Screen/Society--"Hausu [House]" (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)

HOUSE [HAUSU]
(Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977, 88 min, Japan, Japanese with English subtitles, 35mm)

Special 35MM Screening!

A work of dense visual and technial complexity, HOUSE is perhaps best remembered as a psychedelic, cinematic pop-up fairytale of the Grimm brothers variety, but Obayashi's darkly comic fable of seven schoolgirls is deceptive in its simplicity. While the girls' stay in a haunted house results in a series of sinister, stylized, and undeniably silly slashings, HOUSE subtly explores the wartime trauma their parents' generation endured. A midnight movie turned cult classic, House - with its hypercinematic unreality of candy-coloured skies, optically printed collages, and rapid fire editing - is undoubtedly best experienced on film.

"A head-on collision between THE EVIL DEAD (1981) and YELLOW SUBMARINE (1968) - a fevered flight of horror-fantasy like no other." - Sarah Cleary, BFI

"Disney had his seven dwarves, Kurosawa his seven samurai. For Obayashi (with the help of his eleven-year-old daughter, Chigumi, who provided many of the story ideas), it was seven teenage damsels in distress - CARRIE raised to the seventh power, SUSPIRIA spiraling ever upward into some psychedelic seventh heaven. HOUSE is a film that must be seen to be believed, and then seen again to believe that you really did see what you think you saw." - Chuck Stephens, Criterion