House

The 338th review!

I really miss video stores. I just liked walking around and going down every aisle and seeing the different movies, hoping one could catch my eye. Don't get me wrong; I love streaming, but I've always been partial to physical copies and endlessly scrolling on your couch looking for a movie pales in comparison to checking out the stores. I complained about the loss of notes for my October reviews, but I have to say, this October, I'm really feeling the loss of video stores down to my soul. Anyways, tonight we talk about...

House (1977)

Remember last week when I talked about how Videodrome was a weird movie, holy crap, the Japanese horror film House takes it to a whole new level. I really don't even know how to describe what I saw. I can be prone to hyperbole, but believe me when I say this, you will never see anything like this movie.

A young girl is getting ready to vacation with her father in Italy. But he surprises her by bringing home a new step mom and the young girl does not like that one bit. Instead, she writes to her aunt, asking to stay with her. The aunt agrees and the girl gets a group of friends to go with her. From there, it gets nuts. They're supposed to go with their teacher for some reason, but on the way to the train he slips on some steps, lands in a cooking pot, and... stop motion slides down each one and gets it stuck on his butt. It looks incredibly silly, but it gets worse, waaaay worse.

The characters are blank canvases and there's not much to any of them except their names. They're named after their most dominant trait. The main girl is named "Gorgeous" because she's pretty. Her friends are; "Fantasy," the dreamer of the group, "Prof," the smart one, "Mac," the one who eats too much, "Kung Fu," who does Kung Fu, "Melody," the one who plays music and finally "Sweet," who is bubbly and energetic. Yeah...

I honestly don't know how to review this movie because I can't begin to explain it. Everything about it is weird, you watch and the entertainment comes from wondering what it's going to throw at you next. It's not even consistent with its mood and tone. It's kind of jarring how much it jumps around every few minutes. I don't even know where to begin criticizing or praising this movie because it is the weirdest thing I've ever seen.

One thing I have to get it credit for is visually it's the most interesting looking movie I've ever seen. Like a lot of the backgrounds, are giant beautiful landscape paintings. There are moments where the movie wants you to focus on something, so it will have the entire screen go black except one little section to make sure you don't miss it. With the limited budget and technology of the time, it does a whole lot of camera tricks. It messes around a whole lot with perspective shots and insane effects. After I watched it I was disappointed I did a video review for The Addams Family because visually, this movie is pretty awesome.

I read the director of this movie asked his young daughter about what scared her, and some of the things that happen in this movie are what she came up with. A short, and not even close to complete list include; an evil cat jumping out of a painting, a piano eating a girl, a severed head biting one of them on the booty, they get attacked by couch cushions and occasionally in the background there's a dancing skeleton for no reason. It's wild.

I don't do this really ever, but if you're a horror fan, you HAVE to see this movie. I'm not recommending you to see it because I loved it, because I didn't. But it is definitely something you should experience, it's an absolute trip.This has been one of the hardest reviews I've ever had to do because I really have no idea how to adequately describe what I witnessed. You're pretty much watching the fevered dream of a child.