled about a
Speaker 2: villain with the cat that it makes them seem more
Speaker 2: threatening and sinister, the fact that they are ordering up
Speaker 2: murder of humans at the same time that they're being
Speaker 2: very gentle and stroking a cat. You know, It's like
Speaker 2: that contrast of of delicate gentleness and friendliness with one
Speaker 2: creature but cruelty to another.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that I think that probably sums it up.
Speaker 2: Now. We've talked about House as a as a widely
Speaker 2: reputed ultimate weird movie. We've talked about it as the
Speaker 2: mount Everest of haunted house movies. But there's another thing
Speaker 2: that we haven't really mentioned about it yet, which I
Speaker 2: think is key to understanding what it is, which is
Speaker 2: the childlike logic that operates in House. It is different
Speaker 2: from a lot of horror movies. And I somehow connect
Speaker 2: this to the fact that, say, the House doesn't have
Speaker 2: a standard backstory of like human evil drawing in demons
Speaker 2: and wicked spirits. Instead, it feels like the the evil
Speaker 2: that infects the house just sort of totally unexplainable and random,
Speaker 2: something that comes in and strikes and infects the house
Speaker 2: and the occupant of the house from outside.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: That seems much more in line with the way that
Speaker 2: children imagine evil spirits. You know, you don't need that
Speaker 2: like backstory of it being caused by someone's human wicked choices. Instead,
Speaker 2: it's just it comes out of nowhere and it's scary
Speaker 2: and it doesn't even need to be explained.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a very important aspect of House, and
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about Nubuhiko Obayashi, the director,
Speaker 1: who is also an actor in it and a producer
Speaker 1: and director of special effects. But famously this like the
Speaker 1: key aspects of this film were inspired by conversations he
Speaker 1: had with his daughter, who I believe was ten at
Speaker 1: the age, Chigumi Obayashi, where he would come to her
Speaker 1: and like, well, what what what do you find scary?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: Tell me what fry? What would be I think he
Speaker 1: also said like, hey, if daddy were to make a movie,
Speaker 1: what kind of things would you want to be in it?
Speaker 1: And so she came up with these various ideas that
Speaker 1: were all based on just this child's eye view of
Speaker 1: the world, like, for instance, so one particular thing. We'll
Speaker 1: probably run through most of them. But there's a scary
Speaker 1: clock in the movie, and according to her on the
Speaker 1: Criterion collection disc of this film, there's an interview with
Speaker 1: her and her father from several years back, and she
Speaker 1: says that there was this there was this point where
Speaker 1: they were staying at this house in the country, you know,
Speaker 1: a family house, and there was a big clock in
Speaker 1: the hallway and she would have to cross by it
Speaker 1: in the night in order to go to the bathroom
Speaker 1: and she was frightened by the clock, you know. And
Speaker 1: so it's the kind of thing like humans are generally
Speaker 1: not frightened by big, dusty clocks and houses, but children
Speaker 1: can be. And so the beauty of this film, One
Speaker 1: of the beautiful things about this film is that he
Speaker 1: took these ideas from his daughter and then you know,
Speaker 1: added a little more traditional ghost story structure to it
Speaker 1: and handed it off to the screenwriter. But yet it
Speaker 1: still retains these very childlike views of fear and threat
Speaker 1: and then sort of translates them to a certain extent
Speaker 1: into a wider understanding for you know, any viewer, they
Speaker 1: may watch it. You don't have to be a child
Speaker 1: to feel the fear of this clock.
Speaker 2: There is a young person's creativity in the way some
Speaker 2: of the scary images in the movie are conjured, so
Speaker 2: like making connections that an adult might not normally make,
Speaker 2: but then also a kind of a young person's fearlessness
Speaker 2: in deciding what is scary. So there is a scene
Speaker 2: in the movie where a character is fatally attacked by
Speaker 2: pillows and mattresses that fall from the ceiling. I think
Speaker 2: that is an image that if an adult were to
Speaker 2: come up with it, they might think, no, that's silly,
Speaker 2: that's not scary. That doesn't work. It just doesn't fit
Speaker 2: the language of what is a threat in horror movies.
Speaker 2: But I think I read this idea also came from
Speaker 2: from the director's daughter. You know, she was afraid of
Speaker 2: like being attacked by mattresses from the sky, and in
Speaker 2: the movie it they just they just do it. That's
Speaker 2: a scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think she mentioned in the interview
Speaker 1: that it came from or maybe your father did that.
Speaker 1: It came in part from going out to the countryside
Speaker 1: and having to sleep on futons and then fold them
Speaker 1: up during the day, and as a child, like the
Speaker 1: futon is so big and it's kind of heavy, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of falling on you, so it kind of
Speaker 1: feeds into this idea.
Speaker 2: I never would have thought of that, but yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's that's really the beauty of it. Like,
Speaker 1: these are all things that grown ups would not have
Speaker 1: thought of. They come from the mind of children, and
Speaker 1: the child's mind is capable of such wonders and such horrors.
Speaker 1: You know that. It's one of the joys of parenthood
Speaker 1: is getting to to be on the receiving end of
Speaker 1: so many wild and creative ideas that they just come
Speaker 1: up with on their own, you know, because they have
Speaker 1: to this innate creativity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to see to see the wild mental leaps and
Speaker 2: the strange connections that a young brain makes that you
Speaker 2: just you're seeing into something that your brain may once
Speaker 2: have been capable of but is no longer like the
Speaker 2: pruning has cut you off from from that kind of
Speaker 2: connection across mental distance.
Speaker 1: So this, again, this is a huge part of the film.
Speaker 1: We'll keep coming back to this as we discuss the
Speaker 1: making of the film and also get into the plot.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm glad that we're finally covering House. It's
Speaker 1: a film that has been on the Weird House Cinema
Speaker 1: list for I mean really since the beginning. I mean
Speaker 1: that's just if when you think of weird films and
Speaker 1: you get into listings of weird films, it's always up there.
Speaker 1: There's a poster or or a recreation of the poster
Speaker 1: for this film in the the front window of Videodrome,
Speaker 1: the movie rental place here in Atlanta. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's always been on the list, and today we're finally
Speaker 1: talking about it. I guess I'm gonna stick with the
Speaker 1: Mount everest of Hunted House Films for my elevator pitch.
Speaker 1: Do you have any anything to add to that?
Speaker 2: Joe Worst Summer vacation ever. Seven high school friends go
Speaker 2: out for a leisurely visit to a countryside manor somewhere
Speaker 2: in Japan and get eaten by various household appliances.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's go ahead and listen to at
Speaker 1: least part of the trailer audio here. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: it necessarily makes sense to listen to the whole thing,
Speaker 1: but we definitely want to get just a little taste
Speaker 1: of that music, a little taste, especially of the title.
Speaker 1: So let's have a listen. See that squin I see
Speaker 1: in your Rise where tomorrow as Hi, my heart as
Speaker 1: a bell, ringing blow at the touch of the leans
Speaker 1: down the.
Speaker 2: Rainbow, come slide with loud row, skateball and as they
Speaker 2: got clo.
Speaker 1: Cocaaia cosa. Oh all right now, if you want to
Speaker 1: run out and watch House before we get into any
Speaker 1: further discussion here, well, lucky for you, House is widely
Speaker 1: available in pretty much any format you might desire here
Speaker 1: in the States. You can currently stream it on Max
Speaker 1: unless I think it's still there It's also available on
Speaker 1: Blu Ray and DVD from the Criterion Collection. And that's
Speaker 1: how I watched it. I rented it from Videodrome and
Speaker 1: watched it on Blu Ray. And I'll refer back to
Speaker 1: some of the special features as we perceive. All Right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's get into the people who made this film, starting
Speaker 1: once more at the top with Nuwahiko Obayashi again director.
Speaker 1: He also plays husband in this producer, director of special effects.
Speaker 1: He lived nineteen thirty eight through twenty twenty. He was
Speaker 1: a Japanese director, screenwriter, and editor known for his work
Speaker 1: in experimental cinema of the nineteen sixties TV commercials, reportedly
Speaker 1: by the thousands and often involving the sort of Western
Speaker 1: celebrity appearances that were parodied in two thousand and threes
Speaker 1: lost in translation.
Speaker 2: Okay, so where you might have like a celebrity famous
Speaker 2: in English language movies and TV come in and kind
Speaker 2: of deliver some strange, out of context lines for a
Speaker 2: soda commercial in Japan or something exactly.
Speaker 1: And if you look up at images of him, you'll
Speaker 1: find a lot of old images of him, like standing
Speaker 1: around with various celebrities from the West. Now, this film
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy Seven's House was his first feature film and
Speaker 1: intentionally off kilter, highly weird, experimental horror comedy. I guess
Speaker 1: you might call it, but you can describe it many
Speaker 1: other ways as well. Initially didn't land all that well
Speaker 1: with especially the Japanese critics and in the industry, but
Speaker 1: it's going developed a cult following in Japan and abroad,
Speaker 1: and today it's celebrated as just a complete cinematic freak
Speaker 1: out and stands tall amid the pantheon of global psychatronics cinema.
Speaker 2: As long as you're sticking to coherent narrative films, it
Speaker 2: is one of the weirdest ever made.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I do want to stress that it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does have a plot that you can follow. It's
Speaker 1: not one of these You can definitely describe it as
Speaker 1: art house to a certain extent. Ty West the horror director,
Speaker 1: has a little bit on the Criterion collection disc where
Speaker 1: he talks about it being an art horror film, which
Speaker 1: he says, you see little of these days, in part
Speaker 1: because studios want to bring ironically someone in from the
Speaker 1: commercial world to direct a very cookie cutter horror film
Speaker 1: that kind of matches up with the style of everything
Speaker 1: else and doesn't stand out. But you do still see
Speaker 1: some art horror films like Slip Through, and there's some
Speaker 1: great examples of that for sure, But yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a very artistic vision here. Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think horror films are often thought of as
Speaker 2: a cash grab, and in many cases they are because
Speaker 2: horror films are, for the most part, relatively cheap to make,
Speaker 2: and they tend to gross a lot more than their budgets.
Speaker 2: But you know, something that might be true of a
Speaker 2: lot of entries in a genre is of course never
Speaker 2: true of all right.
