Hausu inspired one of those once in a life-time moments when you will laugh so hard you piss yourself, and then crap your pants from being stunned by sheer cinematic prowess.

I had sat down expecting Hausu to be a cruel and mildly atmospheric J-horror ghost story, but instead I got a tornado of avant garde stylistic explosions married to a tongue firmly implanted in its cheek. It’s as if Dario Argento, Richard Lester, Vera Chytilova, Seijun Suzuki, and Takashi Miike secretly collaborated to re-make Star Wars, and then privately screened the results for you while you were hanging upside down over a tank of piranhas. It’s that good.

The seven Japanese schoolgirls of Hausu have names to conveniently denote their characters:”Prof” for the smart one, “Gorgeous” for the prettiest one, “Mac” for the overweight one, “Fantasy” for the stylish one, and my personal favorite “Kung-Fu” because well, she knows Kung-Fu. They are all members of a team of some kind, though I’m not sure what exactly and they need a place to train for the summer, as they do every year.

Gorgeous’s father is getting re-married to a woman who only appears with a breeze blowing in super slow mo, to the accompaniment of ethereal string music. As you can imagine, that constant slo-mo shit can get kind of irritating, and Gorgeous wants to get away from it all. Georgeous writes a letter to an estranged aunt that she has never met, asking if she and her friends can spend the summer doing whatever it is they do. The aunt agrees, and they are off to the titular house.

The bus trip is like a day-glo version of Willy Wonka’s psychedelic boat ride, only this time through artificial rainbow streaked countryside. After the girls arrive at the aunt’s home, they soon discover that the house is unfortunately possessed by a ghost/demon who likes to eat virgins.

The girls are devoured by mattresses and pillows, turned to glass, eaten by pianos (one of the funniest and truly most disturbing scenes I’ve ever watched), attacked by severed floating heads, plagued by horrible visions of bananas, among other nuisances. The phrase, “I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for this” becomes an all purpose punch-line. Hausu is horror-comedy-coming of age tale, par excellence.

Every scene has some kind of cinematic interjection and manipulation, from the shifting color filters, to deranged collage and montage of events and images, to wildly varied animations, mattes, props (the wall paper in the rooms of the house match the print on some of the girls dresses), and mini-movies stylized as beautiful and heartfelt silent films and WW2 era romances, and of course obligatory whirlwind action scenes that follow the shout “Save us Kung-Fu!”.

Hausu features a heavy emphasis on wall to wall Spaghetti Western-esque wall to wall music. Gorgeous’s dad is a composer; he is mentioned to have auditioned for Sergio Leone, who said he was better than Ennio Morricone. There are also horror movie themes, cartoonish comedy sections, pop songs, strings, and sounds that are just generally unclassifiable possibly because they might be two songs playing at the same time.

I have seen director Nobuhiko Obayashi’s work before; he was responsible for the campy kaleidoscopic Sada, based on a true story about a woman who, during World War II, castrated her lover and became an overnight celebrity. Sada, it turns out, was only a mere hint of the madcap reservoirs unleashed in this movie. Obayashi is actually most famous for directing game shows, and so he brings this same everything and the kitchen sink dynamic to Hausu.

The least important element of Hausua is the plot, as there is so much happening in literally every scene, as easy to forget altogether and still enjoy it. The only other film as unrelenting in terms of visual excess is perhaps Jorodowsky’s The Holy Mountain.

I’ve never laughed so much at a film that was so dazzling to watch. Hausu skyrocketed into my favorites instantly. “It’s like were trapped in a b-movie.”, says on the girls, “An out of date of one too…” See this film with someone you love.

Tags: hausu, Nobuhiko Obayashi

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