Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi • 1977 • Japan
Starring Kimiko Ikegami, Miki Jinbo, Kumiko Oba
How to describe Nobuhiko Obayashi’s indescribable 1977 movie HOUSE (HAUSU)? As a psychedelic ghost tale? A stream-of-consciousness bedtime story? An episode of “Scooby-Doo” as directed by Mario Bava? Any of the above will do for this hallucinatory head trip about a schoolgirl who travels with six classmates to her ailing aunt’s creaky country home and comes face-to-face with evil spirits, a demonic house cat, a bloodthirsty piano, and other ghoulish visions, all realized by Obayashi via mattes, animation, and collage effects. Equally absurd and nightmarish, HOUSE might have been beamed to Earth from some other planet. Never before available on home video in the United States, it’s one of the most exciting cult discoveries in years.
Up Next in Art-House Horror
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The Shout
Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski • 1978 • United Kingdom
Starring Alan Bates, Susannah York, John HurtThis entrancing psychosexual puzzle thriller from Jerzy Skolimowski features a memorably unsettling performance from Alan Bates as an enigmatic drifter who insinuates himself into the lives of an ...
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The Brood
Directed by David Cronenberg • 1979 • Canada
Starring Oliver Reed, Samantha Eggar, Art HindleA disturbed woman is receiving a radical form of psychotherapy at a remote, mysterious institute. Meanwhile, her five-year-old daughter, under the care of her estranged husband, is being terrorized by a...
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Wolf’s Hole
Directed by Věra Chytilová • 1987 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Miroslav Machácek, Tomás Palatý, Stepánka CervenkováVěra Chytilová’s subversive take on the 1980s teen-horror movie assembles a gaggle of bratty adolescents for a mysterious skiing retreat at a snowbound cabin where they find themselve...
