Bittersweet Infamy - #83 - A House That Eats Girls

Episode Date: October 22, 2023

Halloween special + season finale! Taylor tells Josie and guest host Mitchell Collins about the scary movie co-written by a child: Nobuhiko Obayashi's infamously eccentric experimental horror comedy,��House (1977). Plus: Josie and Mitchell trap Taylor in a fiendish and frightening choose-your-own-adventure story!

Trick-a-Tree! It's Taylor from The Podcast, you're just about to listen to. Today's season finale, can you believe it, is all about Nobuhiko Obyashi's 1977 cult classic film house. This episode will contain lots of spoilers, including a full recap, but house is the type of movie that you might just want to watch for yourself. It's really, really bizarre, really interesting, and so much fun. If you want to watch it, you can access it on the Criterion channel, Criterionchannel.com. You can also find a trailer on the Criterion

channel's YouTube account. But if you don't feel like stopping the episode in its tracks, you're ready for this finale then settle in for a spooky story and join us for episode number 83, a house that eats girls. Honored listeners, you are gorgely invited to the weeding of the century. It is the corpse bride, Josie Mitchell. And some dead guy, Mitchell Collins, you're invited to the podcast equivalent of Josie and Mitchell's haunted wedding. By the time this episode drops, at midnight on October 22nd, Josie and Mitchell

will have just gotten married, IRL, and we are all gonna be doing the thriller dance of the Monster Mash. What other spooky songs do you all gonna be playing at your haunted wedding? I was gonna say thriller, but we can play it a few times. You know what? You can do with somebody's watching me. That's a great one. Yeah, yeah, you can do that. What's the Halloween song? Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh- Gaaaah. Gaaaah. You know, I don't consider that Halloween. That's not Halloween adjacent. Like we can't just throw these scary. It's just a summer movie that's scary. It's just New Jersey.

Like, is Lake Placid gonna be in it too? Like. You know what? I'm not an orthodox purist when it comes to spooky season. I like that. I'm pretty open-minded, so I would say that yeah, Lake Placid could be in the conversation if you wanted to be. I mean, yeah.

Sure. I think for me though, it's not that I'm a purist. It's just that there's that spooky scratchy itch. Just scratch that spooky spot. And you need to have like, You might want to get that checked out. It's here for the honeymoon. Yeah. You guys don't have to ask that.

I should see a doctor about that. Are you talking about your prostate? Or I might be. Yeah. I'm pretty open-minded when it comes to scary spooks of all varieties. Josie, what's... I don't think of you as much of a scary movie person. Although I've seen scary movies with you.

Yeah, remember when we saw Mama and theaters? I liked Mama, Mama's... I don't want to give it away, but I thought Mama had a very pretty ending catastrophe scene. I liked it quite a bit. Is that the one with Octavia Spencer? No, that's Ma which I also really like Okay, first of all Ma is the shit She just wants some teenagers to hang around and drink Malibu in her fucking basement Just go hang out with Ma and do what she says and there won't be any issues

She's misunderstood. Second of all, Mama also misunderstood Yeah, is it a Spanish movie? I think it was made from a Spanish movie. It was adopted She's misunderstood. Second of all, Mama also misunderstood. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Is it a Spanish movie? I think it was made from a Spanish movie. It was adopted. That's right. OK, OK. This Spanish version is called Ithumama tambien.

I don't know. I shouldn't have one. It's funny that the original has the longer term. They took a lot of liberties. Yeah. They took a lot of liberties with the translation. Josie, what's your background in horror movies here? I don't do super well with them,

especially body horror ones that are like the saw or human centipede stuff where it's just like gratuitous, I can't. Wouldn't it be funny, Josie? Wouldn't it be funny if I did human centipede today? There's something to think about as we go on in the episode. Just a nice little dagger to linger over your head. Wouldn't it be funny if I came human centipede today? There's something to think about as we go on in the episode. Just something, just a nice little dagger to linger over your head.

Wouldn't it be funny if I came in and did human centipede? Oh! I might be saying that I did. Who knows? Anyway, Josie, you go ahead. Fuck you. Ask your mouth. Oh, come on.

It would be funny. It would slash will be funny. Anyway, it's good. It would. Yeah, I don't like hereditary. I'm just not gonna see it. It's not gonna happen. Hereditary is good, though.

Hereditary actually is a real good. And I love Tony Collette. We just re-roached Muriel's wedding. So good, but not gonna do it. Fair enough, fair enough. How about you, Mitchell? Where are you on the horror movie spectrum as it is? Where do you land?

Dude, I'm all over the place. Yeah, I go through different phases. That's the truth. I'm in the mood for different things at different times, but I like to like one car wire cover all the bases. Yeah, exactly that. Another famous horror filmmaker. Yeah. In his famous movie in the mood for different things at different times. Horror movies that I really like lately. This is like an old person thing to say, but I really love the Valutanship from the 40s. Like Cat People and I walked with a zombie and the leopard man and my favorite, like one of my favorite movies, which I don't even know if you'd call it a horror movie, but it's called Night of the Demon

and it's an adaptation of an... Never heard of it. Yeah, it's MR James story. It has Dana and... It's actually, it's actually M. Knight Shyamalan. Yeah, it's an adaptation of an M. Yeah, it's MR James story. It has Dana and- It's actually, it's actually M Night Shyamalan. Yeah, it's an adaptation of an M Night Shyamalan story. Wait before he was born, which is the twist. Like, the ultimate M Night Shyamalan twist. The chair was never pushed in.

Think about it. I know the name Val Luton only because it was director's movie director's in general and script writers in general can be a bit wanky with their film knowledge and horror movie directors and writers to the end. And I know the name Val Luton because it was the name of one of the characters in the original final destination. It was. I just watched Final Destination 2 the other day and they were talking about like... It's the teacher. Yeah. They were like, oh, and then Val Lutin, and I'm like, what the fuck? By the way, Final Destination 2 kicks ass. That's a great one.

Final Destination 2 fucked an entire generation for log carrying trucks. Oh my gosh. I still, if I'm behind a log truck, no, and rightly so, peel into that, peel into the shoulder, take that carpool lane. If they pull you over, they pull you over. Make sure you're not in the line any bounce.

You're just, you're not gonna find me behind the logs. Today Taylor, we have a little horror story for you. I'm scared. It takes place in Vancouver and it stars yours truly. I'm not yours truly, but you. Yours too. What did I do? You are the main character.

I'm a main character. You are the main character of this work. This is that scene, you did this last Halloween. No, no, no, no. This is another tassity, another Taylor vassus. This time, it's a fucking shit in the middle of the road. This time, it's the last time. This time, it's different. This time, it's a choose your own adventure story.

Yes. I can live with that. As a season finale and as a celebration of spooky season, we are breaking form out a little bit. There are no sources for this. We are using our brains, and mainly it's Mitchell's brain that is behind this. Let's be honest. Okay. Put in a lot of the we're talking about. A lot of the legwork here. We're taking you to the world of imagination. Yeah, baby. Well, the world of imagination is the only world I can stand these days.

At least let's go. That's what we were thinking. Beauty. Do you want to get a started, Josie? I do. Are you ready, Taylor? I'm ready. Okay, good.

It's dark night in Vancouver, Taylor. It is. You're not wrong. Halloween is almost here. Again, I're not wrong. Halloween is almost here. Again, I'm not wrong. But tonight is a little different, Taylor. Tonight you find yourself on the 99 B line. Oh, God. Yeah.

