Perhaps you have read Franz Kafka and seen The Matrix and Inception. Perhaps you believe you are a seasoned veteran of having your mind totally blown. Perhaps you are an idiot. Released in 1977, the movie purports to answer the question “What happens when several characters that I suspect are insane Japanese versions of American stereotypes spend a night in a haunted house inhabited entirely by the ghosts of schizophrenics?”, but actually answers the question “What has Japan been planning for the past thirty years to get revenge on the United States for World War II?” This movie was not made by a director. This movie is the product of scientists using extremely advanced techniques and staggeringly complicated algorithms to cram 1500% insanity into the length of time of one single movie. In lieu of reasoned argument supporting this view, I’ll simply point out that the “director” (scientist in charge of the project), Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, happened to be born in a little town in Japan called “Hiroshima.”
“HAHAHA! HAMBURGER ROUNDEYES WILL PAY FOR SPEEDY END TO PACIFIC WAR!”
You don’t believe me? You, who grew up on Back To The Future, Star Wars and Family Matters? And now you dare to experience Hausu? You are not prepared. But I was foolish enough to promise Keisha that I’d review the next movie we watched, and as luck would have it, that was Hausu. Okay, so let’s settle in, surely I can find some funny in this thing.
The movie opens with Japanese text over a kaleidoscope of colorful rays, and campy 70s music plays, which lulled me into a false sense of security – maybe it’s some kind of Japanese Starsky and Hutch where they solve the mystery of who’s been breaking into all the schoolgirl used-panty vending machines in the city. A few opening graphics which display the words “A” “MOVIE” “HOUSE” one at a time scroll by. The O in HOUSE proceeds to grow teeth, lips, and an eyeball in the center, eats its own eye, then casually dribbles a hand out of the mouth while a man sonorously intones “HAU…su”
“I don’t know, man, are you sure about this? We could just check out Weekend at Bernie’s, or something that won’t end up with a dick lodged three inches inside of me.”
Duly noted, brain.
Two incredibly green Japanese girls are now in a room with a slow version of “We’ll Meet Again” playing, which seems to be the Hausu theme, so that’s how I’ll refer to it. One is surrounded by candles and lab equipment, and the other is taking pictures. They both seem happy, but it’s that creepy kind of Japanese happy where everything’s fine one minute, but you’re worried any second one or both of them will start gushing blood out of their eyes without changing their facial expression or even acknowledging it. After the picture taking, they turn the lights back on and one of them excitedly says “We need to explain the backstory to the audience!” No, wait, I mean “’I’m so jealous of you, Angel, going to your dad’s villa” “But you’re going on a school trip with everyone, Fantasy” (yes, “Angel” and “Fantasy” The names only get worse from here, somehow) They gibber in that overenthusiastic Japanese schoolgirl way about summer, and then, again excitedly (you know what, just assume everything one of the characters does is done excitedly, that way I don’t have to keep typing it. I hate that word anyway) congratulate a teacher, who looks really uncomfortable, about her upcoming marriage, saying they bet she’s “head over heels in love” despite her noting sadly that it’s an arranged marriage, and telling them to get to class so she can sit quietly and ponder her life and how it came to this alone. The girls skip away with creepily large smiles on their faces. Maybe it’s just that it’s a different culture, but to me, that’s like bouncing up to one of my friends and saying with a huge grin, “Hey man, I heard your sister was in a car accident! That’s so neat! Do you think she’ll ever be able to walk again?” Well, anyway, moving on.