Speaker 1: Right, So again, there's a great interview with Obayashi and
Speaker 1: his daughter on the Criterion collection disc and I highly
Speaker 1: recommend folks to check that out. But because it also
Speaker 1: has a lot of interesting stills, behind the scenes photos
Speaker 1: and so forth, And they run through several aspects of
Speaker 1: the making of and the reception of the film, and
Speaker 1: I just want to go through a few things that
Speaker 1: really stood out to me and I think are important
Speaker 1: for understanding how this film came together and then how
Speaker 1: it was interpreted. So he says that at the time,
Speaker 1: so we would be dealing with I think at the time,
Speaker 1: like mid seventies Japan. He said that cinema was pretty
Speaker 1: much in decline, in that young people did not go
Speaker 1: to them movies. TV was what was really in and
Speaker 1: even his daughter, who would apparently go with him to
Speaker 1: the theater all the time, would comment that Japanese films
Speaker 1: were boring, Like when he asked her what kind of
Speaker 1: film Shouldaddy make, she would be like, Oh, don't make
Speaker 1: a movie, Daddy, Japanese films are boring. So a lot
Speaker 1: of what he's doing is definitely trying to create something different,
Speaker 1: something new.
Speaker 2: Bummer shut down by your child.
Speaker 1: But he says that a lot of aspiring filmmakers at
Speaker 1: the time, like himself, didn't want to do commercials, but
Speaker 1: he thought differently. He seems to have thought differently about
Speaker 1: a lot of things. He points out that the big
Speaker 1: thing is there was money in commercials, and the key
Speaker 1: here is not that you would make a lot of money,
Speaker 1: and I think that may have also been true, but
Speaker 1: more to the point, you could actually work with a budget.
Speaker 1: So again, like the Japanese cinematic world, according to him,
Speaker 1: was sort of shrinking at the time. You couldn't get
Speaker 1: these big budgets, but you could go into doing these
Speaker 1: commercials and there was money there. He says that ultimately
Speaker 1: the content might be meaningless, but you could experiment, you
Speaker 1: could chase the visual expression of the thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you see a lot of directors who eventually
Speaker 2: end up making movies in all cultures. It's an American
Speaker 2: cinema two that you know, they start in commercials and
Speaker 2: also music videos. That used to be a big thing
Speaker 2: because it was a place to just like work on techniques.
Speaker 2: You know, whatever the actual content is, you're just experimenting
Speaker 2: with ways of showing things and learning the craft that way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, He speaks in the interview of turning experimentation into expression,
Speaker 1: and that really seems to have been a big part
Speaker 1: of his IMO at the time. Certainly in the production
Speaker 1: of House, which didn't even have any storyboards. They intentionally
Speaker 1: they did not do storyboards for it. They would just
Speaker 1: try things out and just like throw everything against the
Speaker 1: wall and see what they could get. I believe it's
Speaker 1: Tie West and the extra that points out that, like
Speaker 1: they use just basically every in camera technique imaginable film.
Speaker 2: That makes sense because I would say that the visual
Speaker 2: style of the finished product is incredibly chaotic. There are
Speaker 2: just tons of different techniques on display, sometimes seemingly at random.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about this later when we get
Speaker 2: into discussing the plot, the sometimes the violation of cinematic
Speaker 2: norms that takes place throughout the movie, but also in
Speaker 2: terms of special effects, in terms of editing techniques, like
Speaker 2: it all just is just crazy different visual stuff happening
Speaker 2: all the time that does not feel part of an
Speaker 2: attempt to select a particular visual texture that like a
Speaker 2: lot of films do, Like they just have totally different
Speaker 2: looking effects and styles happening back to back.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He mentions like having great admiration for filmmakers like Krosawa,
Speaker 1: but then also wondering what would irritate Carrossow, pursuing that
Speaker 1: line of thinking, that's great. So anyway, Toho Studios famously
Speaker 1: was inspired by Jaws for this one. This is often
Speaker 1: just thrown out there. It's like this was this was
Speaker 1: an attempt to catch it on Jows. Well sort of
Speaker 1: kind of, at least from Toho's position. Established studio again
Speaker 1: realizes they need to they need to do something fresh,
Speaker 1: and they look over and they say, oh, well, this
Speaker 1: Steven Spielberg guy just made like this enormously successful shark movie,
Speaker 1: huge hit from the mind of a young emerging talent.
Speaker 1: Let's get one of those young emerging talents and get
Speaker 1: them to make us a Jaws.
Speaker 2: And of course, Jaws did lead to numerous ripoffs and
Speaker 2: copycats in the American market and all around the world.
Speaker 2: I mean, you can find the Italian Jaws ripoffs, American
Speaker 2: Jaws ripoffs, they're they're popping off all over the place.
Speaker 2: Jaws made a lot of money, and much like when
Speaker 2: Star Wars made a lot of money, it spawned an
Speaker 2: endless series of copycats. So did Jaws. So you would
Speaker 2: get Jaws with a bear Jaws. Other people would just
Speaker 2: do shark you know, shark copycat movies, Jaws with a
Speaker 2: killer whale. Uh, there are so many of these.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And Obiasci points out that that's how the grown
Speaker 1: up mind works, especially like the corporate mind is. Like
Speaker 1: shark attack films are in, let's do a bear attack.
Speaker 1: Let's do it, you know whatever, animal attack. And that's
Speaker 1: the reason he turned to his ten year old daughter
Speaker 1: for this fresh inspiration, like what what does she want
Speaker 1: me to make a movie about? And so she gives
Speaker 1: him this list of ideas. He adds this, you know,
Speaker 1: basic ghost story premise because he says, you can't have
Speaker 1: the house eating people for no reason. It's got to
Speaker 1: be a story reason. And then he hands this off
Speaker 1: to the screenwriter and they have a script.
Speaker 2: In a way, it's so beautiful just to imagine taking
Speaker 2: all of your, like your kid's weirdest, most messed up
Speaker 2: ideas and just saying that's gonna it's in the movie.
Speaker 2: In the style of the Key and Peel sketch for
Speaker 2: Gremlins too, It's just very much it's in the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So it's impressive that the screenplay was green lit
Speaker 1: by Toho. They're like, all right, let's do it. But
Speaker 1: there was still apparently a long run up to actually
Speaker 1: shooting the movie. I think it was like a couple
Speaker 1: of years. And so during this time they produced and
Speaker 1: sold the soundtrack, They produced and sold a novelation, there
Speaker 1: was a radio play of it. I was really surprised
Speaker 1: by all of this. I'm often not cute into all
Speaker 1: of the gears of getting you know, the film from
Speaker 1: the screenplay stage to the production and release stage, but
Speaker 1: you know, it sounds like Obyashi put a lot of
Speaker 1: effort in just like all right, let's do all these things.
Speaker 1: Sort of to ensure that Toho keeps it greenlit and
Speaker 1: and knows that it's coming. He talks about like printing
Speaker 1: up business cards with the movie poster on it and
Speaker 1: handing them out and saying Toho is making this movie,
Speaker 1: TOAs making this movie, and so forth. And I also
Speaker 1: have to to say that, like in the interview and
Speaker 1: the various photos, it's like it's very clear that Obyashi
Speaker 1: was a very flashy, very creative, you know again it's
Speaker 1: experimental and establishment bucking young director, but also one who
Speaker 1: seemed to be very personable with cast and crew, to
Speaker 1: the point that he has shares this story about how
Speaker 1: the lighting team ends up really coming around to him
Speaker 1: because he addressed them by their names, and they this
Speaker 1: had never happened before in the production of Toho films.
Speaker 1: They were just they were never addressed by name, and like,
Speaker 1: so he brought an entirely different vibe to the production.
Speaker 1: And he also says that he made a point of
Speaker 1: wearing a different outfit every day in order to sort
Speaker 1: of keep the vibe up. So there are all these
Speaker 1: interesting photos of him in various flashy outfits. He's often
Speaker 1: got sunglasses on, very hip hoocking dude.
Speaker 2: I think I read something about how in order to
Speaker 2: get people in the feeling of a scene in the movie,
Speaker 2: he would like play music while they were shooting.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it would kind of like, I think, dance
Speaker 1: with everyone, that sort of thing. Now. Obyashi was born
Speaker 1: in Hiroshima, and all of his childhood friends, he says,
Speaker 1: died as a result of the bombing, and he also
Speaker 1: makes a point of of, you know, pointing out that
Speaker 1: he incorporates elements of this into this picture as well
Speaker 1: into the anti war themes and other movies that he
Speaker 1: would go on to direct. So he speaks of the
Speaker 1: in this interview, he talked about the youth in this film.
Speaker 1: The Seven Girls, as we'll get into that are a key.
Speaker 1: So he was about forty at the time, and he
Speaker 1: talks about like the young people being too young to
Speaker 1: really know what war is and as a result to
Speaker 1: fully appreciate the joy of peace. And I thought this
Speaker 1: was really interesting. I have to hear this after watching
Speaker 1: the film, because yeah, you think about the tension in
Speaker 1: this movie that's president most harror movies, like the space
Speaker 1: between and leading up to the horrible things, and there
Speaker 1: is like this unnatural, almost sickeningly sweet aspect to the sweetness,
Speaker 1: like it's artificial sweetener leading up to those moments that
Speaker 1: you know were coming. And it absolutely works in house
Speaker 1: like it like I felt myself, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: getting chill bumps because I knew something terrible was going
Speaker 1: to happen, which I have to say wasn't what I
Speaker 1: quite expected from the movie. Like I was expecting you know,
Speaker 1: psychotronic weirdness and craziness and and all that, and I
Speaker 1: didn't really expect the scary parts to be scary or
Speaker 1: to feel that the tension leading.
Speaker 2: Up to them. Yeah, well, there is a I would
Speaker 2: say this movie is almost always in some ways trying
Speaker 2: to subvert its own tone. So there are scenes that
Speaker 2: are very ominous in what's happening, or they're conveying dark
Speaker 2: or sad or scary information. And a lot of these
Speaker 2: scenes will have things about like the sights and sounds
Speaker 2: of the scene that are lighthearted and funny, like it'll
Speaker 2: play jolly, sort of happy music while something really sad
Speaker 2: or scary is happening. And then it'll do the opposite too,
Speaker 2: something very light hearted is happening on screen, but there
Speaker 2: will be things about it that make it very ominous
Speaker 2: and unsettling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, as mentioned earlier, critics hated it
Speaker 1: at the time, many didn't even review it, and those
Speaker 1: that did often were just very savage about it all.
Speaker 1: But is he stressed in the interview, young people loved it.
Speaker 1: He says like, like ten through thirteen were the ages
Speaker 1: of people that were going out and seeing this movie.