This is it again, okay. End of scary story. And you're going to go meet some friends for karaoke. That's why you're on the bus. Sure, okay. And you have found a nice little seat by the window. And you're deciding if you're gonna break out a spooky tune, some thriller, some somebody's watching you,

or you're gonna go for an old reliable, you know. Yeah, torn. Yeah, you're still undecided. It's true No shut up. Oh shut fuck you. Oh, you're doing Natalie and Brugula's torn. Brugula is torn. We've talked After he sings that he's gonna tell everybody did you know it's a cover? It is no, I what dude. It's a it's a heartbreaker. It's a heartbreaker. That's the scariest thing I can think of. It's rough. As the bus moves over these streets, the traffic lights and shock windows are washed out by a thickening fog that is filling the air. It is chilly. Shit is damp. No. And you think to yourself this is my favorite time of year. No, but I guess maybe in this fictional version? Yes

Just then you remember that you need to text your buds to let them know that you're on your way You said that you would give them a shot when you're on the bus. Dear Jerome Please forgive my lateness on account of fog. I'm very excited for musical madness. Yours, Travis. And as you put your phone down in your lap, you look out the window and you almost do a double take. No way. You could have sworn that your bus just drove by a functioning blockbuster

video store with all the lights on. It's not abandoned. It is a functioning. Yes. Time is so this so we may be looking at a time bus or a ghost store. There's a couple of options here. Okay. Right. And you think, oh my god, could this be real? Maybe it's one of those pop-ups. You've, you know, you've heard that they're... Yeah, Kylie Jenner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, Kylie, Kylie, Kylie saw a path to riches here. No, I got it. And you know that there's like one still functioning, but somewhere in the States, it's not here, and it's certainly not on the 99 bus route. Is it in Bend, Oregon? I think it is actually. I think the functioning one is. And now the curiosity is just overwhelming you. Look over your shoulder. You're like,

what? So Taylor, you have a choice. What do you do? Do you stay on the bus and you just decide you're going to tell your friends about it when you get to karaoke? Or do you get off the bus? Great best of the narrative. At the next stop and do you check it out? Just a little hold on real quick. I just want to say, we tried to make this a good, this is not a bullshit to your own adventure. No, no, you've got branching paths.

I trust you. Yeah, this is a garden of Forking Paths, Taylor. Ooh. What I would actually do in real life is I wouldn't get off the bus. Yeah. I would just go to karaoke, however. What would Travis do?

Travis would get off the bus. Travis would for sure get, Travis wants to know what's on the shelf? Is it dangerous minds? Is it dangerous liaisons? What dangerous movies on these shelves? Sure. Okay. Okay. So we're off the bus. We're off the bus.

Okay. You get off the bus at the next stop. You walk a few blocks down to where you think you saw the blockbuster. You keep walking a while, but then you begin to doubt yourself. Was it back there? Did you even see that? But then all of a sudden, there it is, right in front of you. Strangely. I should trust myself more. Nobody else seems to be paying at any special notice.

There are plenty of people in the sidewalk, but they're all just minding their business. They're walking by. It's nothing. But from what you can see through the fogged up windows, it looks like it's empty inside. But when you push the door, it opens. You experience an eerie rush of nostalgia immediately upon entering the space. The popcorn machine, the candy, plastic blue tapes fill the room, all brightly lit with fluorescent lights.

It looks like every blockbuster you ever went to. You seem to be the only person here. There isn't even anybody working the till. But there is a fluffy gray cat sitting on top of the counter. Its big yellow eyes are taking you in. The song Follow Me by Uncle Cracker is playing. I love Uncle Cracker. Shock, shock, no one. I love Uncle Cracker. The TVs and the upper corners of the room are playing the movie Halloween H2O with the sound off. It feels like you've gone back in time. You look around and take it all in as the uncle cracker song washes over you. Follow me everything is alright. I'm the one that took you in at night.

Somehow you know all the words, but you can't remember how, or why. Somehow. Somehow. Now, Taylor, do you explore some DVDs, or do you explore some video games? Fuuuuck. Video games. Oh, Taylor and Travis both video games. Okay, okay. I love that both of you all agree on that. That's nice.

You walk over there. Some video games that you see on the shelf. Silent Hill 2. Perfect dark. Okay, you walk over there, some video games that you see on the shelf. Silent Hill 2. Perfect dark. Okay. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3. Pickman.

It's 2002. And WWF Smackdown. Just bring it. As opposed to here comes the pain, yes. Exactly. You take a closer look at the box for the WWF Smackdown game, which features a very young Dwayne the Rock Johnson, wearing sunglasses and a silver bracelet. The Scorpion King.

Yeah. It's not all he's wearing. Senglasses and a silver bracelet. Yeah, he's naked otherwise. No, it's just like... Listen, the thing about wrestlers is that all wrestlers look naked if you edit out the part with their little ball and chan, they all look pretty naked. Maybe some elbow pads if you're lucky.

Suddenly on the box, his eyes, they begin to glow red behind the glasses. You drop the empty box. Just now you realize that that same Uncle Krakrason, it's been playing the whole time. Only now. It's looping. Follow me. Follow me. Follow me.

Follow me. Uh uh uh. That's a bad name. Follow me follow me follow me follow me You're a bit you're a bit spooked now obviously you and Travis Yeah, this is fucking weird and you decide It's your condition. I should stay on the bus And need for comfort you look for the great cat you walk over to the cashier's desk, but the cat isn't there But in the corner of the blockbuster, there's a door, a jar. The cat must have gone in there. You go to open it, and what you see is a long old staircase

leading down, down, down, into the darkness. Taylor, do you get the hell out of there? Or do you go down the dark creepy staircase? Okay, so he, okay. You keep presenting me these tantalizing options to explore, even as I understand implicitly that it's not my best interest to explore them. What would Travis do?

Travis would go down the stairs. Go down the stairs. Sure. All right, down the stairs you go. Okay. You start walking down the stairs, and each step creaks and creaks and creaks. Bices got out of here. A pool of darkness reveals itself.

Your eyes start to adjust to the dim, dim light because upstairs is so bright and fluorescent. Blockbuster, yeah. The door has closed behind you, so now your eyes have a chance to really get focused. Bile eight and shit yeah. You're walking down and down and down and as you go you start to hear the sound of almost like springs are going back and forth like We're going back and forth like Okay and As you go further down you start to see that there's a very dim dim light down there and you round

the post that marks the last step and You can see kind of far farther than the footprint of the store above you. So it's quite down there. You walk towards it, you see that the sound that is the sound of somebody jumping on a trampoline. Beside a bare bulb light. Yeah, okay. Intrigued and freaked out, but it's tripling. It's a good time.

Maybe, maybe, you know, they can give you some insights to what's happening. Why is there a blockbuster? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't wait for this person's insight If it's even a person It is a person Okay, and you can tell that it's a young woman and her back is to you as she's jumping methodically almost like a metronome like up okay up and down She gets her weirdos, okay.

And you say, excuse me? Hello? Hello? Excuse me, now. Excuse me. Oh, excuse me. Excuse me. Keiko, you're pasaki.