Then there’s some kind of forest-fade (leaves grow all over the screen, or…something) to Angel going home and talking to her dad, who scoops up his 17? year old daughter in his arms like a bride and talks to her…again, different culture, I guess. Her dad introduces her to his new fiancé, who comes in the room to violin music and a heavy breeze, whom Angel immediately hates and storms out of the room. She goes to her room and stares wistfully at a picture of her mother. Oddly, I felt comforted by this scene, since a kid hating their parent’s new significant other is something a Westerner can actually relate to. It will be the first and last instance of me feeling this way during the movie. She looks through a collection of old photos of her family while the Hausu theme plays and begins scribbling over her father’s face in them while saying “I hate you now, Daddy” She talks sadly about her mother and missing her while the slow music plays, and suddenly – smash cut to half a dozen Japanese schoolgirls dancing around a fountain while the music changes to what sounds like a rejected Buddy Holly track. Okay, things are about to get cra…Japanese again, aren’t they?
The characters discuss more things we already know, and we’re introduced to “Melody” who plays instruments, “Kung-Fu” who has good reflexes or something, “Prof” the token smart girl with glasses who’s reading a book, “Mac” a “fat” girl who eats a lot (by fat I mean she’s about 120lbs compared to 90-100 for the rest of the girls) and “Sweetie” who is a soulless horror. I’m sorry, I mean Japanese schoolgirl. Okay, so, “Angel” “Fantasy” “Melody” “Kung-Fu” “Prof” “Mac” and “Sweetie” We’re in for a wild ride, folks. I should note that to all appearances, these are their real names, not nicknames – not once in the movie was there any indication any of them had any other names. They’re always referred to that way, whether laughing with friends or when a cartoon abomination of a cat is attempting to murder them all with laughably bad special effects and all dialogue is shrilly screamed. But now I’m getting ahead of myself. Moving on. Angel joins them and bitches about her dad, then a guy who looks like a skeevy 40-year old Japanese bus driver pulls up and talks to them. This must be the Mr. Togo they’re all talking about having the hots for, despite the fact that in America, you could take one look at this guy and just KNOW as soon as all the kids were off the bus, he went around and sniffed all the seats. While they all laugh and talk, (and the 50s era American rock music never lets up during this whole scene) the screen suddenly goes black except for a little circle around Angel looking depressed and pissed. Some directors (not to Michael Bay any names) have only a tenuous grasp on the concept of subtlety, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a movie grab me by the throat and carefully explain a concept to me until I croak out that I get it and please let me go. Once again, I’m going at a glacial pace here, I know, and I feel bad, but, just…folks…this movie. I’m sorry.
Another cut to Angel writing to her aunt asking if she can stay with her, I guess to remember the old times. Around here a fat white cat Angel calls “Snowy” makes an appearance. Remember that, there’s a test later.
Angel’s aunt responds, sure, come and visit. There’s another boring scene between Angel’s dad and his fiancé that has pretty much nothing to do with anything. After that, a rejected Beatles upbeat track plays while Mr. Togo is packing, gets tripped by Snowy, gets his ass stuck in a bucket, and gets hit by a car. He then calls the girls with the bucket still on his ass while a little kid drums on it in a visual that made my blood run cold, and explains he needs to get the injury treated and he can’t come with them right now. Well, who’ll surreptitiously grope us now? All the girls pile on a train. Snowy is on the train, and the movie does another black-screen-with-circle-around-the-cat, since Angel picking the cat up and talking to it wasn’t enough to let us know, yes, the cat is on the train. In Nobuhiko Obayashi’s defense, he is a terrible director. The girls talk about stupid shit on the train, piling around Snowy and talking about the cat as if they’ve never seen a goddamn cat before.
