MOVIE REVIEW: House (1977)

There's this well-known home video label in the US, known as The Criterion Collection; famous for putting out carefully selected independent, foreign, and culturally significant cinema. Every so often, one of my cinematically-inclined friends will persuade me to rent one of their products out of specific interest. Luckily, some insightful (and loaded!) patron supplies my local library with nearly every Criterion Collection DVD out there, so obtaining them usually isn't a problem for me. Especially when the rest of the population has to obtain these DVDs or Blu-Rays by either NetFlix or forking over the lump sum and praying it's a movie they'll not regret buying. The DVDs/Blu-Rays are intentionally expensive, due to processing costs (for more info, click the link to the Criterion site).

Needless to say, when I found out from one of my friends that Criterion put out a crazy, cult, Japanese horror film named House, whose box describes itself as "An episode of "Scooby Doo" meets Mario Bava", I had to check it out. Even with Criterion's pedigree, it didn't surprise me that they released something like this, especially when they had the balls to release the S&M torture-porn "masterpiece" Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (the thought of seeing it again still makes me shudder). The end result with House is some wacky fun that may turn off serious horror fans, but will definitely please anybody else who enjoys a good helping of "WTF?!" in their film.

House is about a girl named Gorgeous who takes her six female friends to visit her ailing aunt, for the summer, at her lush, cabin in the woods (already, you can see where this is going!). If you ever wanted to know where the stereotype for cute, sailor-clad, Japanese girls with machine-gun laughter came from, you need look no further than House, since the film promulgates it to no end! The seven girls themselves are a vague parable for the "Seven Dwarves" or the "Seven Deadly Sins", each with their own unique personality or talent (my favorite was the girl named Kung-Fu, for obvious reasons!). Upon reaching auntie's house, strange things start happening when a watermelon turns into a disembodied head and tries to bite a girl on her rear, or when the guest-room mattresses start to gang up and try to suffocate another. This is only the beginning, as the gags start to get more violent and weird. But boy, is it entertaining!

The director, seems to set us up for what would seem like an ordinary haunted-house movie with a gaggle of giggling teenage girls. Only unlike many films of House's time, these girls aren't getting drunk, horny, and naked (...okay, one of them does take a bath), they're simply hanging out, making dinner, and being all domestic until strange things start happening. This film isn't meant to be exploitation or straight-up horror, rather a stylized, 88 minute-long dream sequence with a really annoying theme song (It's no surprise either, that the director used to do music videos). As someone who enjoys crazy movies like Dead Alive or Airplane!, I felt right at home with House (no pun intended!). Although the film's bizarre nature can be a little grating at times, and the fact that I felt the ending dragged itself out a bit, House is a must-see for all fans of general comedy-horror.

8/10

Peace,
- Jon