No response, no break in rhythm, no break in stride. She keeps jumping up and down her hair, flopping behind her, her long, long blonde hair. And you circle this trampoline. That's probably like a eight foot diameter. It's one of those big like playground ones. And you're a little concerned because as she jumps her head is very close to a rafter.

And you're like, she's going to... Yeah, that would be worried. Yeah, yeah. And you express it. Say, are you okay? You're skimming. Yeah, yeah. And you express it. Say, are you okay? You're skimming the bulbs. Yeah, yeah, you're going a little close there. And as you walk around the trampoline, you finally get to see her face.

And it's undeniably Carly Rae Jepsen bouncing on the trampoline. Wait, wait, it's objection. I have mild face blindness and I could easily deny that anybody was Carly Rae Jefferson specifically. Travis. Travis doesn't. Travis doesn't. You're right, you're right. Travis would no Carly Rae. Travis was like, Holy

shit. Travis is being taken to the feeling. I got it. Yeah, but Travis is also delighted to see that it is Carly Red Jepsen, but something's not quite right. The trampoline. The trampoline? Her inability to hear anything that you're saying. But thirdly, her eyes are completely white. And it's she's staring off

pupil like Annie into the middle distance. Like Annie? Well, Kari never seen the Annie comic bill or if an anti-fabric cut of people. Oh yeah, the old school one. Just like that. Yes, I may have mentioned this before, but one of my like fucked up troll dreams is I wanna do

a production of Annie where I make the actors wear those contacts. So, I think you have no people. I want to do a production of Annie where I make the actors wear those contacts. I feel like we did this story right then. It was like right to your deepest, deepest aid. A pen tick. To the, my- To Travis. There's a lot of ways into my aid.

Yeah. We have a lot of doors. A lot of neon signs. Yeah. A lot of neon signs. Poin greater than the aid. Yeah. This way, pupil-assize middle distance, and you're like, okay, this is weird.

Obviously, it was weird to begin with, and now it's even weirder. She's absolutely not responding to you. You are there, you are visible, and she is just staring right over your head and jumping up and down. I can't wait to see what the endgame of this is. Me too. Taylor and Travis decide, you know what? I think I'm gonna go back upstairs. I think this is it. So you circle back around, you get a little

a little swiftness in your in your step because it's a little a little freaky, just a little freaky. And now she's at your back. Yeah, my friends are waiting for me. Oh, she's at my back. Well, she's like, you know, you are facing away from her. So she's not, you're not looking at her. It's what I need to say. Okay. I see I see you see you climb up the stairs As fast as you can and it's so dark up there you're away from the the lights were us down in the basement that You almost hit the door So black and you go to get the handle and it's locked it is firmly locked. It's not like it's like

Twisting in there. There's no jiggle. It's just I get it's not a little locked. It's not like it's like twisting in there. There's no jiggle. It's just like, I get it's not a little locked. It's quite locked. I got it. Quite locked. Quite, quite locked. Got it. And you turn back around and you look down the stairs and you hear, you hear the tch tch tch tch tch of the trampoline. But then you start to hear Carly Rae Jeppeson's zombie sing. Follow me tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch Follow me. No, I got that. Yeah, okay. I wasn't sure Travis got it. I just wanted to make sure I got it all the way. Follow, follow, follow you, follow you. I got it. Yeah.

Now, you have two choices, Taylor Travis. Do you pink yourself and try and wake up from this horrible nightmare? What was that? Who was that? I'm okay. I was. Scary. What was that? Are you okay? I'm scared. It seems very... No, it's very inadequate.

It seems very inadequate. But let me get a towel. I'm sorry, that really caught me by surprise. I was... Drinking a bottle of water. I love that we got you in a spit-take That's great You know that was not attractive spit-take that went into a long young form so sorry. Let's take a beat

We'll be right back I'm having a hard time seeing how I'm not gonna end up pinching myself, but go ahead, pitch me, don't turn them. You go back down the stairs and you face Carly Ray. Oh, I like to stand up to my problems, I do. Just for the meme now, I've got to pinch myself, I'm afraid. Pit, let me pinch myself. Okay, okay, okay. Oh, is it me? Oh, is it back to me?

I can do it. You do. This is so interesting. How much leg work is in this It's a you know, it's like a long leg. It's a garden of working path So you pinch yourself you give yourself in fact the hardest pinch you can Shouting wake up wake up wake up and then just like that you're at home in your bed safe. Everything's fine Sweet it was all a bad dream. Yeah.

Thank God. Slowly, you scooch out of bed, and your foot touches something on the floor. Oh my God, it's Carly Rae Jepsen. No, it's a blackbuster rental for WWF Smackdown. Just bring it. Ah! Just then, you hear a knock at your door.

It's your landlord, and he's holding that same gray cat with yellow eyes that you saw on your dream. He says that he found it out back and he wants to know if you'd like to take care of it. And so now Taylor you have one final choice. Do you keep the cute nightmare cat or do you say no thanks? And your landlord gave it to you so he's like it's okay we'll we'll rig up a new lease. You're allowed to have a pet. That's a sweet sweet. That's good plot hole spotting, by the way. I wouldn't have noticed, but good job. I'm gonna take the nightmare cat. I think largely because I'm quite afraid of rejecting the nightmare cat. I want to get on the nightmare cat spot outside.

That's great. Well, you and the cat live have you ever after and the end. That's the end of our story. Do you know the name of the cat though? What's the name of the cat? Maybe. Call me. Maybe. That's a good shit. That's fun. That's fun. Yeah very good. Very good. Very highly enjoyable stuff. What generated that instinct? I don't know. To do a choose your own adventure? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. You just said it.

You were just like, let's do that. Yeah, I think it was, uh... Okay, I mean, sometimes the simplest back stories are the best. Yeah, different storytelling. You know, we didn't have any like specific spooky thing in mind, and it was like, what could be best something different, and that was the solution. Yeah. What does that do?

Are you interested in hearing what other outcomes would have await you? Yeah, yeah, I would I would love to I would love to hear where the paths branched. The most interesting other one that could have happened is if you had not gone down the spooky stairs and if you've been like, you know what? Screw it. I'm not going to play a y'all's game. If Taylor had listened and not tried. Yeah, if you had like called our bluff and been like, well, let's see if you have something interesting that's outside of this blockbuster. Then what would have happened is this, as fast as you can, you get the fuck out of this cursed video store and you catch the next bus you see going your way. For a second, you think about going back home, but something about that sounds even scarier.

You need to be with your friends right now. Finally, you get to the karaoke bar. When you walk in, everything looks normal. A bunch of your friends and some folks you haven't met are all sitting around a big table with pictures of beer. You give everybody hugs and they encourage you to put your name on the list for a song. As you go to order a drink, you see your buddy Jonathan up there going up to sing a song. Jonathan Mountain, our monthly subscriber. Thanks Jonathan.

Oh and you think to yourself, ooh, ooh, back to reality. Thank God. What the fuck was that back there? You paid the bartender, take a sip of your drink, and take a big breath of relief. Did you imagine that whole thing? Then Jonathan starts singing. You don't know how you met me, you don't know why you can't turn around and say goodbye. Oh my God. something is terribly wrong.