Angel talks about her aunt and the freaking Beatles music finally ends, to be replaced by the Hausu theme. As Angel talks about her mom growing up during WW2, stock footage plays and then an old-timey type movie about her mom and grandparents. Sure, it’s a flashback, whatev-wait, why are the characters commenting on things that are happening in the movie? “That’s my grandma. That’s my mom. Beautiful, isn’t she?” “Wow, you look just like her!” Did Angel pull out a 8mm projector or something to help tell her story? Did she have enough room to set it up on the train? Then the movie starts burning and breaking apart, and they comment on THAT. Then it repairs itself and stock war footage plays. Angel’s mom’s fiancé gets shot down in a fighter plane and looks mildly irritated that he seems to be going down in flames. His expression is the exact same as mine as when someone takes the last cup of coffee. Then very sped-up footage plays of a Japanese wedding, with no groom present, while the Wedding March plays aaaaaand smash cut to the atomic bomb going off on Hiroshima. Yeah, now we’re getting into it, aren’t we, Mr. Obayashi? Stanley Kubrick managed to keep people in the dark about his shadowy Illuminati connections for forty years, and you held out for twenty minutes. Angel says her aunt lives alone in the house now. Then the bus stops in the middle of fucking nowhere and the characters all get out – wait, they’re on a bus now? Yes, I just rewound the movie and they definitely got on a train. I guess they got on a bus sometime during Angel’s story. The characters look cheerily around the vast NOTHINGNESS and one says “Which way?!” “That way!” “Yeah!” HOW ON EARTH DO YOU KNOW THAT? THERE’S NOTHING AROUND FOR MILES. The girls start walking and Japanese text appears on screen, which the subtitles helpfully inform me say “RETURN TO COUNTRYSIDE AND GET MARRIED” Wow. I don’t know if I’m going to make it to the end of this. We’re then treated to picture-in-picture of all the characters’ faces with their names under them, just in case you didn’t know or to refresh you if your brain is already trying to do a complete wipe of anything to do with this movie.
They walk several miles through the forest, if the montage is any indication, while not stopping their laughing like ninnies for one second, then come upon a melon stand run by Japanese Jabba the Hutt, who points out the mansion they’re heading to, and they all skip gaily off while he puts a hat on a melon and laughs maniacally.
At the door they shout various things to try to get it to open; it does on their own and they all finally stop laughing. Snowy runs inside, and as the door opens, we see an elderly lady in a wheelchair, holding Snowy in her lap. Angel greets her aunt, who says “Well, well, seven pretty girls” in a tone that would certainly get her arrested if she was in earshot of any cop in the world. Auntie wastes no time laying a guilt trip on Angel, saying she’s been waiting for a visit for a long time, and consents to having a picture taken. But while Sweetie is trying to take the picture, a bad special effect makes Snowy’s eyes glow green! Surprised by the shittiness of the special effect, Sweetie lets the camera get jerked upward out of her hands by a technician with a piece of string, who then drops it on the ground and breaks it. The awkwardness is smoothed over by Mac, who presents Auntie with a melon the other girls accuse her of stealing from the shop, and say it “looks like her” Wow.
They go into the house and turn on the lights. Another shitty special effect makes the chandelier sparkle, and a ridiculous tune plays while a couple three-inch rhinestones peel off the chandelier and drop to the floor, somehow impaling a lizard. Kung-Fu inexplicably punches one into an old-timey phone while the girls scream. Snowy inspects the dead lizard, then we cut to the characters talking about the grand piano. Melody plays a bit of an upbeat tune while the other characters look around, which stops abruptly when someone pulls back a curtain to reveal…a nine dollar skeleton from Target! Stunned by the sheer cheapness of the producer, Angel screams in outrage, then all the characters inexplicably freeze while Auntie glibly informs them “This room used to be an examining room” and wheels into the room. Auntie says she’s usually very lonely, but now she “has so many lovely youngsters visiting me” while the girls all giggle and coo over her. Oooooooookay. The girls break up to perform various tasks. Kung-Fu kicks a closet door open and some rats fly out and land on the girls’ chests, which I’m assuming has to be a metaphor of some sort. Mac, Angel and Auntie go outside to deposit the watermelon in the well, since the fridge is broken, and Auntie comments “Mac, that’s a funny nickname” Angel explains “she’s always eating, so it’s short for the English word for stomach” That’s ridiculous, but okay, fine, I suppose it’s really no different than Westerners proudly sporting Japanese character tattoos which they think make them look mystical and mysterious which actually say “HALF CHICKEN, 3 DOLLAR, WHOLE CHICKEN, 5 DOLLAR” and far be it from me to engage in cruel mockery of any culture’s terminally mentally ill members. I thought it was short for Big Mac. That would have made more sense. Auntie smiles and says “Plump little Mac, you look good enough to eat” She is then asked “Why do you wear your glasses outdoors?” and responds “I’m frightened of the blinding sunlight” Well, discomfort, sure, but frightened? Of sunlight? Practically everything Auntie has said so far has been wistful or really creepy. Guess which one is going to be fleshed out the more fully as this movie progresses?