Speaker 2: And too young for this movie. I don't know, I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 1: We had an off mike discussion like when is the
Speaker 1: appropriate age to see House? And I I haven't no answers,
Speaker 1: but hard to say ten to thirteen. I guess at
Speaker 1: least in the late seventies in Japan. But anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: young people loved it, made it a success in a way,
Speaker 1: kind of to the disappointment of the studio establishment. And
Speaker 1: then ultimately some of the people who loved it were
Speaker 1: future filmmakers. The people who loved it were future film critics,
Speaker 1: and so it would eventually be held up as one
Speaker 1: of the great Japanese horror movies and ultimately, like we've
Speaker 1: been saying, one of the great weird films of global cinema. So, Obiyoshi,
Speaker 1: you've followed up House with a long filmography that ultimately
Speaker 1: broadened his mainstream appeal, including several less nutty coming of
Speaker 1: age movies, but he didn't abandon horror. His subsequent movies
Speaker 1: also include nineteen eighty two's Cute Devil, nineteen eighty three's
Speaker 1: Legend of the Cat Monster, nineteen eighty sevens The Forbidden Classroom,
Speaker 1: and nineteen eighty eight's The Discarnates. The same year as House,
Speaker 1: in seventy seventy, also made The Visitor in the Eye.
Speaker 1: This was a live action manga adaptation, and his twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen anti war film Hanagatami was actually forty years in
Speaker 1: the making. He was actually working on the script for
Speaker 1: that film with the screenwriter Katsura right before House. His
Speaker 1: last film was twenty nineteen's Labyrinth of Cinema, and again.
Speaker 1: He died in twenty twenty. Now his daughter is Chigumi Ogashi.
Speaker 1: She actually appears in the movie. She's the shoe store girl.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. There's a scene outside like a cobbler's shop,
Speaker 2: shoemaker shop, and there is an old man and the
Speaker 2: girl like hammering on some shoe soles. I think, I
Speaker 2: think this is where mister Togo, the teacher in the
Speaker 2: movie it's a bucket stuck on his butt and has
Speaker 2: to go to the hospital.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in one of the goof here, just like Monty
Speaker 1: python S sequences that occur in the film. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just complete nuttiness, complete slapstick Charlie Chaplin esque and then
Speaker 1: some I guess ye, but yeah, keep a lookout for her.
Speaker 2: And bucket butt scene is Yeah, it's powerful.
Speaker 1: Almost as good as the banana scene. Later on, we'll
Speaker 1: get to that, okay, and then the screenplay proper I
Speaker 1: mentioned Katsura. This is Chiho Katsura, who lived nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: nine through twenty twenty so. He was a Japanese screenwriter, novelist, translator,
Speaker 1: and film critic whose work, based on what I could
Speaker 1: see of his available filmography, included a great deal of
Speaker 1: Japanese pink he erotic films, but he also worked in
Speaker 1: other genres, including at least a couple of family films.
Speaker 1: He worked with Obashi on several mainstream films, including again
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen's Hanaga Tommy. All right, but now we should
Speaker 1: mentioned that really on the acting front, we have seven
Speaker 1: core characters. These are the seven girls. Their names are
Speaker 1: gorgeous kung Fu Fantasy prof or Professor Mac, which is
Speaker 1: short for stomach because she likes food.
Speaker 2: Oh I didn't, I didn't get Mac.
Speaker 1: It took a while for me to put that together. Okay, Mac, Melody,
Speaker 1: and sweet, and they are all exactly what their names imply.
Speaker 2: Right, So they're named after their trades. So Gorgeous is
Speaker 2: supposed to be beautiful. Kung Fu is the jock of
Speaker 2: the group. She can like she can do sports and
Speaker 2: kung fu, and she's very decisive and active. Fantasy is
Speaker 2: a day dreamer. She's Gorgeous's best friend, and she likes
Speaker 2: to I don't know, she's often daydreaming, though most of
Speaker 2: the things in the movie where it's like is she daydreaming? No,
Speaker 2: they're actually happening. Prof is very smart and logical, and
Speaker 2: she often has a book in her hand. Mac is
Speaker 2: always hungry to a ridiculous extent, Like I think literally
Speaker 2: every single line she says in the movie is like
Speaker 2: I am eating now, yummy, you know, I want I
Speaker 2: want a watermelon.
Speaker 1: She just has a great metabolism, though I have to stress, like,
Speaker 1: it's not like she's overweight or depicted as such, Like
Speaker 1: she just is hungry all the time.
Speaker 2: Mac Mac loves food and Melody loves music. She plays
Speaker 2: the guitar. I think we see her with a violin case,
Speaker 2: and she plays the piano. There's a there's a very
Speaker 2: unfortunate piano scene where she gets her fingers bitten off.
Speaker 2: And then there is Sweet, who is You might think
Speaker 2: Sweet is the one who is into desserts, but no,
Speaker 2: that's Mac. Sweet is named so because she is friendly
Speaker 2: and like gentle and kind.
Speaker 1: But yeah, still, it's kind of like the Seven Dwarfs, right,
Speaker 1: Like their names, yeah tell you who they are for
Speaker 1: the most part, except what is Doc. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know what Doc Steal is, But yeah, these these gals
Speaker 1: names all make sense. And and apparently the number seven
Speaker 1: was was important Togo actually because like teams of seven
Speaker 1: are or were common in Japan. Now. In casting the
Speaker 1: Seven Girls, he says that, like he pretty much depended
Speaker 1: on just casting girls that he'd worked with in his
Speaker 1: commercial work, so a lot of them were, you know,
Speaker 1: models with very limited acting experience. There's basically basically gorgeous.
Speaker 1: I think it's the only one who had had an
Speaker 1: acting career that was already like emotion, but it was
Speaker 1: still still very early. So he but he says, like
Speaker 1: this is also an important part of the vibe, Like
Speaker 1: the acting from these girls is kind of amateurish and
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel polished or professional, but that, like other
Speaker 1: aspects of the film are intentional, Like that's part of
Speaker 1: the intended fabric of the thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are scenes in the movie that have an
Speaker 2: almost sketch comedy kind to feel, if you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, Like characters kind of like stumbling over each
Speaker 2: other with their lines, talking over other people's lines, and
Speaker 2: like sometimes maybe it seems like they're improvising, but it
Speaker 2: is clearly part of the fabric of the movie. It's
Speaker 2: what they're trying to create. I think somehow it simultaneously
Speaker 2: makes the movie funnier but also makes the characters somehow
Speaker 2: feel more vulnerable when they are threatened by the evil
Speaker 2: magic of the house.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, and in a way that maybe comparable to
Speaker 1: how sometimes your b horror movies are more terrifying, in
Speaker 1: that they feel more like it's documentary footage, you know,
Speaker 1: like they're not actors, and it can, Yeah, it can
Speaker 1: sort of warp your expectations and experience of watching it.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I'm not going to list all seven actresses
Speaker 1: who play the seven Girls. A lot of them again
Speaker 1: were new to acting and didn't necessary, you know, stick
Speaker 1: around for more acting or maybe only have a handful
Speaker 1: of credits. But the key exception is the actor who
Speaker 1: plays Gorgeous. This is Kamiko Ikigami born nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: American born Japanese actress. She'd been acting for a few
Speaker 1: years at this point, having made her TV and film
Speaker 1: debuts in seventy five. Her subsequent films include nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine's The Man Who Stole the Sun, The Acclaim, nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three drama Yokiro, for which she was nominated for
Speaker 1: a Japanese Academy Award, and nineteen ninety three's Lone Wolf
Speaker 1: and Cub The Final Conflict.
Speaker 2: Now, the seven main girls are sort of an ensemble
Speaker 2: of heroes, but I'd say there I'd also say there
Speaker 2: are sort of two main protagonists of the movie, and
Speaker 2: that is Gorgeous, but also her best friend Fantasy.
Speaker 1: Fantasy, Yeah, Fantasy is very key. Komiko Oba born nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty plays this role. I'm also a huge fan of
Speaker 1: kung Fu. I thought Mickey Jimbo born nineteen sixty was
Speaker 1: great in this.
Speaker 2: Ooh, you're so cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she is so cool, and she can kick ghosts.
Speaker 2: She can, she does. In fact, she can kick ghosts
Speaker 2: even without her head attached to her body.
Speaker 1: But ultimately, yeah, it's an ensemble and all the girls
Speaker 1: are great. They're all wonderful. I love their caricatures. It's fabulous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but again, most of them didn't have a lot of
Speaker 1: acting experience.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 1: The most established actor in the whole mix is the
Speaker 1: actor playing the Auntie who they are visiting. Often credit
Speaker 1: is Auntie Carrie House, so I guess her last name
Speaker 1: is House anyway, played by Yoko Minamita. She lived nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three through two thousand and nine, a Japanese actress,
Speaker 1: best known for this film, at least internationally, but with
Speaker 1: credits going back to nineteen fifty two. So she was
Speaker 1: a very established actor, but at the time, according to
Speaker 1: the director, had trouble getting work in cinema, befitting her
Speaker 1: status and her talent. Again, so like cinema seemed to
Speaker 1: be down at the time in Japan, so but it
Speaker 1: was it was still it was a big deal that
Speaker 1: she took this role, not only because she had such
Speaker 1: she was an established star, but Also, it was key
Speaker 1: that she took the role of an older woman, according
Speaker 1: to Obyashi, because in Japanese cinema, certainly at the time
Speaker 1: and maybe still this is still the case, there was
Speaker 1: no going back for an actor or actress once you
Speaker 1: took an older person's role. Apparently it wasn't this wasn't
Speaker 1: even necessarily like a double standard for women, as men
Speaker 1: also couldn't keep playing younger characters as they aged.
Speaker 2: If like they had taken a role previously in which
Speaker 2: it was acknowledged they were playing an older character.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, once you take that older lady role, it's
Speaker 1: like that's it. Now, now you play old ladies. There's
Speaker 1: no sort of like midpoint where you can kind of
Speaker 1: play both roles. But I have to say, she's tremendous
Speaker 1: in this.
Speaker 2: Oh, she's so good. She's so crazy. Yes, there's a
Speaker 2: really great scene where she's eating some food I don't
Speaker 2: remember what she's she's munching on something and then just
Speaker 2: kind of like pops her mouth open and yeah, she
Speaker 2: has an eyeball that lives in her mouth and she
Speaker 2: kind of looks around at people with it and then
Speaker 2: closes her mouth like te.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are times where she breaks the fourth wall,
Speaker 1: and I mean you just kind of expect her to
Speaker 1: craw out of the television at you at that point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's great.
