WEBVTT - Weirdhouse Cinema: House (1977) 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:08.480 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:13.160 --> 0:00:17.599 Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is Rob. 0:00:17.480 --> 0:00:19.759 Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. 0:00:20.200 --> 0:00:24.159 Today on Weird House Cinema, we're tackling what might be 0:00:24.360 --> 0:00:27.760 by many measures, I think, by my measure, the ultimate 0:00:27.800 --> 0:00:33.080 haunted house movie. In another Haunted House property, nineteen seventy 0:00:33.120 --> 0:00:36.280 one's Hell House, a novel by Richard Matheson. This was 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:38.919 later made into the Legend of Hell House in seventy three. 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:43.680 There's a description of the Belasco House, this haunted house 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:46.839 that's key to the plot, and it's described as quote 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:50.960 the mount Everest of haunted houses, due to the intense 0:00:51.120 --> 0:00:55.600 sanity warping powers that it holds over anyone who attempts 0:00:55.600 --> 0:00:58.800 to make it through the night there to complete the journey. Now, 0:00:58.800 --> 0:01:02.000 there are various great haunted house films out there, and 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:05.040 I feel like the best of them excel in connecting 0:01:05.160 --> 0:01:08.480 with something very ancient in the human psyche, right, the 0:01:08.640 --> 0:01:11.120 essence of the damned place, a location that is so 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:15.440 just fundamentally physically or spiritually polluted that to venture into it, 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:18.120 to be there, to take place there is to just 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:21.880 absolutely warp your identity and connection to reality. So there 0:01:21.880 --> 0:01:24.840 are haunted house movies that tackle this in a very 0:01:24.840 --> 0:01:27.319 serious fashion, and you might argue that they tackle it 0:01:27.360 --> 0:01:29.840 more seriously than the movie we're talking about here today, 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:34.039 nineteen seventy seven's House. But when the chips are down 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:37.560 and House is firing on all cylinders, I think it 0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:40.160 absolutely delivers on all the goods. It absolutely checks off 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:43.600 all the boxes. For my money, right now, I'm going 0:01:43.680 --> 0:01:46.240 to say that House is the Mount Everest of haunted 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:46.880 house movies. 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:51.040 It's got to be up there, and like Mount Everest, 0:01:51.080 --> 0:01:54.000 it may cause the kind of altitude sickness, maybe a 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:58.840 sense of dizziness, a visions of other figures climbing up 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:01.040 the mountain with you that may or may not be there. 0:02:01.720 --> 0:02:06.760 It is a weird, baffling, life changing experience. House is 0:02:06.800 --> 0:02:09.560 one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen, but that's 0:02:09.560 --> 0:02:13.079 not an observation unique to me. It is widely regarded 0:02:13.120 --> 0:02:16.280 as like one of the great weird movies of all time, 0:02:16.880 --> 0:02:19.600 and yeah, I think it also qualifies in the subgenre 0:02:19.760 --> 0:02:23.680 of weirdest and most interesting haunted house movies. Though it's 0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:27.080 different than than a lot of haunted house movies, because 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:30.079 a lot of haunted house movies, like you're pointing out, 0:02:30.280 --> 0:02:33.560 are about a house that's been polluted, a house that 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:37.680 has been sort of like made into a place of 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:41.480 evil because of something evil that happened there. You know, 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:45.720 like a person, an evil person, does something wicked inside 0:02:45.760 --> 0:02:48.720 the house, and then that evil infects the house and 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:53.040 so forth. But the difference I would point out is 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:57.480 that the evil in those cases seems to be spurred 0:02:57.720 --> 0:03:03.239 by human wrongdoing, and in House nineteen seventy seven, I 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:06.400 don't know if i'd say that's the case. Instead, it's 0:03:06.400 --> 0:03:10.480 hard to say where the evil comes from. The person 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:14.840 who occupies the evil haunted house doesn't seem to have 0:03:14.919 --> 0:03:18.240 initially been an evil or bad person, but someone who 0:03:18.240 --> 0:03:22.320 suffers a kind of unfortunate fate and is transformed by 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:27.840 forces unnamed into a type of monster. And in that transformation, 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:30.760 it's like the house comes with her, you know, like 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:34.360 she and the house merge into one being that is 0:03:34.440 --> 0:03:38.480 fully just an expression of monstrousness and magical predation. 