After dinner, Mac runs off to retrieve the watermelon while the girls play with Prof’s hair and clean up the dishes. Mac doesn’t return quickly and Fantasy goes to the well to check on her, noting she hasn’t pulled up the watermelon yet. When Fantasy pulls up the watermelon, she sees that it’s a waterlogged, insanely grinning head that I guess looked a little like Mac. It says “Faaaaantaaaaasy” as she screams and falls to her hands and knees. The head flies around in a manner that was frightening and menacing and certainly not a technician bobbing it up and down on a fishing pole. The head then latches itself onto Fantasy’s butt with its teeth and says “That tastes good!” Fantasy shrieks and runs inside as the head vomits blood and falls to the ground.
The girls gather around Fantasy as she repeats about a dozen times “A severed head, a severed head” and tells them it’s in the well. Auntie says she’ll go and see and stands up. One of the girls disinterestedly says “You can stand up?” Auntie casually responds “Having you girls around has given me energy” and all the girls seemingly go Oh! Okay! That’s cool! No big deal that the aunt just fucking stood up out of a fucking wheelchair! Hey, you know, *I* don’t even care, because if *I* was in this movie, I would have checked myself into a Motel 6 right around the time the girls decided it would be a fabulously brilliant idea to wander through the woods looking for a house they didn’t really know where was located. So *I* wouldn’t have even been around for this. None of the girls takes this rather obvious cue to say “Fuck all y’all, I’m outies” and removes themselves from an incredibly fucked up situation unfolding, however, so they frankly deserve whatever’s coming to them. They all go to the well.
From the well, the girls pull up a watermelon, and they eat it. Auntie winks at Fantasy as she eats, and opens her mouth twice to reveal an eyeball in her mouth looking around. Fantasy reacts mildly surprised, but I guess she figures, hey, after a severed head biting her butt and a crippled woman standing up out of a wheelchair, an eyeball peering out of a mouth? Pfft, that’s clown shoes.
The girls clean up again, and a few of the girls get very gently terrorized by some extremely minor disturbances. Kung-Fu is outside chopping wood, and after a moment she looks up and says “The cicadas have gotten so loud” Suddenly, Kung-Fu’s upbeat 80s theme music plays as cut pieces of wood fly into the air, wiggling like severed limbs and launching straight for her. She punches and kicks them all out of the air, then deadpans “How weird. Just my imagination!” Well, I guess keeping a positive attitude about your impending institutionalization is important.
Auntie dances into the kitchen where Fantasy is washing dishes, and glibly informs her she’ll soon see Mac again, then pirouettes inside the fridge. Fantasy drops the dishes in shock and stammers to Prof that Auntie jumped into the fridge, as Auntie sticks her head into the frame in the foreground while the girls argue and smiles at us. I’m not sure how to write about what happens next. There are five second clips strung together of Auntie dancing, dancing with the Target skeleton, eating a rubber gorilla arm, eating goldfish out of a bowl, and Snowy meowing in tune with the nonchalant elevator music that plays throughout this entire scene as he/she teleports on and off the piano stool. I watched that scene five times to write this one paragraph. Brain Cell Squadron Blue 732, you were the greatest heroes of all.
“I’ll drop kick a big ball of crazy right into your face out of nowhere, I don’t even care.”