Speaker 1: And really the only other main actor I would want
Speaker 1: to mention is the cat and or cats. We don't
Speaker 1: know how many cats played Blanche. You know, often you
Speaker 1: have multiple cats in a role. But really, for the
Speaker 1: most part, I was just struck by what a great
Speaker 1: feline performance this is. Feline actors are notoriously difficult to
Speaker 1: work with, and even in the best of cat related movies,
Speaker 1: often look like they really would prefer to be out
Speaker 1: of the shot and are more interested in like scurrying
Speaker 1: off screen.
Speaker 2: We were looking at some of those Blowfeld shots where
Speaker 2: the cat looks like it's trying to be somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's a lot of that obvious working with
Speaker 1: cats is difficult, but there are plenty of shots in
Speaker 1: this film where yeah, it's like Blanche just looks like
Speaker 1: she's completely at ease.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: Beautiful cat too, absolutely beautiful white cat, very.
Speaker 2: Fluffy love Blanche. Hey, you didn't mention him, but there.
Speaker 2: You also had a credit note for the guy who
Speaker 2: like operates the Ramen stand.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the guy credited as Ramen Trucker is a
Speaker 1: Sraman trucker trucker. I yeah, okay, so maybe I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is the I'm not sure exactly where
Speaker 1: he shows up. But this is a guy named Shiochi
Speaker 1: Heroes who lived nineteen Eighteeneen through nineteen ninety. Just a
Speaker 1: bit player in a one time stunt man. But he
Speaker 1: played King Kong in nineteen sixty three. He's King Kong
Speaker 1: versus Godzilla.
Speaker 2: So he's the guy, you don't there's a scene where
Speaker 2: mister Togo, he's supposed to be coming to He doesn't
Speaker 2: know that they're in trouble, but he they're waiting, the
Speaker 2: girls are waiting for him to come to the rescue
Speaker 2: at the house. And then we cut away to him
Speaker 2: and he's like at a Ramen card eating Ramen. And
Speaker 2: this is the guy I guess operating the Ramen cart.
Speaker 2: I believe, so yeah, And we see him like stuff
Speaker 2: a huge mass of noodles into his mouth and then
Speaker 2: grin at the camera with the noodles in his mouth.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, now come into the music. The music
Speaker 1: is important in house. A's say. Kobyashi has the composer credit.
Speaker 1: He lived nineteen thirty three through twenty twenty one Japanese
Speaker 1: composer in and occasional actor, and in fact he is
Speaker 1: in this acting as well as the watermelon salesman.
Speaker 2: That is an insanely weird role to go to somebody
Speaker 2: who's not primarily an actor, like that is a weird,
Speaker 2: weird role.
Speaker 1: It is very memorable. Apparently it took some convincing to
Speaker 1: bring him onto the project, but Obyashi was insistent that look,
Speaker 1: a ghost story needs the sweetest, most beautiful music in
Speaker 1: order to land properly, and that's why I need you
Speaker 1: on the picture. And he was like, okay, okay, I'll
Speaker 1: do but I also want to act in it. I'll
Speaker 1: do it. But then he was like, you know, you
Speaker 1: really need some youthful energy in this as well. So
Speaker 1: it's like, I'll work on these themes and all, but
Speaker 1: I think you should also bring in this Japanese rock
Speaker 1: band so that they can like recreate some of these
Speaker 1: themes and breathe additional life into the picture. And that
Speaker 1: is where the rock band Godaigo comes into the picture here.
Speaker 1: So this is a Japanese rock band, I believe named
Speaker 1: after the ninety sixth Emperor of Japan. They were mostly
Speaker 1: active in the seventies and eighties, but I think are
Speaker 1: still around to varying degrees, like I see him doing
Speaker 1: press and all. They were notable for supplying the music
Speaker 1: for the Japanese TV series Monkey and This, by the way,
Speaker 1: is the Japanese TV adaptation of the Chinese novel of
Speaker 1: Journey into the West that I think. Actually, it also
Speaker 1: got some air outside of Japan, like I think I've
Speaker 1: read that it aired in Australia, for example, so a
Speaker 1: lot of people even outside of Japan have fun memory
Speaker 1: of this show. And also I believe there is a
Speaker 1: scene in the movie where we see the band just
Speaker 1: hanging around. There's like five of them, and two of
Speaker 1: them I think two of them are Americans.
Speaker 2: Hmmm. Okay, I vaguely recalled this happening, but I don't
Speaker 2: remember when in the movie it is. Maybe it'll be
Speaker 2: in my plot notes here.
Speaker 1: I think it might be in one of those sort
Speaker 1: of Sesame Street esque sequences where we see this kind
Speaker 1: of like idealistic town. Okay, yeah, but anyway, these are
Speaker 1: the folks involved in the music, and the music in
Speaker 1: house is absolutely bonkers, bordering on and seemingly just intentionally
Speaker 1: irritating at times even bordering on madness and yeah, and
Speaker 1: other times just super sweet or happy, go lucky or
Speaker 1: loaded with this kind of resilient seventies hippie vibes, you know,
Speaker 1: like the hippie dream is degraded, but the music is
Speaker 1: really insistent that it's still going.
Speaker 2: There are like pop rock anthems that feel very strange
Speaker 2: for the for what's going on with the scene. There
Speaker 2: is a main theme that I assume was composed by
Speaker 2: by Kobayashi. I don't know for sure, but the main
Speaker 2: house theme that just plays over and over and over
Speaker 2: in all these different ways, and that you know, the
Speaker 2: dun Dun dundune, it like takes on a kind of
Speaker 2: evil magic of its own. It's like the it's like
Speaker 2: the music is in some way responsible for the wicked
Speaker 2: magic that is taking place on screen.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and on that note, let's get into the wicked
Speaker 1: magic of House.
Speaker 2: I love the animated title at the beginning, so there's like,
Speaker 2: of course we get the Toho logo, but then there's
Speaker 2: like a blue box on a black background with pink
Speaker 2: and green text inside it that says a movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Ob Yashi says that this was key because he
Speaker 1: had to remind everyone, this is the essence of cinema.
Speaker 1: You can't dismiss it. This is a movie.
Speaker 2: I admit it. I admit it.
Speaker 1: It's a movie. But it's kind of telling because I think,
Speaker 1: like some of the critics were like, this is not
Speaker 1: a movie, this is just a series of commercials, this
Speaker 1: is excrement, and so like even from the get go,
Speaker 1: he's like, this is a movie. I believe in the vision.
Speaker 2: So after it says a movie, we see some like
Speaker 2: little white blobs jiggling like jello in space, and then
Speaker 2: the little white jello smudges turn into letters that spell
Speaker 2: house in English, and then the letters pop and a
Speaker 2: voice comes on and says.
Speaker 1: Howse Obayashi also stresses that giving a Japanese film a
Speaker 1: foreign language title, which is the case here, like the
Speaker 1: Japanese title for House is house. He says, this simply
Speaker 1: was not done at the time. It was really kind
Speaker 1: of taboo, and so he had to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was wondering what the cultural significance is of
Speaker 2: using English specifically. Now I know, in say, if it's
Speaker 2: an English language movie, you might have a title in
Speaker 2: another language that signals some thing For example, I think
Speaker 2: of a horror movie called Oculus. You know, that's like
Speaker 2: a Latin title that I don't know. Something about using
Speaker 2: Latin in your title suggests kind of antiquity, something that
Speaker 2: is ancient and maybe kind of foreign and scary. I
Speaker 2: don't know what the connotations of using English specifically in
Speaker 2: your title would be here. But when I first saw
Speaker 2: the movie, I didn't even think about it.
Speaker 1: I didn't either, But yeah, he points out that, yeah,
Speaker 1: people hated this idea, so you shouldn't do it. This
Speaker 1: isn't done. But like I say, he bucks those trends.
Speaker 1: So he's like, yeah, I'm gonna call it house, but
Speaker 1: we're not done with the credit sequence. Credit sequence gets
Speaker 1: keeps getting more amazing.
Speaker 2: So yeah, then you've got like the white Jello house.
Speaker 2: And then the O in house grows teeth and turns red,
Speaker 2: and then a woman screams. Then the teeth turn into
Speaker 2: red lipstick lips, and then the lipstick lips open to
Speaker 2: reveal shark teeth and an eyeball in the back of
Speaker 2: the throat, and then a piano starts linking on the soundtrack,
Speaker 2: and then the O lips bite down on they bite
Speaker 2: down on something and then they spit out a severed
Speaker 2: human hand, and then we finally cut to the action,
Speaker 2: and what we see at first is a woman filmed
Speaker 2: behind what looks like a green filter, and she's wearing
Speaker 2: a white sheet like a hooded cloak, and she is
Speaker 2: surrounded by what looks like beakers and glass chemistry equipment,
Speaker 2: but also candles in ornate holders, so it's a very
Speaker 2: weird shot. And then in a reverse shot, we see
Speaker 2: a girl in school uniform taking her photo. She gives
Speaker 2: a thumbs up, she says okay, and then the girl
Speaker 2: in the photo throws off her cloak and walks to
Speaker 2: the window of the room and we sort of zoom
Speaker 2: out of the frame within the picture to just be
Speaker 2: to just see one picture now. And this other girl
Speaker 2: is also in a school uniform, so she had like
Speaker 2: a costume on. And these are our two of our
Speaker 2: main characters, I would say the two most important of
Speaker 2: our characters, Gorgeous and Fantasy. Gorgeous was the one who
Speaker 2: was posing in the photo with the cloak over head,
Speaker 2: and Fantasy was the one taking the photo. And they're
Speaker 2: talking about how summer vacation is coming up, and Gorgeous
Speaker 2: is going to spend summer vacation at the Fabulous Villa
Speaker 2: owned by her fabulous dad, which is in Karuizawa. And
Speaker 2: I looked this up because I didn't know. Karuizawa is
Speaker 2: a mountain resort town that has long been a popular
Speaker 2: summer travel destination in Japan and for international visitors as well.
Speaker 2: It seems like it's kind of a beautiful forested mountain
Speaker 2: environment that gets like a nice cool weather in the summer,
Speaker 2: and like people travel from all over to go there.
Speaker 2: We also learned that Gorgeous's father has been away in
Speaker 2: Italy and he is supposed to be coming back tomorrow.
Speaker 2: A later scene reveals that Gorgeous's father is a film composer,
Speaker 2: and that he is a rich and successful film composer,
Speaker 2: and he's been away working for somebody named Leoni, who
Speaker 2: says that her father's music is better than Morricone's. So
Speaker 2: I guess he they they're saying he's working for Sergio Leoni.
Speaker 1: All right, sounds good, I'll buy it.