The verses are not as memorable, but by now you can definitely recognize the song, a song Jonathan would never willingly choose to sing. It's followed by Uncle Cracker. That's hilarious. Be wilder, you rush over to the table where your friends are all sitting, and they all look at you in perfect unison. The pupils and irises of their eyes have disappeared. The empty white orbs of their eyes

stare blankly into your soul. Now, now their eyes begin glowing red and you back away. You look back at Jonathan still singing. His eyes are glowing red too, as are everybody else's in the bar. Taylor, at this moment, do you paint yourself and try to wake up from this horrible nightmare? In this case, if you did that, the same thing will happen. You get the same outcome that happened.

But does the cat appear in the karaoke one? So if you paint yourself it does, but not if you say to leave. If you decide to leave the karaoke bar, that's not what happens. No cat. Oh Jesus, you really went into it, okay. This is what happens. You run to leave where you came in, but the bouncer blocks your door. His towering frame and glowing red eyes send a clear message, dude, you're fucked. A stranger jumps out from the bathroom line,

grabbing your legs, knocking to the floor. You kick and struggle as hard as you can, but the growing crowd. The cracker? The growing crowd, they hold you down against the floor Jesus your friends get up from their table and join them descending over you as the entire karaoke bar begins to Eat you alive tearing you limb from limb as everything as everything goes dark you can still hear Jonathan singing Follow me everything is all so okay wait so all considered, I got out of this man.

You did well. You got a cool cat. You really made a go on a good decision. You got maybe. I just made a friend. Yeah. Yeah, you get the cat. And got a copy of a Smackdown.

It wasn't here comes the pain, what was it? Just bring it. Just bring it. Smackdown, just bring it. Yeah. That's not bad. You know, I'm not a play-spider. I'm just bringing it as a matter of fact.

So, it's like a new theme to me. All you guys do is like, get yourself like a play-session-2 emulator or whatever and you're good to go. I've got a PS2, I've got a PS2, I'm grand. You're grand. Oh my god. You guys are playing right away. I thought you should know how it could have gone, because you really did, you did make good decisions. You and Travis. Yeah, what a team. When I'm with you, I make you free and swim through your veins like a fish in the sea. I'm singing I don't did you put out your candle as your candle out candles out be man's on the bed all right all right everybody's gathered around the lack of hearth I'm ready to settle in I don't know if you remember this this conversation that we had during our trip to

Jordan River recently but when we were out walking around on the beach I said something to you to the effect of you know I've had the same thing ever since the very first we time we did Halloween stuff I've had the same story that I've wanted to do for years and years and years and every year I end up pushing it to the side and doing some things. Yeah, I do remember that. I've done it again. I've done it again. So I pushed that whatever that is we'll have to wait for a minute. Oh my god, you tease! What a tease! I've done something else yet again. Instead of doing the same thing that I've been putting on forever Never I wanted to reflect our new hobby of amateur film analysis for those who don't know you can go over to our coffee account

K.O. Hi if in FI dot com slash better suite in for me And you started doing a monthly film club for our monthly subscribers in the name of cross promotion cross Contamination if you like cross pollination today. We're gonna be Discussing a horror. Is this dagger gonna fall on my head? It's been hanging here this whole time. This is a story about people's lips getting stitched to each other's ass. No, we're not gonna use either of them.

I'm sorry. It was joke. It was, it was break. Yeah, I'm sorry, it was break. Sorry, it is fun. We will be discussing a very infamous horror movie, but not just any horror movie. This is possibly the crown jewel in my favorite genre of art, which is Josie Weirdard. This is a very beloved piece of Weirdard, a very critically well received piece of weird art. Mmmmm.

And I would go as far as to say it's one of the best movies I've ever seen. Okay, oh wow! You the listener may not enjoy it, I would imagine this is a polarizing piece of film. Okay. But I love it, I know Mitchell loves it, and I wonder if Josie does too, because I know she's seen it. Yeah. Oh that's right, because you know this. I know it. Yeah, we talked about it.

Mitchell and I have been compared to this, but I'm going to tell you this one. Okay. Is this the Spirula? No. Okay. But good gas. Very good gas, actually. Very good gas. Thank you. On the one hand, it is a well-loved and enduring piece of arthouse cinema in the Japanese mid-century anti-nuclear war tradition of Goggiara,

which we covered on the show back in episode 61. On the other, it gains its infamy from being one of the most singularly indescribable, chaotic, colorful, completely insane horror movies. In the entire Ken Ruralse Jozy's rocking back and forth, she's figured it out. Described by its Wikipedia page as an experimental horror comedy film, its DVD packaging as a roller coaster ride without breaks, its Criterionage as an experimental horror comedy film, its DVD packaging as a roller coaster ride without breaks, its Criterion summary as an episode of Scooby Doo directed by Mario Bava, and by filmmaker Ty West as bizarre manic, complete anarchy, and quote, the weirdest movie I've ever seen.

On the one hand, it has a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has been preserved in the Criterion collection. Yeah, baby. On the other, it was largely ignored or panned by contemporary critics with one going so far as to say, this is not a film. Oh, oh, what? What's the feels unfair? Yeah. On the one hand, its visual effects are deliberately unconvincing in cartoonish. On the other, the film is a technical marvel of zooms collages matte painting film editing absolutely every conceivable Visual technique you can imagine a film is here in abundance tackle with competence in gusto Ultimately when you boil it down. This is a classic tale of seven girls versus one house or should I say

Oh Don't yes good. I've no vehicle obiachi's beloved bat shit 1977 horror movie house So I know you both see that Jersey Start us off. Where do you come to this movie from I've worked with mixture? We worked it together. Yeah, that's the first time I saw it. But you'd seen it before yeah I've seen it lots of time. You've seen it lots of time. I haven't seen it since then. That's the last time I saw it But we saw it. But we saw it because Marion said that he really loved it and liked it.

Yeah, just watched it for the first time. He just watched it for the first time. And so then it was like, oh, it came back on our radar. Because I recommend it. It was cocktail party conversation. Yeah, I recommended it to Marion. And Marion didn't get around to watching it, but then finally did. I think it was Halloween Halloween a couple years ago.

Yeah. And then Mary was like, this is the best movie I've ever seen. So I was like, you know what? We should watch it. Yeah. Yeah. And Criterion Collection, all like cool stuff. Yeah. What's the Criterion Collection bunches for it? You know that it's at least sick, like even if you're not going to specifically love it,

you know that like, we're cultivating an experience. There's something here. Yeah. Yeah. You have a time. Will it be good? You'll have a time. You'll have a time. Yes. It may be good and maybe bad and maybe boring. It may be long and maybe in black and white, but you will have a time. But this is not. This is very colorful as you make sure.

Oh, this is the opposite of boring and black and white. New shit is being hurled at you every second in this movie. I encourage absolutely anybody to pause this podcast and go watch this movie so you're not. Literally, there's nothing I can say to you. It won't do it justice. It won't do it justice. Exactly. Even as I go through, I'm gonna give you a recap of this movie. I'm gonna take you all through the movie. So for those of you who don't end up wanting to watch the movie I can just guide you on through it, but it's so much fun. I can again I'm not guaranteeing that you'll love it, but okay, let me tell you the truth here

I got a brain thing in a heart thing here my brain says that all pieces of art are subjective There are moments of say repetitive loud chaotic sound design that I can imagine not being for everyone sincerely, everybody has different tastes, if you're the type of person who likes like a very serious, realistic courtroom drama, this may be a little too out there for you. That's what my brain says. My heart says that people who don't like this movie are bad people of dead and your children. Okay, yes, okay. If there's nothing in there that can at least spark wonder in you, if not joy then at least wonder because it's a very singular piece of film and to push it over to my boy Mitchell Collins, you say you've watched this many a time, yes?