Some more maudlin bullshit about Angel’s grandparents that as far as I could tell added nothing to the plot, although to be fair, saying that something added nothing to this movie's plot is a little like trying to add salt to the concept of human love. Melody plays the Hausu theme on the piano while, unseen by her, the Target skeleton slowly dances in the back of the room. While the music plays, Angel applies lipstick, and the mirror she’s looking at freezes an image of her smiling, then an image of her with fangs, then thunder sound effects play as the mirror breaks and blood starts to run down the shattered shards of the mirror. We then cut to the real Angel, and pieces of her face break off like glass, revealing a fire underneath, then her whole body and the mirror are like that, just…replaced with fire. She seems completely nonplussed by it. Keep in mind that, like many scenes in this movie that make you check your soda to see if it’s been spiked with LSD, the music is wholly inappropriate. Melody is still playing the slow, relaxing Hausu theme through all of this, and it’s impossible to convey through words how disorienting for the viewer this is.
Cut back to Melody, and the keys start to glow red (a really bad CGI red glow, I should note), and the cat stares at her, its eyes glowing green. Cut to Sweetie looking at a light, and in the background, the music starts to sound shitty. Melody begins hitting the wrong keys, starts screaming, and the girls run in to check on her. While this is happening, Sweetie is totally murdered by futons. Seriously. A bunch of futons and pillows buffer her and goose down flies all around her as she screams while fast paced and “scary” music plays. Fantasy, looking in the window at all this happening, screams in helpless jealousy that Sweetie is getting out of this shitheap and Fantasy didn’t take her chance to opt out of this movie when she could.
Cut back to Kung Fu and Prof talking to Melody, who says she “thought she’d been bitten by the piano” Fantasy bursts in, yelling “Sweetie! The futons….” then breaks down crying. The girls minus Melody run into the room, with feathers still flying everywhere, but they can’t find any trace of Sweetie. Suddenly 70s cop drama music starts playing (that is the only way I can think of to describe it) as Fantasy goes back to check on Melody, finding her in a closet (it was COMPLETELY unlit, tiny, and looks EXACTLY like my hallway closet, do not try to tell me that is a bathroom), who asks Fantasy to pass her some toilet paper, although in her defense, since the girls’ presence has apparently cured Auntie’s paraplegia, I doubt she’d mind them pinching a loaf in the closet too terribly much.
“We got you out of a fucking wheelchair. You shut the fuck up now.”
Kung-Fu and Prof are still sifting through the futons, bitching that Sweetie “didn’t have to vanish” as they find her apron and bra. Yeah, what a bitch. They also find the cat, and Melody announces “I found her panties” and sniffs them. Wait, what? Yes, I definitely saw that. You know, just in case you forgot that we’re definitely still in Japan.
Yes they do, Melody. Yes they do.
Fantasy says “The futons and bedding attacked her as if they were alive” and Prof replies “That doesn’t make sense.” Prof, I appreciate the effort, but I don’t know whether or not you’ve seen the last hour of this movie, because I have, and sense gave us all a three-finger salute and walked off shaking its head and muttering 4 seconds into the opening credits. Fantasy suddenly remembers Mac is still missing, and says they’re all going to disappear. Luckily for her, Prof has the absolutely perfect comfort for Fantasy’s woes – she reminds Fantasy that Mr. Togo will be here soon, and “he’s a man, he can help us. A knight on a white charger coming to save us damsels in distress” Fantasy’s eyes glaze over as heroic trumpet music plays and she imagines Mr. Togo riding up on a horse screaming “OH, PRINCESS FANTASY!” and she runs across a field to him yelling “I LOVE YOU!” and then “THE END” appears on screen. Hey, that was a totally fucked up way to end your movie, but whatever, I’ll take – oh, that was just for the movie in Fantasy’s head. WHY MUST YOU TEASE US, NOBUHIKO OBAYASHI?