Speaker 2: I wonder what went into that decision. Why anyway, let's see. Oh,
Speaker 2: but we also learned that so Gorgeous is going to
Speaker 2: the villa and Fantasy and their other five friends. The
Speaker 2: six girls together are going to go to some kind
Speaker 2: of camp for the summer. They're going to a camp
Speaker 2: by the seaside that is run by the sister of
Speaker 2: their teacher, mister Togo. So it's mister Togo's sisters in
Speaker 2: kind of complicated yeah, but ultimately unimportant, right because they
Speaker 2: don't go there. So Gorgeous and Fantasy are best friends
Speaker 2: and they kind of tease each other. Fantasy Gorgeous teases
Speaker 2: Fantasy for having a crush on mister Togo. Fantasy teases
Speaker 2: Gorgeous for looking like a witch in a horror movie
Speaker 2: when she was dressed up in the in the cloak
Speaker 2: in the picture. They have a conversation with their Jim teacher,
Speaker 2: who is a currently getting married to mister Togo. I think, yes, yes, Okay.
Speaker 2: Then there's kind of a montage of Fantasy and Gorgeous
Speaker 2: being best friends. There are a lot of montages in
Speaker 2: this movie. Now, while this movie represents a lot of
Speaker 2: kind of lighthearted scenes of you know, just like teenagers
Speaker 2: being friends, there it also represents I think a lot
Speaker 2: of the dark side and frustration of being a young person.
Speaker 2: And so there's a scene where, like Gorgeous goes home
Speaker 2: to meet her father and he's home earlier than expected,
Speaker 2: so at first she's very happy to see him. It
Speaker 2: seems they have a good relationship, but we learn that Gorgeous'
Speaker 2: mom died eight years ago and today her father has
Speaker 2: some news he needs to share. A woman enters the
Speaker 2: frame at the house in a flowing white dress with
Speaker 2: a silk scarf blowing in the breeze, and her presence
Speaker 2: feels very almost ethereal. There's kind of a diaphanous quality
Speaker 2: to the way she's represented on film whenever we see her.
Speaker 2: And this character is named Rioko Emma, and the father
Speaker 2: informs Gorgeous that she is going to be your mom now,
Speaker 2: and he says several things to kind of try to
Speaker 2: soften the news. I guess he's like, she's surprisingly good
Speaker 2: at cooking and other things too. You won't have to
Speaker 2: mend my shirts anymore. But we can just see that
Speaker 2: is like not the kind of appeal that Gorgeous wants
Speaker 2: to hear. Gorgeous is hurt by this because it seems
Speaker 2: that she hasn't really properly grieved for her mother's death,
Speaker 2: even though it was a long time ago, and she's
Speaker 2: not ready to accept a new member of the family.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, this portion of the film reminds me a
Speaker 1: little bit of what we'd get later in Jim Henson's Labyrinth,
Speaker 1: you know, with Sarah and sort of you know, the
Speaker 1: young woman's angst and so forth, and I imagine you
Speaker 1: see that in a lot of other movies as well.
Speaker 1: But the other thing, the main thing I want to
Speaker 1: stress is that I think it's essential to note that
Speaker 1: this is, in many respects the most normal part of
Speaker 1: the film. Right, this is the real world set up
Speaker 1: to the speculative elements to come. So it would be
Speaker 1: the most boring part of your average cookie cutter horror movie.
Speaker 1: And yet in house it's full of experimentals and varied
Speaker 1: film techniques. I especially love the shooting through a kind
Speaker 1: of what is it like a glass mirror lattice work?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, very weird. And also I would say it
Speaker 2: is strange in how fearless it is in depicting the
Speaker 2: intense emotions of a teenager. So like after this interaction
Speaker 2: where she has she has this bad reaction to meeting Rioko,
Speaker 2: gorgeous goes back to her room, which is crazy, by
Speaker 2: the way, it has like purple walls with huge flowers
Speaker 2: painted all over them, and she like, you know, she's
Speaker 2: got a piano in her room. Uh, and she and
Speaker 2: she weirdly like suddenly seems very at peace in her
Speaker 2: room despite having just run away from this family news
Speaker 2: that caused her so much distress. But then she is
Speaker 2: acting kind of like silly and dreamy, and she speaks
Speaker 2: to a framed portrait of her mom and goes through
Speaker 2: a box of old family photos, remembering like good times
Speaker 2: with her father, when he was proud of her, when
Speaker 2: she wanted a sports competition. And then she's just shown
Speaker 2: drawing x's over her dad's face in the photos and saying,
Speaker 2: I'll bully dad. I hate him.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, it's a time of intense emotions.
Speaker 2: But also in the sequence she remembers her mom, she
Speaker 2: remembers her in a bridal costume, similar to how she
Speaker 2: cloaked herself in the in the Chemistry Lab photo earlier. Actually,
Speaker 2: and in she sees sort of a picture of her
Speaker 2: mother with her auntie, and she says, I wonder how
Speaker 2: auntie is. The auntie in the photo is somehow kind
Speaker 2: of animated, even though she's in a still photograph, and
Speaker 2: she is holding a white cat.
Speaker 1: Oh, that'll be important.
Speaker 2: Also here we should mention just that the presence of
Speaker 2: music in this movie does not feel like no, I
Speaker 2: mean all movie. Most movies have music, but the presence
Speaker 2: of music in this movie does not feel normal. There's
Speaker 2: kind of a constant soundtrack playing running under nearly every
Speaker 2: scene that makes everything feel like a monta or a
Speaker 2: flashback or something.
Speaker 1: That's a great point. And then there are choices made
Speaker 1: later on, like visually stylistically that also give you that feel.
Speaker 1: Is this the present? Is this the past? What's going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Now, next, at school, we meet our gang of
Speaker 2: student heroines, and again they're each named for something about them. Again,
Speaker 2: they are gorgeous, her best friend Fantasy, who's always daydreaming.
Speaker 2: Prof who wears glasses, is a nerd. She's logical, she
Speaker 2: has a book, Melody who's holding a guitar and loves music,
Speaker 2: Mac who loves food and is shown with a donut,
Speaker 2: Sweet who is very nice and friendly. And Kung Fu,
Speaker 2: who is the jock and does martial arts. When we
Speaker 2: first meet her, she jumps up and karate chops of
Speaker 2: volleyball that is flying toward the group, and everybody says
Speaker 2: you're so cool, kung Fu. Also, when we first meet them,
Speaker 2: it's just a weird scene. They're like they're in a
Speaker 2: school courtyard and there are just bubbles floating through the air. Also,
Speaker 2: there is a in the school courtyard with a copy
Speaker 2: of the Venus de Milo in the middle of it,
Speaker 2: like the armless you know venus just there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they're talking about how they're all about to go
Speaker 2: on vacation to the you know, the seaside inn of
Speaker 2: mister Togo's sister for ten days, and they're bummed because
Speaker 2: Gorgeous can't go with them. She's going to the country
Speaker 2: with her dad instead. But mister Togo shows up in
Speaker 2: this weird tiny car and he's like, bad news, my
Speaker 2: sister's gonna have a baby. We cannot go vacationing by
Speaker 2: the sea. But I was just thinking, did he not
Speaker 2: know this was going to happen?
Speaker 1: I know she didn't get a lot of advanced notice
Speaker 1: from the sister. I guess yeah.
Speaker 2: And the girls bully mister Togo for this. I think
Speaker 2: he says, don't bully me. But there's a new plan.
Speaker 2: Gorgeous suggests that they all come to her Auntie's house
Speaker 2: in her mom's old hometown. And so we see Gorgeous
Speaker 2: writing a letter to her aunt informing her that all
Speaker 2: of her friends are coming, and she says, I know
Speaker 2: we've only met once. Please don't think I'm strange. Is
Speaker 2: the aunt going to think you're strange? Gorgeous, I don't
Speaker 2: know this aunt. Yeah, but she says, you know, she
Speaker 2: wants to spend time with her aunt like she used
Speaker 2: to spend with her mom. Somewhere around here, she just
Speaker 2: happens to run into a fluffy white cat, and she says,
Speaker 2: cute kitty, where are you from?
Speaker 1: And instantly adopts the cat.
Speaker 2: Yaw. The cat is part of the yes and named
Speaker 2: it Blanche. So Blanche is the name of the white cat.
Speaker 2: We see it sitting on top of the mailbox outside
Speaker 2: Gorgeous's apartment, and she gets a letter back from her
Speaker 2: aunt saying, oh, yes, come see me and bring all
Speaker 2: your friends. So we know Gorgeous is going to go
Speaker 2: visit her aunt and take all her friends with her.
Speaker 2: And we also here get a scene of Rioko, Gorgeous's
Speaker 2: dad's new wife, announcing her plan to go later go
Speaker 2: after Gorgeous and her friends go to the aunt's house
Speaker 2: she's going to go there and meet her so that
Speaker 2: she can get to know her and talk to her
Speaker 2: one on one. She says, this is my first trial
Speaker 2: in becoming her mother. And again she's got this scarf
Speaker 2: on her neck blowing in the wind in a way
Speaker 2: that makes it I don't know, it just looks kind
Speaker 2: of doomed or vulnerable somehow, like someone it's suggesting like
Speaker 2: a grabbing of her by the neck or something. Yeah. Yeah, Oh,
Speaker 2: And then the very next scene we get is so
Speaker 2: off the wall. It's this crazy musical number outside a
Speaker 2: cobbler's workshop. There's a guy working on shoes with a
Speaker 2: pipe and a cap. There's a young lady in the
Speaker 2: leather apron. This is the director's daughter. There's a donkey
Speaker 2: in the background or maybe a miniature pony. Uh, and yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just nuts. So like mister Togo comes down to
Speaker 2: this scene but like falls down the stairs and gets
Speaker 2: a metal bucket stuck on his butt and announces he
Speaker 2: will have to go to the hospital for his butt bucket.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this scene is yeah, it has strong sesame street vibes.
Speaker 1: And then it goes into just utter ridiculous slapstick territory.
Speaker 1: It's in many ways, yeah, out of keeping with the
Speaker 1: tone so far, but also perfectly in line with the
Speaker 1: tone of house. Yep, it's hard to describe.
Speaker 2: There's a child drumming on mister Togo's bucket while he's
Speaker 2: on the phone.
Speaker 1: This would seem to be aggravating the condition, or I
Speaker 1: don't know, I'm relieving it. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: So without mister I guess mister Togo was going to
Speaker 2: accompany them somehow, I didn't fully understand this.
Speaker 1: He was gonna be chaperone.