0:03:39.240 --> 0:03:44.160 It's like tragedy plus time equals house. Yeah, that's like, 0:03:44.280 --> 0:03:46.720 you know, like you're saying, she's not an evil person 0:03:47.120 --> 0:03:49.880 and she had she went through a great tragedy, but 0:03:49.920 --> 0:03:54.000 it's like over time that is like spiritually fermented into 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:58.200 this new shape, and that shape is is hungry and 0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:00.000 in many respects evil. 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:04.280 Maybe it's a tragedy plus time plus cat equals house 0:04:04.440 --> 0:04:07.440 because the cat. What is the role of the cat 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:11.080 in this movie? Could we last October did an episode 0:04:11.160 --> 0:04:14.000 or a series of episodes about monster cats of Japan 0:04:14.080 --> 0:04:15.240 that was October, wasn't it? 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:16.000 I believe it was? 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:19.200 Yes, Yeah, like the Bakan echo and stuff. There are 0:04:19.240 --> 0:04:22.600 a number of different sort of cat ghosts or evil 0:04:22.640 --> 0:04:26.839 cat monster entities cat yo kai in Japanese lore, and 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:29.400 we talked about a few of them shape shifting cats, 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:33.240 cats that the cats that might lurk out in the 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:37.080 wilderness and be some kind of monster. I don't know 0:04:37.600 --> 0:04:40.719 if the cat in this movie is exactly supposed to 0:04:40.760 --> 0:04:45.200 be supposed to correspond to one of these cat monster archetypes, 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:48.680 but what a presence it is. It feels kind of 0:04:48.760 --> 0:04:51.719 like maybe all of the evil in the movie comes 0:04:51.760 --> 0:04:54.040 from the cat, and it's not clear where the cat 0:04:54.160 --> 0:04:55.240 comes from. 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:57.919 Yeah, the cat is somehow key to it is like 0:04:57.960 --> 0:05:03.200 a nexus point or a physical incarnation it's uncertain. I mean, 0:05:03.560 --> 0:05:07.440 as I feel, like, you know, scary supernatural things should be. 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:11.520 They're difficult for us mortals to fathom. But we yeah, 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:15.280 we have this fabulous cat at the center of everything here. 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:17.480 And I think it also this is what serves to 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:19.560 make House not only a great haunted house movie, but 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:22.320 also a great cat movie. Like all the cat stuff 0:05:22.400 --> 0:05:26.880 is completely on point and very cute, very cute cat, 0:05:27.040 --> 0:05:28.120 very cute flu fear. 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:32.560 This movie got me thinking about it what it is 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:35.760 meant to say about a character when a character often 0:05:35.800 --> 0:05:38.839 has a cat in their lap. So this is the thing. 0:05:38.880 --> 0:05:42.640 Actually I mostly associate with villains in films like Blofeld 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:46.080 and the James Bond movies. Is this villain who in 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:48.280 the early James Bond movies, I think you don't even 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:50.480 ever see his face. You just see the lower half 0:05:50.480 --> 0:05:54.320 of his body. He's a man who's presiding over this evil, 0:05:54.400 --> 0:05:58.120 shadowy criminal empire known as Specter, and he has all 0:05:58.120 --> 0:06:00.160 these henchmen going out and doing things for him. When 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:02.240 you see the lower half of his body, he has 0:06:02.279 --> 0:06:05.719 a fluffy, very flufy white cat in his lap and 0:06:05.760 --> 0:06:08.600 he pets the cat while you know, demanding updates from 0:06:08.640 --> 0:06:12.320 his assassins, and then later in the James Bond movies 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:14.640 you do actually see the face of Blofeld and so, 0:06:14.760 --> 0:06:17.719 and he's played by various different actors, but in one movie, 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:20.680 for example, he's played by Donald Pleasance. And so you know, 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:23.479 we were sharing before coming in here, like images of 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:26.800 Donald Pleasants holding a white cat, much like blanched the 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:29.880 cat in house. What does the cat mean? Why is 0:06:29.920 --> 0:06:33.600 the cat in the villain's lap, and what associations are 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:35.799 we supposed to make from seeing that image? 