The girls suddenly realize Angel is missing, and they go upstairs to find her. They find her wandering aimlessly with a blank expression. They go back downstairs and Kung-Fu chirps gaily about phoning the police station. Gee, you think? Your fat friend’s only been missing for about six-plus hours. Unfortunately for them, only very-distant yelling can be heard through the phone – they can’t make a call. Angel announces she’s going for the police, and leaves the house. Kung-Fu reminds everyone “There’s nothing to be scared of, Auntie’s here!” which is a little like saying “I know we’re trapped here in the mountains, but Alfred Packer is an experienced guide! I’m sure he’ll get us safely out of this!”
Shit then gets real as all the doors and windows in the house shut and lock themselves, with machine-gun sound effects for some reason, as the girls scream trying to get out, but fail.
Cut to Angel wandering in the woods humming a truly inane poem about dancing to the Hausu theme, and juggling balls of blue light, I guess to show the audience that no, Angel has lost it and there isn’t going to be any help coming from that direction. Then we cut to Mr. Togo in a big traffic jam, and despite his adept insulting of the perpetrators of this atrocity (“Bastard in the toy car! Get out of the fucking way!”) he is well and truly stuck. No help – er, I mean white knight on a stupid horse coming for Princess Fantasy – from that direction either.
Kung-Fu’s music plays and she tries to kick some of the wooden planks away from the door, but her music fails her and sputters out as her kicks have no effect. Prof reasons “Auntie lives here by herself, so there must be a way of closing the doors automatically at night” First, no. Second, you guys had to use a fucking outdoor well to keep a watermelon cool, I really think the likelihood of Auntie living in some kind of Silicon Valley superhouse (in 1973!) with sophisticated defense mechanisms is about as likely as this movie sweeping the Oscars. Third, no. Melody provides support for this view: “She said she’d gone to music school in Tokyo, right? So she’s clever” I…just….wh…you’re a fucking maniac, Mr. Pilkington. Prof suddenly unsheathes her supergenius brain and exclaims “That’s it! Let’s just ask her!” and the girls all react as though Prof just laid some kind of quantum theory proving the existence of God on them. Unfortunately, they find a hand in a jar, with Mac’s ribbon on it. Well, that’s unfortunate. Mildly disturbed by the discovery of a fucking pickled hand in a jar (now it’s not just Fantasy flipping balls, they all saw it) they decide Melody should play something for them to calm everyone down.
As Melody plays the Hausu theme, the girls muse over their situation. Soon a voice starts singing along with the music, which the girls say is Angel’s, and they go to look for her as Melody keeps playing. Fantasy, thinking something is wrong, tries to get Melody to stop playing and turn around, but she won’t. Her fingers start to glow with really bad special effects again, and Kung-Fu and Prof find a geisha upstairs. I…don’t know. Back downstairs, light effects that look like animated comic-book explosions play over Melody’s fingers as the sound abruptly changes to sound like someone is hitting all the piano keys at once. Suddenly the music stops and Melody holds up her hands. All of her fingers look partially or completely eaten. Melody’s reaction?
Look at her face. Look at her fucking face.
The piano then actually eats Melody in one of the more gruesome and disturbing yet butt-fuckingly insane death scenes I’ve seen, actually, while Fantasy screams on the floor and does nothing to help her friend, but she does pull a fishbowl over on top of herself, so there’s that. Also toward the end Melody’s detached head floats near her kicking legs sticking out of the piano and says “Oh, how obscene!” I feel as though I’ve been watching this movie all my life.
Upstairs, the Hausu theme is still playing as Prof spouts “It’s unscientific. Irrational. Unnatural. Unreasonable. It’s absurd.” Well….yeah. Kung-Fu sees Sweetie’s image looking at her out of a grandfather clock, and as Sweetie’s stone gaze rests upon the weeping Kung-Fu like a judgement and green slime pours down the clock, Sweetie’s voice chirpily says “You did it, Kung-Fu! Cool!” The slime turns red like thick, goopy blood and the two girls run downstairs to see Fantasy unconscious on the floor with one of Melody’s half-eaten arms next to her. Prof clutches a book, staring at the piano, that has Melody’s severed fingers still playing the Hausu theme on the blood-soaked instrument. I admit, that’s kind of messed up in a good way.