Oh, many a time. And just recently in the past year, so I've been catching up to a lot of his other movies. Right. For a long time ago, I'd watched his early, early short films. Somebody I know on the internet shared a pirated link of all of his movies. I know, but Yashi Trove. Yeah, so I got the trove of Obiyashi and I've been making my way through. He has a couple other good spooky ones but nothing that's quite as crazy as House.

House is a very specific thing, I feel like. And like I didn't dive much deeper into Obeyashi's uver. Uver, as we say in Vancouver. Uber. Uber. Short Vancouver. I didn't dive much deeper in there than I watched House and I watched a motion for this. And I read kind of some synopsis of his later works, but House is I gathered certainly in terms of infamy, in terms of like the qualifying thing for this podcast, it's his most infamous film, but I think it's also his like in the way that other than Twin Peaks Lynch's big thing is still

blue velvet, it's sort of his blue velvet is blue velvet you know kind of comes near the beginning of his career and his sort of I don't know I really like I really anyway quite being I really like it Mitchell clearly really likes it yeah Josie seems to like it so you like it yeah there we go so let me just dive into into how it's made let's go let's go make tuxbury let's open the front door of this haunted house I seem to remember it's made. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. that happened in 1945 in Hiroshima, Japan. The United States dropped an atomic bomb to end World War II. Yep, that is obviously very traumatizing for Obyashi and very influential for the generation of people broadly that survived that experience, but also the generation of artists. Totally.

Well, as we discussed back in our good year at number 61, Lost in Translation, you can see it all over the Japanese film of this era and like the subsequent two, three, four decades, right? Yeah. The bombing of Hiroshima, as you might imagine, very traumatizing for Obayashi with many of his childhood friends dying due to the bomb.

This theme is understandably reflected in house. Not that you might, there's so much going on in this video wouldn't necessarily peg it right away. Yeah, when I watched it, that wasn't front of mind for me. No, well I was just thinking about like how Dope it is that the grandmother or the aunt character, she's like waiting for her husband to come back from the war. That's sort of, and it's like it's not really a somber anti-war film in the classic tradition, but that's sort of like what's fueling the haunting. The war is what's causing everything.

The bitterness created by lives that were diverted by the war or ended by the war. Exactly. The fact that people aren't able to live to their maximum destiny and the maximum love that they are able to acquire because the war has killed so many people and ruined others.

It's really in there, but it's because it's such a chaotic film, even as it includes like footage of the atomic bomb. It's an exploit second and it might take like two or three watches and a film companion to take it out. And I love that about his films because it's all over all of his films. And and only in a couple of the ones I've seen is it really any kind of overt message.

He's always making it just obliquely about it. He made his very first movie when he was eight years old. It was a super-rate movie and it was called Popeye's adventure. It was a piece of IP that he made as a child like Yeah, it was fan art about Popeye very punk rock Yeah, but it's like he he talked about how like then after that Hiroshima happened the bombing But then he like continued to make this like pop art for the rest of his life But it imbued it with this sort of reflection on more this haunting the haunting. Yeah, yeah

Yeah, one of the sort of moral bleak ways that we see it in houses, it's, and this is something that you can keep in mind as we go forward if you want to go in with some context because what I learned is I was like, oh yeah, I wouldn't have thought of it that way, but it makes perfect sense. House and it subtle ways about the tension between a carefree younger generation that exists in a post-war time and has no concept of the fragility of the peace that they enjoy. So those seven young girls who arrive at the house, yeah. Who are just there for fun and boys and la la la la. Yeah. And understandably embedded older generation, which knows how close Warren death remain even in peaceful times. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The aunt sort of like even though she's like spooky and basically haunted ghosts, she seems to have this I know about the grotesque things in life. I know about the darker side. She's like a symbol of them. Yeah. For sure. She's so beautiful, right? Yeah. Yeah. So from his childhood to his young adult Hodo Bayashi, as Mitchell was just saying, he gets invested in 8 millimeter and 60 millimeter filmmaking. There you go. He becomes part of a collective of art filmmakers called the Japanese art guild. At the time, film is seen as a hobbyist's medium, but for Obayashi lacking a university degree. So, way for him to pursue his art relatively and expensively, he uses his young expertise

to make films for local businesses to screen his advertisements prior to theatrically released films, which become his first publicly exhibited works. So he's basically doing the pre-show ads for movies. And some of them are dope. He has all these Hollywood stars and a lot of his commercials. Like Charles Bronson is one. For sure. And I forget what it's called, like, Mandum.

It's the name of like, it's like, Mandum. It is, I believe, trust and believe that I have a mandum section here. So we will get it. Oh, thank God. I'm just gonna go on for the ride. I can't wait. Listen, listen, hang in there folks. You got one paragraph of information biographical about Obayashi coming and then we're getting right into Charles Brosson in men.

Okay, okay. Hang tight. Good, okay, okay. So Obayashi becomes part of a new generation of Japanese filmmakers and western filmmakers living in Japan who start to make art see short films and screen them at what are called event halls in the country and so basically it was this sounds like the kind of thing that me and a young Josie Mitchell and probably a young Mitchell calls if I need you would go to just like we've got a gallery space and we're projecting minute long short

films by this that and the other right yeah that sounds right I go today right now this is what I'm saying one time one time this do you want to hear the best thing Josie invites me to I don't even remember what it was but it was some exhibition that she was a part of and she'd done a booklet and she hands me the thing and it's got like an upside down triangle alchemy symbol on the pepper and I turned to her like this supposed to be a vagina and she's like yeah I actually is Taylor think about it. Yeah It was good. Good shit. Yeah, no, but you were I remember you were excited. You're like yes, absolutely. I'm glad you saw that like that Welcome to my art show

Our show here's my vagina on a book. Yeah, and it was, you never said if it was Eurovision, it was just Ava Jaina. So at one of these event hall showings, there's a fateful exhibition, specifically in Shinjuku, very happening part of town, right? Where each participating artist is given a 60-second slot to air their own films, which they exhibit to an audience that ends up, including a producer for Japan's biggest advertising firm, Dense, who suggests the artist bring their skills

to the realm commercials. It's the 60s. Television has much larger budgets and consequently much better quality than cinemas, which command dwindling audiences films broadly of our of poorer quality. So whatever you're kind of imagining as the the standard now where you look at something like the Big Bang Theory and you look at something like the Avengers and they seem like two very different budgetary scales. Flipping. It's a time, I think, of the eaters figuring out what differentiates them from television.