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:37.960 I mean, in the case of Blowfeld, I guess kind 0:06:37.960 --> 0:06:40.120 of you know, it's the idea of like a regal 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:43.880 sort of lap creature, but also maybe a commentary on 0:06:43.960 --> 0:06:48.159 the nature of the cat. You know, the cat has 0:06:48.200 --> 0:06:52.440 its own air about it. Though it's weird that owning 0:06:52.480 --> 0:06:56.840 the cat is villainous in these Bond movies, and yet 0:06:56.960 --> 0:06:59.680 James Bond kicks a cat. I would think that that 0:06:59.839 --> 0:07:03.080 is me. That's that's the And also like the Forgo 0:07:03.080 --> 0:07:05.359 what was this? I forget which one this was. This 0:07:05.400 --> 0:07:08.040 may be the one that actually takes place in Japan 0:07:08.480 --> 0:07:10.600 part of the time anyway, but there's a whole bit 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:13.840 where it's like oh, Blowfeld has a double which one 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:16.200 is a real Blowfeld? Better kick the cat to find 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:19.520 out which master it scurries to. And it's like, I 0:07:19.560 --> 0:07:21.880 don't even know if that would work, Like, is that 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:24.160 really going to be the cat's number one? Moves like 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:26.840 to go back to a safe lap. I think the 0:07:26.880 --> 0:07:28.840 cat may just go hide under something. 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:32.120 I think there is something to be signaled about the 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:35.400 villain with the cat that it like makes them seem 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:39.200 more threatening and sinister, the fact that they are ordering 0:07:39.280 --> 0:07:41.880 up murder of humans at the same time that they're 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:45.800 being very gentle and stroking a cat. You know, It's 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:50.560 like that contrast of of delicate gentleness and and friendliness 0:07:50.560 --> 0:07:52.600 with one creature but cruelty to another. 0:07:53.120 --> 0:07:55.480 Yeah, I think that. I think that probably sums it up. 0:07:55.880 --> 0:07:58.960 Now. We've talked about House as a as a widely 0:07:59.040 --> 0:08:03.120 reputed ultimate weird movie. We've talked about it as the 0:08:03.120 --> 0:08:06.920 mount Everest of haunted House movies. But there's another thing 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:08.800 that we haven't really mentioned about it yet, which I 0:08:08.800 --> 0:08:12.760 think is key to understanding what it is, which is 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:17.240 the childlike logic that operates in House. It is different 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:19.560 from a lot of horror movies, and I somehow connect 0:08:19.680 --> 0:08:22.640 this to the fact that, say, the house doesn't have 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:26.960 a standard backstory of like human evil drawing in demons 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:30.960 and wicked spirits. Instead, it feels like the evil that 0:08:31.040 --> 0:08:35.120 infects the house is just sort of totally unexplainable and random, 0:08:35.240 --> 0:08:38.840 something that comes in and strikes and infects the house 0:08:38.880 --> 0:08:43.680 and the occupant of the house from outside. That seems 0:08:43.760 --> 0:08:46.960 much more in line with the way that children imagine 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:49.720 evil spirits. You know, you don't need that like backstory 0:08:49.760 --> 0:08:53.960 of it being caused by someone's human wicked choices. Instead, 0:08:54.040 --> 0:08:56.439 it's just it comes out of nowhere and it's scary 0:08:56.480 --> 0:08:58.280 and it doesn't even need to be explained. 0:08:58.920 --> 0:09:02.480 Yeah, this is a a very important aspect of House, 0:09:02.960 --> 0:09:06.640 and we're going to be talking about Nubuhiko Obyashi, the director, 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:09.840 who is also an actor in it and a producer 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:16.480 and director of special effects. But famously this, like the 0:09:16.840 --> 0:09:21.320 key aspects of this film were inspired by conversations he 0:09:21.400 --> 0:09:23.400 had with his daughter, who I believe was ten at 0:09:23.440 --> 0:09:28.240 the age, Chigumi Obayashi, where he would come to her 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:30.560 and like, well, what what what do you find scary? 