The girls frantically tell Fantasy “You were right all along! This house is haunted!” and make mention that there’s only three of them left since Angel is also “a phantom” and they have to stick together. Fantasy turns her head forlornly to the right and…some red-faced Japanese man shoves a bowl of noodles towards her and he chows down messily as she stares at him. He pulls back and the scene cuts to the guy in some kind of noodle shop with Mr. Togo. A guy in the noodle shop says “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when” to the guy behind the counter as Mr. Togo chows down. Besides that being the lyrics to the song of the Hausu theme, I have no idea what this scene had to do with anything.
Another short sequence plays with a young girl gradually getting older, putting on the geisha costume and turning into Auntie, who smiles creepily at the audience. Cut back to the girls downstairs….
Okay. Fair warning. This movie’s about to take a turn for the crazy. Yes, that’s right, another one.
Prof is reading a diary as the girls huddle under a light, which goes out, and in the darkness they hear Angel calling “Fantasy” Lightning suddenly lights the room back up, and Angel’s giant head thrusts into the screen saying she’s entered her Auntie’s world.
YOU ARE NOT PREPARED.
Random objects start flying slowly around the room as a 6-foot pair of Angel’s lips talk to them telling them her Auntie died years ago and since she didn’t marry, her spirit is still here and she eats any young women of marriageable age who come to her house so she can wear her bridal gown. I’m not even going to note that that doesn’t make any sense, I feel like it’d be trying to stop a hurricane with a teaspoon. Some kind of combination of evil twangly music and Kung-Fu’s music plays throughout this scene. Kung-Fu punches and kicks various objects out of the air as her music plays and she tries to get to the phone, which Angel lied about being broken. A huge picture of an evil looking Snowy grins at them. Kung-Fu gets to the phone and leafs through the phone book as the phone cord winds around her neck, which she completely fails to notice until it starts flipping her around the room. She kicks the phone off the wall, which apparently stops the cord from killing her, and then after bursting through a couple of smoke and fog effects, runs into Angel in a bridal gown-and-hood, who somersaults and flips through a window, then stands there smiling at her. Cut to Mr. Togo with a hillbilly banjo soundtrack for no reason, lost. Cut back to the house with the same music as before. Angel wraps her arms around Kung-Fu and tries to smother her. Kung-Fu escapes and kicks Angel over top of the house, and the movie zooms in about 15 rapid fire times on a ridiculous “menacing” picture of the cat with a pair of fake Frank-n-Furter lips and teeth. Fantasy cries “Kung-Fu, it’s Snowy! You have to kill the cat!” More utter insanity that I can’t transcribe happens, and then the light comes down on Kung-Fu’s head and lifts her off the ground, electrocuting her. The cat’s head superimposes on the screen, then some boy’s head we’ve never seen before floats around confused with a background of a bunch of blue painted people staring at the audience, then a bunch of disembodied limbs float around and….look, folks, you really have to see it. I know you don’t know what’s going on, but I am firm in my belief that no human who has ever lived knows what’s going on in this movie. If schizophrenia could manifest itself physically, the last 15 minutes of this movie would be EXACTLY THAT.
A problem has been detected and Brain has shut down to prevent damage to your psyche.
DO_YOU_BELIEVE_THIS_SHIT_RIGHT_HERE
If this is the first time you’ve seen this error screen, go lie down for an hour. If this screen appears again, take a shot of bourbon and jog around the block. If you’re watching a Japanese horror movie made in the early 70s by a director whose mother never really loved him, restart brain in safe mode to reenter second grade.
Kung-Fu’s music plays as her legs grow out of the light that….ate her, I guess, and delivers a flying kick to the picture of the cat. The picture falls off the wall, along with everything else, but the cat remains on the wall and starts spewing blood. Angel is there, too, also bleeding like a stuck pig and looking extremely sad, while Kung-Fu’s leg bounces up and down and then gets eaten by a chest of drawers which ALSO start spewing blood. The girls grab the diary and keep reading from it as they float on a river of blood, which they say is “the cat’s blood” Fine, I’ll believe anything at this point. My hopes of a normal life are shot forever, I’ve got nothing to lose. Sure, it’s the cat’s blood.