Speaker 2: I okay, he's going to chaperone this trip to the
Speaker 2: ant's house, I guess. But so instead they have to
Speaker 2: go without him. So the girls are at a train
Speaker 2: station and they're getting on the train and they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: who are all these cowboys and rock stars? Or actually no,
Speaker 2: they don't comment on it. I'm just wondering. There's Yeah,
Speaker 2: the train is full of Oh maybe this is where
Speaker 2: we see Godaigo. I don't know. But there are cowboys,
Speaker 2: there are nuns, there are sailors. The train is full
Speaker 2: of all different kinds. Oh, el Topo's on there, I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's like this vision of I don't know,
Speaker 1: like a very non conformist Japanese society. I don't know
Speaker 1: what it is, like why they're cowboys getting off these trains.
Speaker 2: And blanches on the train too. They let cats on
Speaker 2: this train. Somebody while they're traveling with the cats just
Speaker 2: happens to say, any old cat can open a door,
Speaker 2: only a witch cat can close a door.
Speaker 1: Ah, that'll be key. And also, if you haven't guessed already,
Speaker 1: this is definitely a witch cat.
Speaker 2: Now Here, we get some backstory that's very important to
Speaker 2: the film, but I want to stress how strange the
Speaker 2: delivery of this character information is so Gorgeous starts explaining
Speaker 2: to her friends that her aunt and her mother they
Speaker 2: were sisters and they loved each other very much, and
Speaker 2: Gorgeous once traveled with her mother to meet her aunt
Speaker 2: when she was six, but she hasn't seen her since.
Speaker 2: And then like a film strip starts and again I
Speaker 2: want to say, there's no way I could identify that
Speaker 2: they could be watching a film strip on the train.
Speaker 2: But we're watching a film strip with like CPA tones,
Speaker 2: and it's like the girls are watching it too, and
Speaker 2: they're sort of riffing on what happens in the film.
Speaker 2: So as we see this stuff. I guess gorgeous narrates,
Speaker 2: I think, or somebody narrates A long time ago, Japan
Speaker 2: was in a big war. This is Auntie's house. Her
Speaker 2: late father was a doctor. This is my grandma, this
Speaker 2: is my mom. Isn't she cute? And then one says
Speaker 2: she looks like you? And then we see the ant
Speaker 2: and her fiance, and her fiance is a very dashing
Speaker 2: young man. One of the friends calls out, he's so handsome.
Speaker 2: They say he was a doctor and he was going
Speaker 2: to run the local hospital. And the friends asked, you
Speaker 2: mean they didn't get married, and she says, no, they
Speaker 2: couldn't get married because of the war. So we learned
Speaker 2: that her auntie's fiance gets drafted to serve in World
Speaker 2: War two, but he makes a pinky promise that he
Speaker 2: will come back, and she promises to wait for him,
Speaker 2: and we see the auntie and her fiance kiss, and
Speaker 2: then he has to go away to war, and then
Speaker 2: the film burns up and someone shouts a kiss of fire.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's such a strange and wonderful energy to this
Speaker 1: part of the film, with the optimistic and youthful responses
Speaker 1: to this story. They're being presented with and the way
Speaker 1: they're riffing on it, So you know, they're amazing and
Speaker 1: they're to be envied because they see mostly the beauty
Speaker 1: and the romance in this story and they feel it intensely,
Speaker 1: and they're not you know, it's not like they don't
Speaker 1: understand the tragedy, but and they're not getting the tragedy,
Speaker 1: but they can't fully understand it, and or their understanding
Speaker 1: of the tragedy is overpowered by their youthful enthusiasm for
Speaker 1: the romantic elements of the tale.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, that's exactly right. But then the backstory
Speaker 2: goes on. So after the Kiss of Fire, we learned
Speaker 2: that her fiance never returns from the war. We see
Speaker 2: him revealed sitting in an almost comical looking in how
Speaker 2: strange it is. He's like shown sitting in the cockpit
Speaker 2: of a crashing airplane, just expressionless as the airplane goes down.
Speaker 2: And then we later see after the war, Gorgeous's mom
Speaker 2: marrying her father, posing for the photo that we saw earlier.
Speaker 2: So she's in her wedding garments and the auntie is
Speaker 2: beside her holding her white cat, looking unhappy and unfulfilled.
Speaker 2: After this gorgeous, explains that her aunt has been living
Speaker 2: alone in the house for many years and that she
Speaker 2: gives piano lessons to the neighbors for money. And then
Speaker 2: somehow suddenly they are on a bus instead of a train.
Speaker 2: Just a abrupt transition, the bus stops, the girls get off,
Speaker 2: and they are in a cartoon landscape. So they cross
Speaker 2: these different types of backgrounds, a valley with mountains, a
Speaker 2: cable bridge spanning a wide rocky stream. There's a path
Speaker 2: through a forest where sweets. She's afraid of ghosts. Prof
Speaker 2: says ghosts don't exist, and Kung Fu implies that she
Speaker 2: will use martial arts on any ghosts that appear. Perfect.
Speaker 2: Also through this whole track, Mac is just relentlessly announcing
Speaker 2: the consumption of food, just yelling like, yummy, this tastes good.
Speaker 2: One of the last things before they get to the
Speaker 2: house is the watermelon vendor scene, which is tremendous. They
Speaker 2: come across like a watermelon stand and they remove a
Speaker 2: watermelon from the shelf of the stand, and then behind
Speaker 2: the watermelon is the face of the vendor which is shaped,
Speaker 2: which is very round and shaped like a watermelon, making
Speaker 2: this bizarre expression, and then he comes out and acts
Speaker 2: bizarre at them. I don't know how to Rob, how
Speaker 2: would you describe this encounter.
Speaker 1: It's mad cap for sure, yea. And I guess it
Speaker 1: is worth noting that at heart, this is a very
Speaker 1: that this is certainly a hard trope, like this is
Speaker 1: the guy that on the way to the haunted place,
Speaker 1: whose role is to either say, don't you go to
Speaker 1: that haunted place, or as we see here commenting after
Speaker 1: the kids have gone, I can't believe they're going to
Speaker 1: that haunted place. He fulfills that role while also being
Speaker 1: this wacky character who is selling watermelons.
Speaker 2: So the girls go on up to the house and
Speaker 2: it's on top of a hill with walls grown over
Speaker 2: by vines. They're owls diving around in the middle of
Speaker 2: the day, and the gates creak open for them. Blanche
Speaker 2: runs inside and Gorgeous's aunt greets them. She is seated
Speaker 2: in a wheelchair, her hair has turned white, and she
Speaker 2: wears these cool Ringo Star sunglasses and she's holding the
Speaker 2: cat now. And I just want to point out it's
Speaker 2: like the girls, as far as I could tell, there
Speaker 2: was no point at which they question this cat magic.
Speaker 2: Oh Blanche, the cat was Auntie's cat, and it came
Speaker 2: to fetch gorgeous in the city. And now they're all here,
Speaker 2: and that's just not remarked upon.
Speaker 1: No, they just roll with it completely. This is the
Speaker 1: cat who lives here. I don't know where the ca
Speaker 1: that traveled with us went. This is this is Blanche.
Speaker 2: Also, one of them tries to take a picture and
Speaker 2: Blanch the cat shoots green rays out of her eyes.
Speaker 2: This will not be the last time Blanche shoots green
Speaker 2: laser laser beams out of her eyes. But it makes
Speaker 2: the camera fly in the air and smash on the ground,
Speaker 2: and one of the girls yells sexy.
Speaker 1: I need to point out that even when Blanche is
Speaker 1: not necessarily on screen, even when Blanche is not necessarily
Speaker 1: doing that creepy green eye sparkle thing, we often just
Speaker 1: get random meals in the soundtrack of the film, which
Speaker 1: just keeps you on edge and like somehow keeps the
Speaker 1: weirdness level up. No matter what's happening, you're just gonna
Speaker 1: get some randomyows in there and eventually musical meals.
Speaker 2: That's all right, Like now mix the thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Also, I should mention even though they didn't buy
Speaker 2: a watermelon from the watermelon stand in the previous scene.
Speaker 2: Suddenly Max shows up with a huge watermelon and her
Speaker 2: friends accuse her of stealing it, which he's like.
Speaker 1: I paid for it, and I trust Mac. I don't
Speaker 1: think Mac would steal.
Speaker 2: I don't think Mac would steel. She paid for it.
Speaker 2: She's got some watermelon money in her wallet specifically for
Speaker 2: an occasion like this. So they go inside the house
Speaker 2: and they learned that Antie can make her lights come
Speaker 2: on by talking to them. That's cool, m h. And
Speaker 2: they're like sort of having a they're getting a tour
Speaker 2: of the place, and the chandelier attacks them. It drops
Speaker 2: crystal shards that impale a lizard on the floor, and
Speaker 2: then it starts dropping more crystal shards, but Kung Fu
Speaker 2: flies in the air and attacks the shards.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then Blanche eats one of the lizards.
Speaker 2: Okay, And then Melody the musical friend is told about
Speaker 2: a grand piano in the house and she goes to play,
Speaker 2: but like when she gets to it's strapped with cobwebs.
Speaker 2: They remark that there are so many pictures of the
Speaker 2: cat in the house.
Speaker 1: And there are indeed so many pictures of the cat
Speaker 1: it's a constant delight to see all of the Blanche
Speaker 1: are the Blanche iconography, as well as the various incarnation
Speaker 1: of this cat in this house.
Speaker 2: There's so many weird things in the house that we
Speaker 2: can't even We're going to reach a point where we're
Speaker 2: going to have to stop doing a sort of one
Speaker 2: of this minute plot recap and get just focus on
Speaker 2: some specific things. But like one thing is they find
Speaker 2: a skeleton in the house, and they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: grandfather used to treat patients in this room.
Speaker 1: Will this skeleton eventually dance randomly of its own power?
Speaker 2: Yes, it will perhaps, Yeah, And Auntie explains how she
Speaker 2: used to give piano lessons, but you know, nobody comes
Speaker 2: here anymore. So she's been very lonely all these years.
Speaker 2: But now that she has all these girls in the house,
Speaker 2: she is very glad. Something a little ominous about the
Speaker 2: way in which she expresses her gladness. So they decide
Speaker 2: to help Antie out around the house, and they split
Speaker 2: up the jobs. Of course, Mac is going to do
Speaker 2: the cooking and Sweet offers to do the cleaning. There
Speaker 2: is a moment in here where they're like moving around
Speaker 2: the house and somebody gets a cat thrown at them
Speaker 2: from off screen. I think it's Anti.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the cat quote unquote umps into Anti's lap,
Speaker 1: but clearly if there was somebody just out of the
Speaker 1: shot gently throwing the cat into her lap.