0:09:30.640 --> 0:09:32.920 What tell me what what frightens you or what would 0:09:32.960 --> 0:09:35.240 be I think he also said, like, hey, if daddy 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:37.200 were to make a movie, what kind of things would 0:09:37.200 --> 0:09:40.240 you want to be in it? And and so she 0:09:40.400 --> 0:09:43.280 came up with these various ideas that were all based 0:09:43.320 --> 0:09:47.040 on just this child's eye view of the world, like, 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:50.319 for instance, so one particular thing. We'll probably run through 0:09:50.360 --> 0:09:54.040 most of them, but there's a scary clock in the movie. 0:09:54.480 --> 0:09:58.960 And according to her on the Criterion collection disc of 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:01.199 this film, there's a interview with her and her father 0:10:01.760 --> 0:10:05.400 from several years back, and she says that there was 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:07.640 this there was this point where they were staying at 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:10.200 this house in the country, you know, a family house, 0:10:10.520 --> 0:10:14.440 and there's a big clock in the hallway and she 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:16.960 would have to cross by it in the night in 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:19.680 order to go to the bathroom, and she was frightened 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:21.800 by the clock, you know. And so it's the kind 0:10:21.840 --> 0:10:25.560 of thing like humans are generally not frightened by big, 0:10:25.640 --> 0:10:29.400 dusty clocks and houses, but children can be. And so 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:31.679 the beauty of this film, one of the beautiful things 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:34.160 about this film is that he took these ideas from 0:10:34.160 --> 0:10:37.760 his daughter and then you know, added a little more 0:10:37.800 --> 0:10:40.160 traditional ghost story structure to it, and then handed it 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:44.360 off to the screenwriter. But yet it still retains these 0:10:44.720 --> 0:10:50.160 very childlike views of fear and threat and then sort 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:53.840 of translates them to a certain extent into a wider 0:10:53.920 --> 0:10:56.520 understanding for you know, any viewer that may watch it. 0:10:56.559 --> 0:10:59.480 You don't have to be a child to feel the 0:10:59.559 --> 0:11:00.680 fear this clock. 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:05.000 There is a young person's creativity in the way some 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:08.200 of the scary images in the movie are conjured, so 0:11:08.360 --> 0:11:11.880 like making connections that an adult might not normally make, 0:11:11.960 --> 0:11:16.559 but then also a kind of a young person's fearlessness 0:11:16.600 --> 0:11:20.320 in deciding what is scary. So there is a scene 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:23.640 in the movie where a character is fatally attacked by 0:11:23.720 --> 0:11:27.800 pillows and mattresses that fall from the ceiling. I think 0:11:27.840 --> 0:11:29.720 that is an image that if an adult were to 0:11:29.760 --> 0:11:32.000 come up with it, they might think, No, that's silly, 0:11:32.080 --> 0:11:34.560 that's not scary. That doesn't work. It just doesn't fit 0:11:34.600 --> 0:11:37.520 the language of what is a threat in horror movies. 0:11:37.880 --> 0:11:40.240 But I think I read this idea also came from 0:11:41.600 --> 0:11:44.160 the director's daughter. You know, she was afraid of like 0:11:44.240 --> 0:11:48.000 being attacked by mattresses from the sky, and in the 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:50.880 movie they just they just do it. That's a scene. 0:11:51.200 --> 0:11:54.680 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think she mentioned in the interview 0:11:54.760 --> 0:11:57.600 that it came from or maybe your father did that. 0:11:57.679 --> 0:12:00.840 It came in part from going out the countryside and 0:12:00.880 --> 0:12:03.000 having to sleep on futons and then fold them up 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:05.959 during the day and as a child, like the futon 0:12:06.080 --> 0:12:07.800 is so big and it's kind of heavy and it's 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:10.760 kind of falling on you, so it kind of feeds 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:11.640 into this idea. 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:14.120 I never would have thought of that, but yeah. 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:15.760 Yeah, I mean that's that's really the beauty of it. Like, 0:12:15.800 --> 0:12:18.600 these are all things that grown ups would not have 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:21.720 thought of. They come from the mind of children, and 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:26.480 the child's mind is capable of such wonders and such horrors. 