Cut back to Mr. Togo, looking like one suave motherfucker as saxophone music plays. He drives up to watermelon-selling Jabba the Hutt and asks for directions. Jabba jumps to his feet and says “The girls…have been eaten. Eaten!” That’s not even close to what Mr. Togo asked, but Jabba then says, excited and dancing like an excited kid, “How do you like watermelons?!” Mr. Togo, excitedly dancing back, says “I hate them!” “What do you like?” “Bananas!” Jabba turns into a skeleton and his skull floats around. Mr. Togo gibbers “Bananas, bananas!” and goes back to his car and slumps down in the seat and twitches there. I feel I have to stop again to remind the audience who hasn’t shot themselves yet that I am not making any of this up and I am not engaging in any kind of comedic style hyperbole. This is exactly what happens. All of it.
The girls keep reading the diary about how Auntie sent Snowy to meet Angel, then Prof loses her glasses in the lake of blood. Prof thrusts her hand in the blood to search for them, and what looks like an oxygen tank with teeth grabs her and pulls her under. It then surfaces wearing her glasses, wiggles at Fantasy, who screams, and goes back under. Then a naked girl, I think Angel, surfaces, then goes back under and eventually disintegrates in the blood. Fantasy is washed into another room, and as she’s crying and screaming, the theme music begins to play again and Angel-in-geisha-costume comes down the stairs. Fantasy begs for help, saying “I knew you weren’t a phantom!” and rips off her bodice, then sees that it’s Auntie. Then it changes back into Angel. Then we get a tit shot as Angel rubs Fantasy’s head and her eyes glow green at the audience.
There’s a long black screen, then Angel’s dad’s fiancé (remember her? No, you fucking don’t, don’t lie to me) is in a car driving. She stops at Jabba’s place and we see several cut-together scenes of her driving and occasionally getting out of the car to dreamily dance around while another stupid maudlin song plays. Eventually she reaches Auntie’s house. Angel meets her there and they look lovingly at each other while Angel slowly slides back the wooden walls that were barricading the house. Angel invites her in, and they sit cross-legged staring at each other. The fiancé asks where everyone is. Angel says “they’ll be getting up shortly. They’ll all be very hungry. They’ll wake up when they feel hungry,” while eye-fucking the shit out of the fiancé, who notices absolutely nothing wrong. WE GET IT. SHE’S GOING TO GET EATEN.
Then Snowy walks by, Angel’s eyes glow green, and some CGI fire appears over the fiance’s face. Zoom in on Angel’s face, who slow-motion swishes her hair very slowly and carefully, never taking her eyes off the audience, while the aunt says some stupid bullshit about love or something.
Then a race of hyper-advanced scorpion people claw their way out of the ground and murder everyone involved in the making of this movie. Okay, to my eternal regret, I made that last part up.
There’s really nothing else I can say about this movie. . This movie should make it very clear prior to watching it that afterwards, you’re going to have to go through a rehabilitation session of several weeks similar to that gone through by people who have temporarily lost the use of their limbs. After watching it twice (and some particularly delectably mindfuck scenes four or five times so I could write about it accurately, FOR YOU) I feel like I need to spend a week rereading old elementary school books to start the long, painful process toward learning how to reason again. I can only make educated guesses from a brain that looks like a dystopian wasteland about what on Earth I just saw. Nothing I can say is going to convince you of the sheer insanity of Hausu. This is an experience everyone should probably have at least once, but don’t go into it naked like I did. Have a team of trained professionals ready to administer powerful drugs at key points unless you want to see that picture of Angel in the mirror and immediately forget how to do multiplication.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to find a movie with Sorority or Vampire or Cheerleader in the title to review for my next project.