Speaker 2: Just riding around getting cats thrown at her, talking to
Speaker 2: her appliances and furniture. At some point, we learn that
Speaker 2: Mac wants to chill the watermelon in the fridge, but
Speaker 2: the fridge doesn't work, so Anti suggests they put it
Speaker 2: down the well, which they do and just randomly somewhere
Speaker 2: around here, Anti looks at Mac and says, Mac, you
Speaker 2: sure look tasty. Now, this is just one place to mention.
Speaker 2: I could have said it earlier. I could have said
Speaker 2: it at any point. There is a very chaotic editing
Speaker 2: and transition style to this movie. The rhythm of cuts
Speaker 2: and the way one shot transitions to another. These things
Speaker 2: do not feel normal for Japanese cinema, or for any
Speaker 2: cinema that I know of, So I don't think it's
Speaker 2: a cultural thing. I think it is a unique, too
Speaker 2: house thing, just one example among many many weird things.
Speaker 2: There are sudden cross dissolves, you know where like so
Speaker 2: it'll kind of like fade out and then fade back
Speaker 2: in on something on the screen, and normally in a
Speaker 2: movie that indicates a transition forward in time, but here
Speaker 2: the movie uses cross dissolves when the action seems to
Speaker 2: be totally continuous, same time in place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's one of the many things that makes viewing
Speaker 1: this film feel very psychedelic. It feels like some sort
Speaker 1: of sort of an altered experience.
Speaker 2: It's violating like norms of cinematic storytelling that you don't
Speaker 2: even normally think of, that you wouldn't usually notice our norms,
Speaker 2: and like you only notice them once somebody does them
Speaker 2: differently than they're usually done.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Like I say, he's all about bucking the trends
Speaker 1: and same way he can do to irritate Kirosawa.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, so we're about to get to a scene,
Speaker 2: the watermelon Head scene, which I think a lot of
Speaker 2: critics and film historians people who celebrate this movie have
Speaker 2: sort of noted as a transition point in the film
Speaker 2: that like things take on, just that things just get
Speaker 2: different starting at what's about to happen. And so I
Speaker 2: think this should also be the point where we stop
Speaker 2: trying to recount what happens, just moment by moment, because
Speaker 2: it would be crazy and impossible to do here. But
Speaker 2: to begin, we're going to talk about the watermelon head scene.
Speaker 2: So after supper Mac disappears, she says she's going to
Speaker 2: go get the watermelon out of the well, and she
Speaker 2: doesn't come back after a while, and so Fantasy goes
Speaker 2: to look for her, and out in the garden by
Speaker 2: the well, there's a beautiful multicolor sunset. There's soft focus
Speaker 2: on the camera, like we are within a day dream,
Speaker 2: which kind of makes sense because this is Fantasy going
Speaker 2: to do this. She daydreams a lot, though it's strange
Speaker 2: because this is definitely really happening. So it's almost like
Speaker 2: even Fantasy's regular life is like a day dream. You know,
Speaker 2: it's using the cinematic conventions of showing a dream.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like we're in a really nice yogurt commercial
Speaker 1: or something, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And so Fantasy starts pulling up the watermelon
Speaker 2: from the well. It's tied to a rope and she
Speaker 2: retrieves it and it's, you know, it's a round thing.
Speaker 2: But then she turns it over and realizes, oh, this
Speaker 2: is not a watermelon. It's Max's head and mac now
Speaker 2: has sort of blue skin like a vampire and I
Speaker 2: think fangs.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, and it's alive or undead or something,
Speaker 1: and it's it's horrifying. It's quite frightening. And the build
Speaker 1: up to it has been exceptional, like everything's just super
Speaker 1: sweet again, yogurt commercial, yogurt commercial, and then just absolute horror.
Speaker 2: The head talks and then it starts flying around in
Speaker 2: the air, and then it bites Fantasy on the butt,
Speaker 2: and then it vomits blood and then it goes back
Speaker 2: down in the well. Excellent, what a roller coaster. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So Fantasy goes back and reports what happened, and her
Speaker 2: friends go to see the head, but when they get there,
Speaker 2: there is no head to be found. It's only a
Speaker 2: regular old watermelon, which they decide to eat. Also, Auntie
Speaker 2: is here, and she like she stands up right out
Speaker 2: of her wheelchair and explains, you girls gave me energy,
Speaker 2: and then grins into the camera while eating a slice
Speaker 2: of watermelon. Also, this is the scene where she sort
Speaker 2: of shows off to Fantasy and I think nobody else
Speaker 2: that she does have a third eyeball inside her mouth.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, all's a wonderfully creepy sequence.
Speaker 2: So there's all kinds of just like little little vignettes
Speaker 2: of the various characters getting freaked out by stuff. So
Speaker 2: like Sweet is cleaning the floors as she gets lured
Speaker 2: to a room with a doll that has green laser
Speaker 2: eyes like blanch does, and it whispers her name. Gorgeous
Speaker 2: is taking a bath and she gets creeped on by
Speaker 2: like wet black hair that comes up from some unknown
Speaker 2: creature out of the waters, horrifying kung Fu in a
Speaker 2: much funnier sequence, is attacked by flying wooden logs like
Speaker 2: she's splitting wood, and then the logs start attack her
Speaker 2: and she defeats them with karate chops. Yeah, there's one
Speaker 2: point here where Auntie says She's like, one time I
Speaker 2: was excited to go to a restaurant in town, and
Speaker 2: now I'm excited like that again. And then she climbs
Speaker 2: inside the refrigerator and disappears.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, this sequence is so creepy. It's shot
Speaker 1: in a way in such a way that the other
Speaker 1: characters in the room with her don't see her suddenly
Speaker 1: go into the refrigerator, but we do. And then I
Speaker 1: think she re emerges in the foreground of the shot
Speaker 1: and may break the fourth wall here. I can't recall specifically,
Speaker 1: but she does break the fourth wall at various points,
Speaker 1: as if to say, like, yeah, it's me, Auntie, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna eat these kids.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, dancing with the skeleton, eating a severed hand,
Speaker 2: dropping a fried fish into a fish bowl and it
Speaker 2: comes back to life. I think we see her dancing
Speaker 2: in the rafters of the house.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: There's also a sequence where Melody the musical friend goes
Speaker 2: to play the piano again, and she of course plays
Speaker 2: the house theme, you know, the Maybe we can get
Speaker 2: a little sample of that, because you got to know
Speaker 2: what it sounds like. Sometime around here, while like you know,
Speaker 2: Melody's playing the piano and stuff, gorgeous sort of what
Speaker 2: would you say happens to her. She kind of gets
Speaker 2: possessed by the house. She's like looking in the mirror
Speaker 2: and she starts putting on her aunt's makeup, and she
Speaker 2: sees herself as her aunt with fangs and like like
Speaker 2: she's looking in a mirror and the mirror shatters, and
Speaker 2: then Gorgeous's actual face shatters, revealing animated fire inside. I
Speaker 2: think the ghosts have taken her over.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a It's another fabulous sequence. This one I
Speaker 1: think was inspired by just the director's daughter saying, hey,
Speaker 1: what if my reflection attacked me, wouldn't that be scary?
Speaker 1: And of course they've taken that in a applied you know,
Speaker 1: the ghost story logic to it, and yeah, absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 2: Somewhere around here is also the scene we talked about
Speaker 2: earlier where their friend's sweet she's been cleaning the house up.
Speaker 2: She gets attacked by falling pillows and sentient mattresses from
Speaker 2: heaven and seemingly killed and then also maybe transformed into
Speaker 2: a large doll by the evil possessed mattresses. There's one
Speaker 2: part around here where somebody imagines Togo, a mister Togo,
Speaker 2: their teacher, as like a prince on a white horse.
Speaker 2: They're like, he's coming, he'll be here, He's gonna save us.
Speaker 2: But it's so funny every time they're like these repeated
Speaker 2: cuts back to whatever mister Togo is doing. I think
Speaker 2: he is trying to find them, but he never does.
Speaker 2: They show him like stuck in traffic in this incredibly
Speaker 2: tiny like what is this car of his? Is it
Speaker 2: like some kind of dune buggy or.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but yeah, he's he's trying to find them.
Speaker 1: He's having no luck, and spoiler is eventually turned into
Speaker 1: a pile of bananas.
Speaker 2: God, that's a crazy seat. Well, okay, we should just
Speaker 2: say what happens in that scene. Then this is a
Speaker 2: little bit later, so we're jumping around in time. But
Speaker 2: eventually mister Togo he stops for rama and he eats ramen.
Speaker 2: At this Ramen card, we see him driving around in
Speaker 2: the woods at night like a complete bumpkin and just
Speaker 2: trying to like find the house and being like, there's
Speaker 2: no house here, And then I guess he eventually does
Speaker 2: get close because he meets the watermelon vendor, which we
Speaker 2: know is just down the hill from the house. Mister
Speaker 2: Togo goes up to the watermelon vendor and says, do
Speaker 2: you know where the house is? The house? Watermelon vendor says,
Speaker 2: the girls they were eaten. Do you like watermelons? Mister
Speaker 2: Togo says no, watermelon vendor says what. Then he says bananas.
Speaker 2: Watermelon vendor collapses into a pile of bones, his skull
Speaker 2: floats and then emids smoke, and then mister Togo runs
Speaker 2: away screaming banana banana, and then later it is revealed
Speaker 2: that by the morning he has transformed into a pile
Speaker 2: of ben in as inside his car.
Speaker 1: Yes, that is what happens, and I don't know what
Speaker 1: it means how it really factors into the rest of
Speaker 1: the plot, but I guess defies to say he was
Speaker 1: unsuccessful in being the white Night for the Smoothie.
Speaker 2: Now, all this while the girls are trapped in the house.
Speaker 2: They try to escape, but they've been like locked in.
Speaker 2: They try to call for help, but there's just like
Speaker 2: weird stuff going on on the phone. Melody is attacked
Speaker 2: by the piano while playing it, so she's like playing
Speaker 2: the house theme, and then the piano suddenly bites all
Speaker 2: of her fingers off, and then it proceeds to eat
Speaker 2: her whole body in this mind rending cartoon musical number
Speaker 2: where the piano is like chomping on her and there
Speaker 2: are like various human organs and body parts just sticking
Speaker 2: out all over it, like you know, like a leg
Speaker 2: hanging out of a monster's mouth. And then Melody is
Speaker 2: also still laughing as she's being devoured. Yeah, absolutely delirious,
Speaker 2: Yeah gorgeous. Now sort of possessed by the evil ghost
Speaker 2: magic of the house is dressed up like a pale bride.