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:29.720 You know. That was that. It's one of the joys 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:33.920 of parenthood is getting to, uh, to be on the 0:12:33.920 --> 0:12:38.400 receiving end of so many wild and creative ideas that 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:40.600 they just come up with on their own, you know, 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:43.120 because they have to this innate creativity. 0:12:43.480 --> 0:12:46.320 Yeah, to see to see the wild mental leaps and 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:49.280 the strange connections that a young brain makes that you 0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:52.800 just you're seeing into something that your brain may once 0:12:52.840 --> 0:12:55.360 have been capable of but is no longer like the 0:12:55.640 --> 0:12:58.520 pruning has cut you off from from that kind of 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:01.360 connection across mental distance. 0:13:01.800 --> 0:13:03.600 So this again. This is a huge part of the film. 0:13:03.679 --> 0:13:06.160 We'll keep coming back to this as we discuss the 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:08.520 making of the film and also get into the plot. 0:13:10.280 --> 0:13:13.680 But yeah, I'm glad that we're finally covering House. It's 0:13:13.720 --> 0:13:16.559 a film that has been on the Weird House Cinema 0:13:17.360 --> 0:13:20.080 list for I mean really since the beginning. I mean, 0:13:20.080 --> 0:13:21.920 that's just if when you think of weird films and 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:24.920 you get into, you know, listings of weird films, it's 0:13:24.960 --> 0:13:29.079 always up there. There's a you know, poster or a 0:13:29.160 --> 0:13:32.600 recreation of the poster for this film in the front 0:13:32.600 --> 0:13:37.000 window of Videodrome, the movie rental place here in Atlanta, 0:13:37.120 --> 0:13:38.920 So you know, it's it's always been on the list, 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:42.079 and today we're finally talking about it. I guess I'm 0:13:42.080 --> 0:13:44.240 gonna stick with the mount everest of hunted House Films 0:13:44.240 --> 0:13:46.480 for my elevator pitch. Do you have any anything to 0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:46.920 add to that? 0:13:47.000 --> 0:13:53.160 Joe worst summer vacation ever. Seven high school friends go 0:13:53.240 --> 0:13:57.320 out for a leisurely visit to a countryside manor somewhere 0:13:57.320 --> 0:14:02.079 in Japan and get and by various household appliances. 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:04.360 All right, well, let's go ahead and listen to at 0:14:04.400 --> 0:14:07.360 least part of the trailer audio here. I'm not sure 0:14:07.400 --> 0:14:09.440 it necessarily makes sense to listen to the whole thing, 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:11.800 but we definitely want to get just a little taste 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:15.679 of that music, a little taste, especially of the title. 0:14:16.600 --> 0:14:17.839 So let's have a listen. 0:14:26.160 --> 0:14:46.840 House, I see in your rise. 0:14:47.840 --> 0:15:39.600 My All right now, if you want to run out 0:15:39.640 --> 0:15:43.800 and watch House before we get into any further discussion here, well, 0:15:43.880 --> 0:15:46.760 lucky for you, House is widely available in pretty much 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:50.240 any format you might desire. Uh. Here in the States, 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:53.400 you can currently stream it on Max unless it's I 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:56.360 think it's still there. Uh. It's also available on Blu 0:15:56.480 --> 0:15:59.280 Ray and DVD from the Criterion Collection. And that's how 0:15:59.360 --> 0:16:01.720 I watched it. I rented it from Videodrome and watched 0:16:01.760 --> 0:16:03.760 it on Blu Ray, and I refer back to some 0:16:03.800 --> 0:16:14.400 of the special features as we proceed. All right, Well, 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:18.280 let's get into the people who made this film, starting 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:22.640 once more at the top with Nuwahiko Obayashi again, director. 0:16:22.720 --> 0:16:26.440 He also plays husband in this producer, director of special effects. 0:16:26.680 --> 0:16:29.560 He lived nineteen thirty eight through twenty twenty. He was 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:33.960 a Japanese director, screenwriter, and editor known for his work 0:16:34.160 --> 0:16:39.320 in experimental cinema of the nineteen sixties TV commercials, reportedly 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:42.840 by the thousands, and often involving the sort of Western 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:47.880 celebrity appearances that were parodied in two thousand and threes 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:48.920 Lost in translation. 0:16:49.800 --> 0:16:54.240 Okay, so where you might have like a celebrity famous 0:16:54.280 --> 0:16:57.920 in English language movies and TV come in and kind 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:01.080 of deliver some strange out of text lines for a 0:17:01.560 --> 0:17:04.200 soda commercial in Japan or something exactly. 