User:Andrzejbanas/House

House (ハウス) is a 1977 Japanese haunted house film directed and produced by Nobuhiko Obayashi. The film stars mostly non professional actors with only Kimiko Ikegami and Yōko Minamida having any notable previous acting experience. The film is about a schoolgirl traveling with her six classmates to her ailing aunt's country home, where they come face to face with evil spirits, a haunted piano and a demonic house cat.

Toho approached Obayashi with the suggestion to make a film like Jaws. Influenced by ideas from his daughter Chigumi, Obayashi developed ideas for a script that was written by Chiho Katsura. After the script was greenlit, the film was put on hold for two years as no director at Toho wanted to direct House. Obayashi promoted the film during this time period until he was given the right to direct it from the studio. The film was a box office hit in Japan but was received negatively by critics. House was widely released in 2009 and 2010 the United States where it received more favorable reviews.

Plot
In Japan, a young girl nicknamed Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) has plans for a summer vacation with her father (Saho Sasazawa) who had been in Italy scoring film music. Her father returns to introduce Gorgeous to her new mother Ryoko Ema (Haruko Wanibuchi). This upsets Gorgeous as her mother had passed away years earlier. Gorgeous writes a letter to her Aunt asking if she could come visit her this summer instead as she has not seen her in years. After her aunt accepts, Gorgeous invites her six friends, Prof, Melody, Kung Fu, Mac, Sweet and Fantasy to come along with her. On arriving at the Aunt's house the girls are greeted by her aunt who they present a watermelon to. The girls leave a watermelon in a well to keep it refrigerated. When Mac goes to retrieve the watermelon she does not return. Fantasy goes to retrieve the watermelon and pulls out a Mac's head which flies in the air and bites Fantasy's buttocks. The girls continue to encounter other supernatural traps among the house. Kung Fu is attacked by chopped wood after she chopped it, the aunt disappears through the broken refrigerator and dines alone on a human hand. The girls begin to be attacked or possessed by the items in the house. Melody is attacked by a piano and Sweet vanishes after being attacked by mattresses. These attacks lead the girls trying to escape the home. As soon as Gorgeous walks out the door the rest of the girls find themselves locked in the house. The girls try to find the Aunt to unlock the door but only find Mac's hand in a jar. Melody begins to play the piano to keep the girl's spirits up. The girls hear Gorgeous singing upstairs and Prof and Kung Fu go to investigate. Melody's fingers are bitten by the piano keys until it starts to eat her whole body.

Kung Fu and Prof find a ghostly image of Gorgeous who reveals her Aunt's diary to them. Kung Fu follows the vision of Gorgeous as she leaves the room to only find Sweet's body trapped in a Grand Father clock. Panic driven, the remaining girls create a barricade to the upper part of the house while Prof, Fantasy and Kung Fu read the Aunt's diary. They are interrupted by the giant sized head of Gorgeous. Gorgeous says she's that her aunt died many years ago waiting for her husband to return from the World War II and that she remains eating unmarried girls who arrive. The three girls are attacked by house hold items. Prof shouts to Kung Fu to attack the aunt's cat Blanche. In the middle of a flying kick, Kung Fu is eaten by a light fixture. Kung Fu's leg's manage to escape and attack the painting of Blanche on the wall. The attacked Blanche portrait causes the room to fill with blood. Prof tries to read the diary to solve the problem, but is pulled under the blood by a monster. Fantasy sees Gorgeous in the bridal gown and paddles to her. Gorgeous morphs into her Aunt and her mother as she cradles Fantasy. In the morning, Ryoko arrives at the house and finds Gorgeous in the bridal gown. Gorgeous tells Ryoko that her friends will wake up soon and that they will be hungry.

Cast

 * Kimiko Ikegami as Gorgeous
 * Miki Jinbo as Kung Fu
 * Kumiko Oba as Fantasy
 * Ai Matsubara as Prof
 * Mieko Sato as Mac
 * Eriko Tanaka as Melody
 * Masayo Miyako as Sweet
 * Kiyohiko Ozaki as Mr.Togo
 * Saho Sasazawa as Daddy
 * Asei Kobayashi as Watermelon man
 * Tomokazu Miura as Auntie's fiancé
 * Fumi Dan as Teacher
 * Godiego as themselves
 * Haruko Wanibuchi as Ryoko Ema
 * Yoko Minamida as Auntie

Development
On the popular success of the American film Jaws, a proposition came from Toho to director Nobuhiko Obayashi to develop a similar script. To seek inspiration for the story, Obayashi discussed it with his pre-teen daughter Chigumi Obyashi. Nobuhiko sought after her ideas, believing that adults "only think about things they understand...everything stays on that boring human level" while "children can come up with things that can't be explained". Chigumi's suggestions included her reflection attacking her in the mirror, and that a watermelon she pulled out of a well seeming like a human head attacking her and a house that eats girls. Other themes Chigumi suggested drew upon her own childhood fears. These included a pile of futons falling on her that felt like a futon monster attacking her, a large and loud clock at her grandparents home, and getting her fingers caught in between the keys on her piano. After hearing about the story ideas from Nobuhiko, screenwriter Chiho Katsura was reminded of a short story by Walter de la Mare who wrote a story of old woman who is visited by her granddaughters who are all put in a trunk. Nobuhiko incorporated themes of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the script. Nobuhiko was born in Hiroshima and lost all his childhood friends from the bombing. Nobuhiko included these ideas by applying the plot element of a woman's ghost waiting for her lover's return from World War II. The woman's bitterness about the war turns her into an evil spirit that devours the girls who were unaffected by the bombings. Nobuhiko and Chino had worked previously a script titled Hanagatami before being assigned to House, which made the screenwriting process easy for both of them. Nobuhiko titled the script House as he felt that a foreign title for a Japanese film would be "taboo".