Because television has a direct line to everybody's home and it's easier to advertise on. Yeah. So it's easier to make money on. But then also, like, the beautiful thing that comes out of that, which I hope something like that can happen today, is that then, like, there's all these great low-budget, scrappy movies, like Texas Chainsaw, you know, and like not as a living

dead. But there's also a lot of low-budget movies that are of poor quality. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Sex killer. The way that it's going in Japan is that I think budgets for the cinema have been gutted. I think that like we're in the time of like broadly speaking pretty low innovation and

that the money is in the television and especially commercials, because the commercial sell shit, maybe. Not money, baby. This is when we get into the time that Mitchell is describing of the child's brawn and we got some fuel around, these types. It's interesting though, before we get into that,

though I can see a champ in the bit, before we get into that. It's interesting to think that commercials, even though they've got these high budgets, they're regarded a bit snobbishly by the Japanese cinematic establishment as somewhat beneath the otourship of the filmmaker. So if you're caught direct commercials, you can see this something of a hack. That makes sense. I can, okay. You can be like a very funky upbeat in demand commercial director as Obiaschi will go on to be, but you're not Kurosawa, you're not Ozzy, right? You're not one of the greats who's making these very like long-winded epics and black and white. You know, very serious minded films about

feudal Japan kind of shit. Right, yeah, this is a different path. Obiaschi, however, he's the only person in the, in this collective of people who are exhibiting at this particular event hall who ends up taking this ad men up on his offer. He weighs out his access to all of the high end equipment capable of producing these gorgeous shots and rich colors and decides that the allure of being able to depict in his words, a clear blue sky is enough to lure him into the field of commercial work where he builds his portfolio of hundreds of flashy, stylish commercials from everything from coffee to haggar slacks, starting internationally

no names like Catherine DeNive, Ringo Starr, Sophia Leran, and Mitchell's boy Charles Brawnson. So tell me about mandem. Mandem. I mean, I watched a handful of those mandem commercials and I couldn't even tell you exactly what the product is. Is it like, it's like deodorant or perfume? I would say a deodorant possibly a fragrance. Yeah, but what's so dope is that like they have very little

Narrative and not like a cohesive world and also I think that stuck out to me with all the commercials Not just manda is that the sound design is like his trademark and it's not he doesn't do he has got a guy he had to forget the guy's name but it's what do you imagine like two cartoon diamonds hitting each other and going like yeah and you hear it all throughout house and you hear it in this other really good this other good horror movie of his called cute devil has it all throughout it's like the same sound design not similar kind of flavor similar sounds and and it's like this assault on your sonic senses And it's in the commercials, but so for instance my favorite mandem one is like Charles Bronson sitting at a Japanese bar

And you're like reminded of Bill Murray in Lost in Translations like he's like very bad He's got like a tuxedo or jack Nicholson in the shining a little bit. Totally. He's got like a tuxedo He's like, here's it up again, Sam. Yeah, he's like, fill it up again, Jack. And he's just like, man, dumb. And then all of a sudden, it just cuts to his apartment. And he throws his jacket. And then suddenly, it cuts to the Wild West.

And he's shooting guns. And then back to the apartment. And then he's back in the Wild West. And then he's like, back in the Wild West. Lots of fast cuts. He's taking off his shirt. Now he's riding a horse in a stampede. He's built his how.

He's like, Jack. And he's shirtless doing pushups in his apartment Then it's like crazy. Zoot. It's like house, but like nice apartment nice apartment. Good shit. The slogan is all the world loves a lover It's true. They do so around this time. Obe Ashi also releases a short film called Emotion with Exantigu over the E, which screens at around something like 60% of Japanese universities, straight reviews, who's becoming a well-known name among up and coming hip makers of short films, though he's yet to create anything of cinematic length.

Mitchell, I assume you've watched this. Yeah, it's like a French new wave, by way of hope I got she. Yeah, yeah, I feel that. It's got a Dracula in it. Yeah, it's a thing. It's got a very, a very aso-terror Dracula. Can I say something about, do you know what makes to me house a better movie than even

Emotion Evil or doing obviously very different things? I think that house is, if you want to show somebody kind of bat shit art house cinema, it's as accessible as that gets. I think that house is actually a very easy, even if you're just going in it to watch, oh it's so wacky and weird, you know, whatever, I think it's a very easy movie to do that way. Whereas like a lot of this, for example, emotion, I find a bit esoteric, a bit hard to pin down, a bit hard to understand, which is sort of the, I think the common complaint that that gets lobbed against Ardho's cinema by people who don't necessarily enjoy that much.

Yeah. And like, I'm sure you're going to get into it, but there is a Dracula. I don't think he, like, set out to make house as an art house movie at all. I agree. I agree. I don't think so either. We flash forward 1975. Oh.

Yeah, baby. A debut filmmaker, Steven Spielberg, has released the little shark movie that could... Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, big name Japanese film studio toho of gojiro fame sees yen in the idea of giving Japan its own answer to the shark horror money maker and they similarly want to elevate a young filmmaker why not nobuyko obayashi a very cool young commercial director with a background in film making yeah they approach obayashi with this preposition hey man give us jaws which is a very funny five you ever see how you it. That's like the origin story behind house is like make us a jaws. Give us jaws. Yeah. Are you for real? Josie, what would you say is like the amount of shared DNA between this movie and jaws?

Ah, they're movies. Like that's it. They have people in them. They have people. Ah. People get eaten. They have people. Ah! People get eaten. People get eaten. People get eaten.

You know what? One thing they do have in common, my theory behind the English title and why it doesn't have a Japanese title is that that's like a strong similarity is that they're like, jaws. This will be house. You know, it's like, it's just house. That's the villain. Yeah. It's, oh. I could see how some big producers were like,

well, we're not gonna actually spend the time to watch the movie, but it's a one word and it's in English. Awesome, you did it, jaws. There's another thing I fucking love about once he had this script and people thought it was like incomprehensible and it was like, oh my god, this is like a bad shit script. Toho is not doing well, like some of the gods, it was sequels, lost them a lot of money. So then like his producer was like, so Toho is not doing well, like some of the God's illicit equals lust, I'm a lot of money.

So then like his producer was like, so Toho is looking for something that's not comprehensible. We're looking for something that's maybe, because all of our comprehensible share has failed. So let's try something incomprehensible. Yeah, can we get some chagrish? Because we've tried the nunchik. We've tried the nunchik.

We're not responding. Yeah. People have not responded to straight narrative. So we wanted to try some chaos. No, no, no. We need some lobotomies here Yeah, oh, we actually agrees he is on board and in a stroke of what I consider absolutely genius And I mean this in the most 100% straight across in seerway with absolutely no snare cry or any of my voice The very first thing he does is approach his preteen daughter Chigumi who I take to be around 10 at this point

So cool that he does that. So such a badass move. Such a baller move. So much dividends. So much dividends in the final product. Quoting over Yash. I was discussed important matters with children. Adults only think about things they understand,

so everything stays on that boring human level. At that level, a hit movie about shark attacks leads to one about bear attacks. That's the best they can do. But children... a cocaine bear. But that actually happened to be fair cocaine bear hat. Maybe not exactly as Elizabeth Banks committed it to film but it did happen. Back to Obegushin. But children come up with things that can't be explained. They like the strange and the mysterious power of cinema isn't in the explainable but in the strange and the inexplicable

So he's on the inexplicable tangent here too. I'm very taken in this moment by back in the early 2010s There was a webcomic called Axe Cop that was done by a brother in his late 20s in collaboration with his like five-year-old brother They were quite far apart in the beach. It was literally just like give me whatever ideas you have and I'll turn them into a web comic and it got some acclaim. I think you got an animated series. I love that. I became like a cool little project for them to do together. I'm reminded of that here where it's literally like adult lines two degrees, especially like even and I would almost argue Especially ones that are like formally well-studied in art forms tend to be derivative. Yeah, no that's true. Yeah. Almost makes you want to have kids, you know? Just to mind them for ideas.