0:17:04.280 --> 0:17:06.040 And if you look up at images of him, you'll 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:08.199 find a lot of old images of him, like standing 0:17:08.280 --> 0:17:12.320 around with various celebrities from the West. Now, this film, 0:17:12.440 --> 0:17:16.480 nineteen seventy Seven's House was his first feature film, an 0:17:16.560 --> 0:17:21.520 intentionally off kilter, highly weird, experimental horror comedy I guess 0:17:21.520 --> 0:17:23.520 you might call it, but you can describe it many 0:17:23.520 --> 0:17:27.320 other ways as well. Initially didn't land all that well 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:31.679 with especially with Japanese critics and in the industry, but 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:34.680 it subsequently developed a cult following in Japan and abroad, 0:17:35.040 --> 0:17:38.760 and today it's celebrated as just a complete cinematic freak 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:43.240 out and stands tall amid the pantheon of global psychatronics cinema. 0:17:43.280 --> 0:17:47.920 As long as you're sticking to coherent narrative films, it 0:17:48.000 --> 0:17:49.840 is one of the weirdest ever made. 0:17:50.200 --> 0:17:51.760 Yeah, and I do want to stress that it. Yeah, 0:17:51.760 --> 0:17:53.480 it does have a plot that you can follow, It's 0:17:53.520 --> 0:17:57.880 not one of these. You can definitely describe it as 0:17:57.960 --> 0:18:01.840 as art house to a certain extent. Ty West, the 0:18:02.640 --> 0:18:05.000 horror director, has a little bit on the Criterion collection 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:07.720 disc where he talks about it being an art horror film, 0:18:08.640 --> 0:18:12.000 which he says, you see little of these days, in 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:15.320 part because studios want to bring ironically someone in from 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:19.960 the commercial world to direct a very cookie cutter horror 0:18:20.040 --> 0:18:21.760 film that kind of matches up with the style of 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:25.600 everything else and doesn't stand out. But you do still 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:29.000 see some art horror films like Slip Through, and there's 0:18:29.000 --> 0:18:31.800 some great examples of that for sure. But yeah, this 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:33.520 is a very artistic vision here. 0:18:33.680 --> 0:18:36.479 Well. Yeah, I think horror films are often thought of 0:18:36.520 --> 0:18:38.720 as a cash grab, and in many cases they are 0:18:38.720 --> 0:18:42.639 because horror films are, for the most part, relatively cheap 0:18:42.680 --> 0:18:45.200 to make, and they tend to gross a lot more 0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:48.639 than their budgets. But you know, something that might be 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:50.439 true of a lot of entries in a genre is 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:51.679 of course never true of all. 0:18:51.920 --> 0:18:55.320 Right, Right, So again there's a great interview with Obayashi 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:58.320 and his daughter on the Criterion Collection disc and I 0:18:58.640 --> 0:19:01.679 highly recommend folks to check that out. But because it 0:19:01.720 --> 0:19:04.240 also has a lot of interesting stills, behind the scenes 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:07.720 photos and so forth, and they run through several aspects 0:19:07.720 --> 0:19:09.959 of the making of and the reception of the film, 0:19:10.320 --> 0:19:11.800 and I just want to go through a few things 0:19:11.800 --> 0:19:13.320 that really stood out to me and I think are 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:16.560 important for understanding how this film came together and then 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:21.639 how it was interpreted. So he says that at the time, 0:19:22.359 --> 0:19:24.760 so we would be dealing with I think at the time, 0:19:24.800 --> 0:19:28.920 like mid seventies Japan. He said that cinema was pretty 0:19:28.960 --> 0:19:31.800 much in decline, in that young people did not go 0:19:31.880 --> 0:19:35.800 to the movies. TV was what was really in and 0:19:35.880 --> 0:19:37.960 even his daughter, who would apparently go with him to 0:19:37.960 --> 0:19:40.280 the theater all the time, would comment that Japanese films 0:19:40.280 --> 0:19:44.399 were boring, Like when he asked her what kind of 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:46.480 film should Daddy make, she would be like, Oh, don't 0:19:46.480 --> 0:19:50.199 make a movie, daddy. Japanese films are boring. So a 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:52.680 lot of what he's doing is definitely trying to create 0:19:52.720 --> 0:19:54.040 something different, something new. 0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:56.160 Bummer shut down by your child. 