House (1977)
Japanese horror comedy by Nobuhiko Obayashi. A bit of a cult classic and now one of most widely recognized examples of "goofy japanese stuff".
And god, is it goofy. House (or "Hausu") follows a clique of girls as they stay overnight in the old house of an aunt of one of theirs which, you guessed it, turns out to be haunted by an evil spirit. And its extremely fluffy cat. It's about the most generic premise for a horror movie but it serves as the setup for something that's anything but. What Hausu is, is a campy, slapstick haunted house ride, oversaturated with quirky direction and editing tricks and ridiculous setpieces that feels weirdly ahead of its time to the point that even now mainstream comedy is just barely catching up to it. It's an incredibly colourful, fast paced exercise in sensory overload that utilizes every trick in the book, and a bunch it probably invented, to make the viewer laugh. If you had told me this had come out around the same time as Hundreds of Beavers, I would probably believe you.
It uses the cookie cooker setup of a haunted house movie to play with some classic, and at that point already unapologetically campy, horror iconography. I swear, there's a dancing plastic skeleton prominenlty featured in this. It's an absolutely classy production. Plus, some really barmy setpieces. There's a scene in there that I'm almost sure was the inspiration for man eating piano in Mario 64. There is another scene, allegedly directly inspired by the writer/directors then kid daughter (who actually has a writing credit on this) where a girl is being attacked by rabid futons. I'm pretty sure Obayashi invented an entirely new cinematic language in there and while it's more restrained in some of his later work, it followed him for his entire career. Honestly, I think it can't be overstated how gorgeous this movie looks. The colourls are bright and poppy, it works a lot with elaborate sets and matte paintings, it's beautiful!
There is sort of a comprehensible ghost story somewhere in there but this is firmly on the "comedy" side of the "horror comedy" genre. Even its most morbid scenes feel very much like what a child trying to tell a scary story would come up with. That is, aside from a somewhat awkward aside that references World War 2, feels like a bit of an idiosyncratic addition to the script and oddly foreshadows what would primarily occupy the latter part of Obayashi's career.
Hausu is an incredibly entertaining live action cartoon that must have felt like an artefact from another world when it came out, a candy coloured parade of rapid fire non sequiturs. And, yes, most of them are really funny. It's the "if one joke falls flat, the next one's coming 10 seconds later" type of comedy where a big part of what makes it funny is just how much its overwhelming the viewer with absurdity. It's funny in a way that doesn't feel specific to any culture or time period. Again, if anything it feels like it should speak more to modern comedic sensibilities than it did to those of its time. That said, despite being mostly dismissed by critics of the time, it was a hit in Japan and is now finally getting the acknowledgement it deserves in the rest of the world. It's some pretty good shit.
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