Pre-production
The script for House was green-lit shortly after being presented to Toho. No directors at Toho were interested in directing the film as they felt it would end their career. Nobuhiko proposed that he would direct it but was turned down as he was not a staff member at Toho. House did not start filming until two years after the script's completion. Toho allowed Nobuhiko to announce that film was green-lit and began promoting the film by passing out business cards which advertised the film. In the 1960s, Nobuhiko created a short film titled Emotion that was popular at Japanese universities and event halls. Fans of his commercial and film work helped him promote House before it was even in production. Products based on House were released that included mangas, a novelization of the script and radio dramas. The soundtrack for the film was created and released before the film was made. Asei Kobayashi, who worked with Nobuhiko on his television commercials contributed the piano pieces for the film's soundtrack. Kobayashi felt that younger people should contribute to the film's soundtrack and suggested Mickie Yoshino and his band Godiego to contribute songs based on his piano pieces.

The majority of the cast House were not established actors and were people Nobuhiko worked with on his commercials and independent films. During the two year waiting period to start filming House, Nobuhiko created several commercials and began casting the seven girls from models who were in his commercials. The most experienced members of the main cast were Kimiko Ikegami and Yōko Minamida. Nobuhiko was friends with Minamida who he filmed in commercials for Calpis. Ikegami was mostly working television and theater at the time and felt that taking the role of the older woman would no longer let her act as a younger woman again, but still took Nobuhiko's offer. The country music singer Kiyohiko Ozaki who plays Mr.Togo in the film was casted as he was friends with Nobuhiko through his shared hobby of horse-back riding. Other crew members took roles in the film including Chigumi who plays the little girl with the shoe maker who played by the film's production designer.

Filming
Nobuhiko recalled that his producer told him that Toho was tired of losing money on comprehensible films and were ready to let Nobuhiko direct the House script which they felt was incomprehensible. House was filmed on one of Toho's largest sets where Nobuhiko shot the film without a storyboard. Obayashi described the attitude on the set as very upbeat as he often skipped, sang and played quiz games with the younger actresses on the set. Despite having fun on the set, members of the Toho crew felt the film was nonsense. Nobuhiko found the acting of the seven girls to be poor while trying to direct them verbally. He began playing the film's soundtrack on set which changed the way the girls were acting in the film as they got into the spirit of the music. Actress Kimiko Ikegami was uncomfortable about a nude scene in the film. To make her more comfortable, Yoko Minamida also took off her clothes. After Nobuhiko saw Minamida nude, he included a nude scene for her in the film which was not in the original script.

Nobuhiko already had experience with special effects from his work on television commercials. Nobuhiko and the cameraman oversaw the special effects for the film. Nobuhiko desired the special effects to look unrealistic, as if a child created them. For the scene where Ai Matsubara's character vanishes under the blood, Nobuhiko had her suspended nude pouring buckets of blue paint on her to create a blue-screen chroma key effect where the blue colored parts of her body would deteriorate on camera. The outcome of a lot of these effects would be unknown until they finished the film. Nobuhiko stated that sometimes that effects did not turn out how he originally envisioned them.

Release
House was released on July 30, 1977 in Japan. It was originally released on a double bill with the romance film Pure Hearts in Mud. Toho felt House would not be successful, but the film became a great hi in. The film became specifically popular with a youth audience. House was never shown in the United States until the distribution rights were bought were bought by Janus Films to be released as part of their Eclipse line of DVDs. Eclipse was originally conceived as a possible sub-label for cult films for the company. When Eclipse did not become about cult films, Janus began getting requests for theatrical screenings of the film. The film had a small tour of of theatrical showings including two sold-out shows at the 2009 New York Asian Film Festival. In January 2010, House began being shown theatrically across North America.

House was released by the Masters of Cinema label in the United Kingdom on DVD. Bonus features on the disc included interviews with the cast and crew and the theatrical trailer. House was released by The Criterion Collection on DVD and Blu-ray on October 26, 2010. Bonus features on the disc included a making-of feature with interviews with the crew, a short film Emotion (1966) directed by Obayashi and an appreciation video featuring director Ti West.

Reception
The film did not receive many reviews in Japan on it's initial release. The genreal reception among Japanese critics who did review the film was negative. On it's theatrical showings across North America, House began to receive generally favorable reviews. House was The New York Times critics pick stating that "Mr. Obayashi has created a true fever dream of a film, one in which the young female imagination — that of his daughter, Gorgeous or both — yields memorable results." The Seattle Times gave House three out of four stars, stating that what the film "lacks in technical wizardry it more than makes up for in playful ingenuity, injecting cheesy effects into outrageously stylized set pieces." Slant Magazine gave the film three stars out of four, calling it "equal parts brilliant, baffling, ridiculous, and unwatchable." The New York Post gave the film three and a half stars out of four praising the film's originality, comparing it to the work of directors Dario Argento and Guy Maddin. indieWire including House in their list of "Haunted House films worth discussing" calling it "the cheeriest, most infectious blood bath in cinematic history."

The Austin Chronicle gave House a mixed review, saying that "there's surprisingly little to recommend House as a film. But as an experience, well, that's a whole other story." The Village Voice gave the film a mixed review, saying that "Contemporary Japanese pop culture makes the hophead nonsense of House look quaint by comparison... though it plays like a retarded hybrid of Rocky Horror and Whispering Corridors, it is, moment to moment, its own kind of movie hijinks." The Boston Globe gave the film two stars out of four, opining that films by Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson have created had attempted similar styled films with better success.