0:19:57.760 --> 0:20:00.199 But he says that a lot of aspiring filmmakers at 0:20:00.240 --> 0:20:03.600 the time, like himself, didn't want to do commercials, but 0:20:03.920 --> 0:20:06.240 he thought differently. He seems to have thought differently about 0:20:06.240 --> 0:20:08.680 a lot of things. He points out that the big 0:20:08.720 --> 0:20:11.439 thing is there was money in commercials. And the key 0:20:11.520 --> 0:20:13.879 here is not that you would make a lot of money, 0:20:13.880 --> 0:20:15.679 and I think that may have also been true, but 0:20:15.800 --> 0:20:18.800 more to the point, you could actually work with a budget. 0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:22.400 So again, like the Japanese cinematic world, according to him, 0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:24.480 was sort of shrinking at the time. You couldn't get 0:20:24.480 --> 0:20:27.400 these big budgets, but you could go into doing these 0:20:27.400 --> 0:20:31.000 commercials and there was money there could He says that 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:34.840 ultimately the content might be meaningless, but you could experiment, 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:37.360 you could chase the visual expression of the thing. 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:40.480 Yeah, and you see a lot of directors who eventually 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:43.160 end up making movies in all cultures. It's an American 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:46.639 cinema two that you know, they started in commercials and 0:20:46.760 --> 0:20:48.879 also music videos. That used to be a big thing 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:51.480 because it was a place to just like work on techniques, 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:55.480 you know, whatever the actual content is, you're just experimenting 0:20:55.560 --> 0:21:00.159 with ways of showing things and learning the craft that way. 0:21:00.520 --> 0:21:04.840 Yeah. Yeah, he speaks in the interview of turning experimentation 0:21:04.960 --> 0:21:07.960 into expression, and that really seems to have been a 0:21:07.960 --> 0:21:09.920 big part of his im at the time, certainly in 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:13.480 the production of House, which didn't even have any storyboards. 0:21:13.920 --> 0:21:17.719 They intentionally they did not do storyboards for it. They 0:21:17.720 --> 0:21:21.480 would just try things out and just like throw everything 0:21:21.760 --> 0:21:23.960 against the wall and see what they could get. I 0:21:24.000 --> 0:21:26.640 believe it's tie West and the extra that points out that, 0:21:27.359 --> 0:21:31.440 like they use just basically every in camera technique imaginable 0:21:31.840 --> 0:21:32.439 in the film. 0:21:32.880 --> 0:21:35.560 That makes sense because I would say that the visual 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:39.240 style of the finished product is incredibly chaotic. There are 0:21:39.320 --> 0:21:44.360 just tons of different techniques on display, sometimes seemingly at random. 0:21:45.280 --> 0:21:46.960 I want to talk about this later when we get 0:21:46.960 --> 0:21:51.280 into discussing the plot, the sometimes the violation of cinematic 0:21:51.359 --> 0:21:55.919 norms that takes place throughout the movie, but also with 0:21:56.040 --> 0:21:58.919 in terms of special effects, in terms of editing techniques, 0:21:59.000 --> 0:22:02.639 like it all just just crazy different visual stuff happening 0:22:02.680 --> 0:22:06.200 all the time that does not feel part of an 0:22:06.240 --> 0:22:10.399 attempt to select a particular visual texture that like a 0:22:10.400 --> 0:22:13.439 lot of films do, Like they just have totally different 0:22:13.480 --> 0:22:16.160 looking effects and styles happening back to back. 0:22:16.720 --> 0:22:20.480 Yeah, he mentions like having great admiration for filmmakers like Carasawa, 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:24.760 but then also wondering what would irritate Carrossola and then 0:22:25.200 --> 0:22:31.200 pursuing that line of thinking that's great. So anyway, Toho 0:22:31.320 --> 0:22:35.960 Studios famously was inspired by Jaws for this one. This 0:22:36.040 --> 0:22:37.639 is often just thrown out there. It's like this was 0:22:37.760 --> 0:22:39.440 this was an attempt to catch it on jobs. Well 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:42.680 sort of kind of, at least from Toho's position. Established 0:22:42.680 --> 0:22:45.359 studio again realizes they need to they need to do 0:22:45.400 --> 0:22:47.520 something fresh, and they look over and they say, oh, well, 0:22:47.560 --> 0:22:51.280 this Steven Spielberg guy just made like this enormously successful 0:22:51.320 --> 0:22:54.000 shark movie, huge hit from the mind of a young 0:22:54.080 --> 0:22:57.240 emerging talent. Let's get one of those young emerging talents 0:22:57.560 --> 0:22:59.439 and get them to make us a Jaws. 0:23:00.119 --> 0:23:03.359 And of course Jaws did lead to numerous ripoffs and 0:23:03.400 --> 0:23:06.159 copycats in the American market and all around the world. 0:23:06.200 --> 0:23:08.960 I mean, you can find the Italian Jaws ripoffs, American 0:23:09.080 --> 0:23:11.800 Jaws ripoffs, They're they're popping off all over the place. 0:23:11.880 --> 0:23:13.720 Jaws made a lot of money, and much like when 0:23:13.760 --> 0:23:15.760