Yeah. Just have this idea, factor. It's to deal with their ideas, yeah. So, Novo Hiko asks his daughter, Chigumi, if I were to do a big, exciting cinematic feature length film, what should I do? And she says, don't bother Japanese movies or boring. Ha ha.

Woo! Yeah, make TikToks, dad. And so Shigumi just starts taking note of little things that scare her as they scare her. For example, at one point, she's sitting there combing her hair, looking at herself in the mirror and she says, Daddy, it'd be pretty scary if my reflection this mirror started attacking me. And it would be ushisan, is there? Take great fucking love it. That cinema. Yeah.

It's flatable, right? So cool. Yeah. Also highly, fucking love it. That cinema. Yeah. You're not flammable, right? So be it applicable. Yeah. Also highly visual, too. Yeah, exactly. You can describe that in text at all you want, but it won't have the same effect as the visual. And he builds up this list of things that scared his daughter, who ends up getting a writing credit on the script, because she genuinely contributes a lot of concepts for individual scenes,

which I'll go into when I recap the movie. My favorite that she came up with, which is one of my favorite things in the whole movie, is that they made her, because like as I did at that age, they made her take piano lessons. And she was like terrified of getting stuck in between the piano keys. She's like, what if my fingers got stuck in between the keys and then I got sucked into the piano. And I'm like, dude, that's the best part of the movie. And like she came up with that.

That's the most iconic kill of the movie. Totally most iconic kill. Some of them are hard to explain, but if you just say to somebody, no dude, a piano eats a girl. She fully gets eight by a piano. It's pretty, and the way they carried off is very memorable, et cetera.

A friend of mine describing a conversation that she had with her son, who was probably like six or seven at the time. There was something that he was like, oh, that's kind of scary. And she was like, what else scares you? And he sat there very calmly and proceeded to like list like 20 things. Like, they did scare him in the recounting. He was just like, my bedroom ceiling at night, definitely under the bed.

That weird door knob on the neighbors. Grandma has a statue, and she puts it on a stool, and so times I imagine that it comes to live at night. Yeah, yeah, just like, Detroit lit makes the hissing noise when I go in, and it could suck me in through my ass hole, and do the toilet.

Exactly. Or like your neighbor's car that looks like a face. Yeah, totally. Like all of like, he just like listed, oh, just like, Jesus Christ, you must live in terror all your life. But like, as we all do. As we all do, yeah, yeah, yeah.

When you're a kid, I guess you're just like closer to it. But I remember her telling me that story and how calm he was in the recounting too. It was just so funny. I loved that. But kids are weird and cool and scare easily, so. Imagineative and clever and capable of not being entrenched in pattern and cheating. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and your imagination is that flexible.

It's like, oh, yay, happy rainbows, but it can also be like dragons that'll eat me and the piano that will suck me in. Yeah, yeah. There's no like hard line. The trees look like monsters. It's holistic, line. The trees look like monsters. It's holistic baby. I think it's so cool about it too, is that he hadn't made a big budget movie before.

This was his big break. That's a real role of the dice to just be like, what do you think is good? Yeah, he didn't wait till his fourth or fifth movie or his seventh chance to be like, oh, I wonder what my daughter thinks. It was like his big. For his first draft.

He went in with it. He just went in with it. It was like, all right, I get my big, my first big check. And I'm going straight to my 10-year-old daughter with it. It's like so sick. Tight. He takes all of this list of ideas. The things that scared Chigumi

to a collaborator of his, a writer named Chihokutsuro who worked with him for a very old school prestige style Japanese art flick called Hanagatami, which up to this point nobody's interested in. He's been shopping Hanagatami around forever. Nobody wants it. It's like the dream for his project, but no, no doing. So they put Hanagatami on the shelf and Katsu Repens in his words, a story about a house that eats girls. Katsuura and Obayashi, misajjana subplot about nuclear work, is let's keep telling that story forever. It doesn't really exist so much culturally at this point in Japanese films,

so they're just thinking about it as a fantasy ghost movie about young girls full of music that feels too beautiful to be real and imagery so pretty it must be fake. Katsura after what he calls the easiest preliminary meeting he's ever had bangs out the script and gives it to Oba-yashi And that's it for his role and the whole thing He just chills out for the next little while wonders if it'll ever get made. Okay. Oba-yashi wonders the same thing to the point where he gives this film It's English title house very taboo in Japanese cinema at the time apparently he thinks and maybe he's fluffed himself I don't know but Oba-yashi in the criterion

Interview thinks that it was the first example of a Japanese film with an English title. Interesting. And he figures this one's going straight to development hell, but hey, I did my best. This is Jaws. He hands in the script to Toho, prepared to forget about it for the next year or two. Three hours later, he gets a call from Toho. Three hours?

Three hours? Three hours, they read it, they call him obayashi you G is this is jaws to us somehow Or this is jaws but better this is jaws but house this is jaws, but instead of a shark It's big and made a wood Obayashi's like okay, I'm thank you great when does production start toho is like Thank you. Great. When does production start? Toho is like That's the thing. None of our directors want to touch this with a barge pull because they all think it will ruin their careers forever It'll never get made, but we love it. Oh

Okay, oh, but yeah, she's like okay tough, but fair. I mean, why can't I just direct it? Why don't I direct it? Yeah? I'm here. I'm feeling I know it. Toho brass is like, yeah, no, we can only employ directors who are exclusively contracted to Toho, Suima Senbro. Oh. Obyashi, seizing the moment, says, okay, but can I tell people that the option for house by Nobuki Koobayashi has been bought by Toho. And they're like, yeah, man, what if

he were stoked if you're stoked. They hang up the phone and From there will be as she has his business cards printed with the house logo It's at his own. I think he drew it himself, but either way he commissioned it to house with a big time coming out and it says Yeah, at the bottom and he basically goes hell for leather marketing house as a concept in any way that he can imagine. And it works. He convinces a department store to hold a house-themed fashion show with seven models to represent the seven girls in the film. Why? And they have not started filming in any kind of...

No, no, no. No, no. They haven't even said that they will film. They said we're green lighting up and nobody wants it. There's a novelization and a pair of manga adaptations published in popular magazines. An audio drama is produced late night on Japanese radio which does huge ratings and can be found on the YouTube channel GaliBon GAL-L-I-B-O-N in the present day if you know Japanese. This drama includes the original soundtrack for house, a movie that has not yet been made.

How does a soundtrack exist? Oh, Bayashi is just quietly stockpiling people for this movie models from his commercials to play The Young Girls, and a composer named Asae, Kobayashi, and a band called Go Diego to do the music. That's my favorite part. I love that the score is written before there's ever a movie

and that it's for promotional reasons. And that it's like kickass music too. That's really tight. And later on, because these are models who he's just plucked out of random commercials, they're having a hard time getting into the acting and being convincing. So he starts playing this music, the soundtrack that already exists, while they're acting and it kind of enhances their movements and their process. It's very cool. So cool. So the way that he gets linked up with Kobayashi and

Go Diego is, Go Diego is just a young band. If they do a lot of like fun beetles knock off for this too, but Kobayashi is the original composer for this because he's been saying they're commercial buddies him and, um, Kobayashi and Obayashi, baby. There are buddies. It's a lot in common right there. Syllables and syllables in common. Kobayashi and Oh Bayashi, baby. There we go. There we go. It's a lot in common right there. It's syllables and syllables in common. Kobayashi says, if you ever do your movie, let me do the music. Sure, sure, sure.