Speaker 2: In fact, I think she's supposed to look like her mother.
Speaker 2: She's sort of become her mother in a way, but
Speaker 2: she's also become her aunt, and we see her sort
Speaker 2: of moving around accompanied by Prof and Kung Fu. At
Speaker 2: some point here, Prof gets absorbed by reading this book
Speaker 2: that I think is the aunt's diary. It's a book
Speaker 2: that contains lore, and through reading this book, Prof will
Speaker 2: get more of the backstory that explains what happened at
Speaker 2: the house. Oh but meanwhile she's Prof is like looking
Speaker 2: at this book and just yelling like unscientific, illogical. At
Speaker 2: the same time, Kung Fu is staring into this giant
Speaker 2: steampunk grandfather clock and sees an undead version of Sweet
Speaker 2: inside it, and the clock is reeking rivulets of blood
Speaker 2: down its glass front.
Speaker 1: This is probably a good point, is any to mention
Speaker 1: that Oh yash she again was the head of special
Speaker 1: effects on this film, and said in the interview that, like,
Speaker 1: they actually could have used Toho's in house special effects
Speaker 1: people who were quite good. You know, they'd worked on
Speaker 1: various pictures, Godzilla movies and so forth. But he said
Speaker 1: they didn't want to go that route because they didn't
Speaker 1: want the special effects to be too believable, like they
Speaker 1: needed to have a certain unreality to them, and I
Speaker 1: guess even an enhanced unreality.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, I mean the clock scene looks very
Speaker 2: frightening and looks great. There are other parts that don't
Speaker 2: look realistic at all, but I love the style. There
Speaker 2: is one part where after Melody gets eaten by the piano,
Speaker 2: we just see severed, bloody, disembodied fingers playing the piano
Speaker 2: and still playing the house theme.
Speaker 1: Except meal style. Right, This is when it starts being
Speaker 1: like a meal.
Speaker 2: Oh, I think that's right. Yeah, yeah. We learn more
Speaker 2: from the Diary of gorgeouses on. We learned that, you know,
Speaker 2: she was waiting for her fiance to come home from
Speaker 2: the war in denial that he had died. And she
Speaker 2: mentions that all of the young girls in the town
Speaker 2: are gone now and she is all alone. Hmmm. And
Speaker 2: then suddenly, while they're like reading this learning about it,
Speaker 2: a giant head bursts into the room with them, and
Speaker 2: it is the head of Gorgeous and she says, I'm
Speaker 2: in my aunt's world now, and then she morphs into
Speaker 2: a giant pair of lips, and one of the girls
Speaker 2: yells huge lips, and the lips revealed that Auntie actually
Speaker 2: died many years ago, and she became after she died,
Speaker 2: and she became a jealous, vengeful ghost. I think the
Speaker 2: idea is she so longed for her fiance, she wanted
Speaker 2: to marry him and couldn't accept that he had died
Speaker 2: in the war. So now instead she is this vengeful
Speaker 2: ghost that eats all of the unmarried girls who come
Speaker 2: to her house. So I think the suggestion is this
Speaker 2: may have been what happened to all of the girls
Speaker 2: in town who are getting piano lessons, just one by one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And she says that when she eats them is the
Speaker 2: only time that she can wear her bridle gown. And
Speaker 2: then she says, now it's your turn, just let me
Speaker 2: eat you.
Speaker 1: So yes, at this point that, like the poster art
Speaker 1: has come to get, the promise is fulfilled. House is
Speaker 1: a house that eats people.
Speaker 2: So there's a bunch more stuff that happens. The girls
Speaker 2: are attacked by various flying household objects. I do you
Speaker 2: want to emphasize the house theme and how much it
Speaker 2: is like just the objects one would find in a
Speaker 2: domestic residence are all turned evil in the movie. Everything
Speaker 2: that would be in a house, appliances, furniture, just household
Speaker 2: items are all now monsters that attack the girls.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean we've talked about this un stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind before, some of these ideas about house
Speaker 1: significantly old household objects can kind of become animated and
Speaker 1: so forth. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, while they're being attacked by the house prof
Speaker 2: at some point that in order to escape they must
Speaker 2: destroy Blanch the Cat, or perhaps destroy an image of
Speaker 2: an image of Blanch the Cat which is on the wall,
Speaker 2: and so Kung Fu is like, right, got my orders,
Speaker 2: and she tries to carry out this attack on the
Speaker 2: image of the cat, but she is in turn attacked
Speaker 2: by an overhead lamp, which latches onto her skull and
Speaker 2: electrocutes her, and then like the lamp seems to suck
Speaker 2: Kung Fu into a psychic vortex where she perceives floating,
Speaker 2: rotating body parts and hears the voices of her dead friends.
Speaker 2: But somehow she snaps out of this vortex and the
Speaker 2: upper half of her body seems to have been destroyed,
Speaker 2: but her disembodied legs fly out of the lamp and
Speaker 2: kick the image of the cat on the wall, which
Speaker 2: vomits blood and freaks out and leaps up in pain,
Speaker 2: which in turn causes Gorgeous to gush blood and scream
Speaker 2: like a vampire dowsed in holy water.
Speaker 1: And when the cat leaps up, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: animated lightning cat. It's really all this has to be
Speaker 1: seen to be understood. We can describe it to you,
Speaker 1: but you just have to experience it. It's even crazier
Speaker 1: than we made it sound here. It's also like, yes,
Speaker 1: there's lots of blood going on here, but it's also
Speaker 1: and it is gory. But I don't want to like
Speaker 1: oversell that and say, like, oh, this is just a
Speaker 1: real gorefest. It's not. Because it's so weird and there
Speaker 1: is this unreality to the effects. It exists in its
Speaker 1: own dimension.
Speaker 2: It's hard to describe what comes next. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of like there's like cat images vomiting blood, lots of
Speaker 2: things vomiting blood. People drowning in blood, yeah, floating on blood, floating.
Speaker 2: There's all this blood. And then finally it seems that
Speaker 2: all of the girls are devoured by the house and
Speaker 2: that Gorgeous is something altered. She is somehow merged with
Speaker 2: Auntie and whatever comfort you know she offers to her
Speaker 2: friends is a prelude to eating yourself. So they weird
Speaker 2: to understand that all of the girls are have their
Speaker 2: souls eaten by the house. But then, oh man, the
Speaker 2: movie has such a stinger. The next day. Remember remember
Speaker 2: Gorgeous's new step mom Rioko.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's scarf.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with the scarf she's driving through the country or
Speaker 2: scarf blowing in the wind. She said she was going
Speaker 2: to go to the house to uh, to catch up
Speaker 2: with Gorgeous, you know, to get.
Speaker 1: To know her.
Speaker 2: Uh. And she she comes to no, wait maybe she
Speaker 2: wait do we learn whether she and the father had
Speaker 2: actually gotten married yet? I think maybe they had not.
Speaker 2: I think they were going to get married.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think this is still like she's like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go patch things up with her, you know beforehand.
Speaker 2: Yes. Uh. So she she's driving through the country, she
Speaker 2: finds the house. She walks by the watermelon stand where
Speaker 2: we see mister Togo has turned into bananas. Uh. And
Speaker 2: then she goes up to the ant's house. This bittersweet
Speaker 2: kind of beatlesy pop song is played. She wanders through
Speaker 2: the garden and it's very dreamlike and ethereal. And she
Speaker 2: meets Gorgeous at the house and is invited inside, and
Speaker 2: she asks, Gorgeous, where are your friends? And Gorgeous says,
Speaker 2: they're still sleeping, but they'll be up soon when they're hungry.
Speaker 2: They get up when they're hungry, and then Rioko bursts
Speaker 2: into flames.
Speaker 1: Amazing, just absolutely amazing, like legitimately creepy and amazing.
Speaker 2: Oh and then there's like a monologue at the end,
Speaker 2: which I feel like I should just relate. I don't
Speaker 2: see exactly how it connects, but it says, even after
Speaker 2: the flesh perishes, one can live in the hearts of others,
Speaker 2: together with the feelings one has for them. Therefore, the
Speaker 2: story of love must be told many times so that
Speaker 2: the spirits of lovers may live forever, forever, the one
Speaker 2: thing that never perishes. The only promise is love.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't fully understand. It reminds me a little
Speaker 1: bit of the how on the nineties Outer Limits. You'll
Speaker 1: have the narration voice come on at the end, and
Speaker 1: something up in ways that sometimes feel a little disconnected
Speaker 1: from what you just watched. But I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: something's lost in translation here. Or maybe it is, like
Speaker 1: so much of this film intended to be a bit
Speaker 1: off kilter and intended to make you scratch your head.
Speaker 2: So that's how again. Truly one of the weirdest films
Speaker 2: ever made, widely recognized as such, and I have to
Speaker 2: concur with that opinion. It is there's not really anything
Speaker 2: like it.
Speaker 1: Agreed, it is a masterpiece. This is a masterpiece of
Speaker 1: weird cinema. Highly recommend it again. Luckily, it's pretty easy
Speaker 1: to get your hands on if you're interested in watching it,
Speaker 1: and it's definitely worth watching it. I mean, have it
Speaker 1: on in the background if nothing else, but I think
Speaker 1: you'll be sucked in. It's hard to casually watch this movie.
Speaker 1: I watched it by myself and I kept catching myself
Speaker 1: like making faces, you know, like my jaw literally dropping
Speaker 1: at some of the sequences.
Speaker 2: It's like a dream that a cat had about being
Speaker 2: a human.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it might be. It's as good of an explanation
Speaker 1: as any Well, there you have a house. It's great
Speaker 1: to have finally discussed this film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: I felt like it was faded to happen at some
Speaker 1: point or another, and we hadn't covered a Japanese film
Speaker 1: and a spell there, so it was good to cover
Speaker 1: another one here. Obviously, we'd love to hear from everyone
Speaker 1: out there. Do you have thoughts on House, memories of
Speaker 1: seeing it for the first time, hearing about it for
Speaker 1: the first time? Writ in, We would love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. As always, will remind you that Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast with core
Speaker 1: episodes and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed
Speaker 1: on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside
Speaker 1: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
Speaker 1: on Weird House Cinema. Go to letterbox dot com. That's
Speaker 1: l E T T e r box d dot com.
Speaker 1: Look us up. Our username is weird House. We have
Speaker 1: all the movies we've covered listed there, and sometimes you
Speaker 1: can get a peek ahead at what's coming up next. Also, hey,
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Speaker 2: Here's thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
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