With Janus Films distributing prints in the US, Criterion store selling T-shirts, and UK's Masters of Cinema just announcing their upcoming dvd, Nobuhiko Obayashi's House is really storming the world 30 years after it was made. Suppose it's best to give it a topic of its own.
Here's a bit of introduction I wrote some time ago.
There’s a small number of popular directors in Japan whose output has been rather one sidedly presented outside their native country. Cult director Nobuhiko Obayashi falls to this group. To a large extent his international reputation lies on the film House (1977) – somewhat ironic considering how little seen it is outside Japan. But House’s (also commonly known as “Hausu”, as fan circuits have adopted the Japanese katakana spelling for international use as well) reputation has preceded it for years, and now Criterion / Janus Films have picked it for theatrical and home video distribution in the US. For better or worse, next year this time equals mark can be drawn between Obayashi’s name and the film’s title globally.
House is the kind of movie cult film enthusiastics are looking for. Best described as Evil Dead 2 with kawaii factors, Obayashi’s film is a wacky comic book come alive. A group of junior high school students – all girls of course – travel to countryside to spend a weekend in an old house. It just happens to be that this specific house is more or less alive, and its visitors quite a bit dead after soon. If the ghost don’t get them, the piano will eat `em. But it’s not a very gory vision, unlike Raimi’s splatter films. A seminal element is Obayashi’s films has always been the visuals. House comes with more color-combinations and unreal images than the beloved early 70’s visual experimentalists of Japanese cinema, such as Shunya Ito (Jailhouse 41), could ever have dreamed of. But this is also House’s problem. The first 15 minutes may be a jaw dropper, but an over-dose in inevitable. When Obayashi goes overboard, it’s no longer a matter of style over substance; it’s the matter of style over the substance of style.
The reason for bringing up the matter of one sided presentations is that Obayashi’s true talent is indeed in substance. His masterpieces, such as Tenkousei (1982), are balanced, character driven dramas that work on a whole different level than the superficial roller coaster ride that is House. But it would be wrong to consider Obayashi the victim of his own cult film; House is no less genuine Obayashi than Girl Boss Blues is genuine Norifumi Suzuki. There is another side to these directors, but that remains to be discovered by large international audiences. That being said, House is by no means a bad movie. Its cult film reputation is fully justified, the masterpiece tag a bit less so. If a young kung fu skilled girl (called Kung Fu) in her underwear fighting ghosts and getting bit in the butt by a severed head sounds like your cup of tea, you’ve chosen the right film to watch. There’s enough good laughs and inventiveness on offer to keep one entertained even after the visuals lose their brightest shine. The film’s soundtrack, while sometimes repetitive, is also very pleasing.
Lourdes wrote:Hausu - R2J vs. R2UK
I should have done a comparison for this one really. R2J in comparison to the R2UK looks kind of faded but exactly as you'd expect it to based on other similar films of the era, low contrast and looking too bright. The R2UK has had colour correction done and a lot of playing with contrast so you lose shadow detail and other detail amidst the darkness unfortunately, but I have a feeling that it's still better off for it. Hung has an opinion on this I expect.
Wonder what the Criterion will look like, I'm sure they'll adjust the contrast.
* New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
* Constructing a House, a new video piece featuring interviews with director Nobuhiko Obayashi, story scenarist and daughter of the director Chigumi Obayashi, and screenwriter Chiho Katsura
* Emotion, a 1966 experimental film by Obayashi
* New video appreciation by director Ti West (House of the Devil)
* Theatrical trailer
* New and improved English subtitle translation
* PLUS: An essay by Chuck Stephens
Arrrrgh how annoying. I've been patiently waiting to see how the BD turned out but now don't know which release to get. And wtf is with the purple screencap?! If someone who saw it originally theatrically can comment on that then we'll know which one is accurate, but God knows if that's going to happen.
I don't see a big problem with the purple shot. As the film is, it's impossible to say which scene was intended purple, which yellow, and which had a green laughing face ( ) painted on the background...
Criterion is probably how the film played originally. It's just my personal opinion that the MoC look, which may result from less than pristine print, is more in line with the film's mood and style (which is very dreamish and fantasy-like).
It's quite interesting because it's the opposite to what happened with Kwaidan - the Criterion's image was contrast-boosted and had over-saturated colours, and the MoC had the original look (as well as the Japanese cut of course). I'm not saying the purple screencap is necessarily a bad thing, I just want to know which is correct.
Just watched the Criterion Blu-ray and I have to say I was very pleased with how it looks, but I know nothing about how the film is supposed to look at all (but I do have it on good authority that MoC's masters were less than ideal )
The film itself is an absolute masterpiece imo, it completely breaks down the walls of genre, convention and narrative and delivers a completely surreal ride from start to end. If I where to describe the experience to a westerner with no knowledge of Japanese culture then I'd just say imagine if someone took Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Rocky Horror Show, Lemora, and Suspiria (which funnily enough were all made in the years leading up to Hausu) into a weird Japanese blender and turned the dial up to 11 then you might get an idea for how ethereal and bizarre Hausu is.
If you are familiar with Japanese culture then you could describe Hausu as the product you'd get if you gave a talented and unique experimental filmmaker free reign to create a haunted house ride for Bunkasai, told completely from that high school perspective so you get the enthusiastic mish-mash of traditional Japanese horror mythology meeting the manic energy of the teenage brain, with Ôbayashi stripping down the protoypical characters from the Japanese High School genre and even naming each role after their defining characteristics, which alongside the haunted house set-up is just about the only conventional thing about the movie.
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