The problem is when it comes time to actually do the music, Kobayashi has this very, he's got Roshimalan in his head. He's got this very serious Japanese feudal period drama in line with all the gussies. Everyone's much in the same way that Nobuhi Kobayashi is coming into this. Like, this is my big first swipe of the movie. This is SAE Kobayashi's first swipe at a big film soundtrack, and you can't quite make it work.

So he ends up writing the very distinctive. If you watch this movie, you'll hear it, this riff a million times and interpolated in a million different ways to hear the movie goes, work. So he ends up writing the very distinctive. If you watch this movie, you'll hear it this riff a million times and interpolated in a million different ways throughout the movie goes, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, he writes that and passes it off to go Diego who interpret it into a million different things. Should I walk down the aisle to that? You should walk down to that.

Okay. Add a little white cap, can jump up into your hands and go, and then it dies with flash and people will die. Beautiful. The funniest thing that I can think of about this guy, Kobayashi, is he says, you know what, I can't do the music for it

because it's not serious enough, but I'll be in your mood. And Kobayashi in the movie is, you know that big round guy with the cross dyes who sells them the melons? That's him. Oh yeah, yeah. The absolute most bat-shit wacky over-the-top character.

I love that. I have to only write dignified music, but I'll play the most undignified character in the movie. I'll be a fool who collapses into a cartoon skeleton at the road and nothing for me. Yeah, that makes sense. Oh, weird. That's so cool.

I love it. So, so bizarre, so bizarre. So they developed this whole soundtrack that comes out a year before the film and they got played in department stores to hype the film very strange stuff. Finally after two years of pressure and anticipation for this movie, Teho's like fuck it. They relent and they agreed to let Nobu Hiko Miyashi direct this film. Nice. Oh, I love the persistence. The cast of House is largely comprised of random commercial models and friends of the director There's a story about there was a disagreement between the director of photography or cinematography or whatever the whoever's calling the shots right

They were getting into conflict with the lighting guys and and Obeyashi in general speaks very Revolently about the lighting department of a film He thinks that they're like the most important thing you got going is the lighting. Yeah. Just to, I guess, break some of the tension between the camera guy and the lighting. And this is a day where everything's been going wrong. One of the arms of his glasses is falling off because the screws come loose. He's kind of doing it half-wind. Yeah. Everything's going bad.

He calls up to one of the... He's like, I'm... Keep it light. Hey, no boo, whoever the lighting guy is, you could cook an egg with that light. Hey, you, did it it it it it. Just make no boo whoever the lighting guy is you could cook an egg with that light. Hey you Did it? Yeah, just making powder right and then at the end of the day they have like a post day Let's get together for sake and beer and just shoot the shit whatever and the entire lighting crew is missing And he's like oh no, this is bad news and

Then I like an hour or two later one of the lighting guys the one that he'd like kind of call out by name comes up to him with napkin and this is where um Obeyashi starts to tear up as he tells the story Then lighting guy opens up the napkin and it is the screw from Obeyashi's glasses that had gone missing and he was like The entire time I've worked on Toho no director is bothered to learn my name I felt so appreciated so I got the entire lighting crew to look around for your screw for a couple hours and we found it. Wow those screws are tiny. That's such a beautiful like beautiful metaphor. Wow I know for sure it's moving stuff especially

because when you said that they lighting crew didn't show up, was like, oh shit, they got pissed off. That's what he said. They were worried, like they were dumb. They sort of got the same working with the sky. With the image of all these grown men looking around for the tiniest crew imaginable and finding it. So sweet. So tender.

Where was it? I didn't ask. So in keeping with the spirit of spontaneity and play the story, it's found entirely without storyboards and no particular plan on how to accomplish the many advanced cinematic techniques in the film. They'll just come up with the techniques on the set. I love it.

We'll just write on a calendar page and let's go. Yeah. Yeah. Quoting Obayashi, I wanna make the special effects a child would make. That's how I do it, my way. And they look so good. They look like a child, but like a really talented child.

Yeah. A really talented, imaginative child with like a great sense of composition. And what's nuts is that like they make you so happy and there's so much money that's spent today on special effects. So much money gets put into computer graphics. In the name of chasing realism off Yeah, it's like you can just make them look like the effects in house probably cheaper and it would make you so much happier It looks so cool

And how how did they achieve these amazing Fantastic effects will I will tell you exactly how, as we join Gorgeous Fantasy Blanch and the gang for a quick little visit to a haunted little house, here's a spoiler-filled recap of Noble Hiko Oba-Yashi's house. Okay! Alright, so one thing to note is that this starts with a title card that simply says a movie which feels perfect It really does We start the film out. It's a nice seems like a very nice easy high school slice of life of the type that's very Common in Japanese media Japanese film Japanese manga Japanese TV anime whatever it is yeah, and We meet two best friends.

Their names are fantasy and gorgeous. No notes. Cute. No notes. Great names. They are something like our leads. They're finishing up a school for the summer. We find out that Gorgeous, who's played by Kimiko Ikigami.

She's one of the two trained actors who are actually in this movie. The rest are just kind of models from commercials that Oviashi worked with. Gorgeous is going to be spending the summer at a villa with her dad, while fantasy and the rest of the friend group, who we'll meet later, are off to a summer camp together that's run by the sister of their PE teacher, Mr. Dog. Gorgeous gets home from school and we get one of my favorite scenes of the entire film,

and this is a film all about like scary grand guignol scenes, and I really enjoy this kind of character scene between Gorgeous her dad and her scene to be similar. Gorgeous meets her dad, who's on the balcony of their very swanky apartment. The whole... Oh, right, yeah. They've gotten an entire wall that's just like, tiled the glass and we watch the entire scene through it for no evident reason other than, as Mitchell says, why? Because it's cool.

Yeah. That's cool. They've got a very clearly fake sunset background splashed across the back of the set. Gorgeous claps is right into her father's arms and we get the sense that father and daughter are very dear to one another. In a very film nerdy touch, the most film nerdy touch of the film other than absolutely everything, the dad scores films. He's just gotten back from Italy where the director has said he's even better than Moore. Which is, which is, Josie loves that joke. She loves cracking-wise

about O'Lanio. She loves like a spaghetti western composer joke. Yeah, yeah. Some of my favorites. Actually pronounced the gooter. Okay, sorry. So sorry. Unfortunately, around this point, the music becomes discordant, which for fans of symbolism, that's not good news. The dad begins casually golfing off this balcony, as he introduces one of my favorite characters in cinema history for all of the handful of scenes in which she actually appears. Her name is Ryoko Emma, and she is the woman who is clearly about to be gorgeous as stepmother. She is played by Hariko Awanibuchi and no film character has ever more totally expressed my exact aesthetic and art

more than her. She is impossibly soft and beautiful. The wind she has a wind machine that follows her. Of course. And it's always blowing her beautiful gauzy white scarf behind her. She has her own themes like an entire Dundundund, like an entire dramatic orchestra that just accompanies her everywhere. She goes, she's wonderful. She takes off her gauzy white scarf. She puts it over Gorgeous's head and she says, Gorgeous, let's shake hands when they do. Dad says that Ryoko is quote, surprisingly good at cooking and other things too, which is fucked up for like a few reasons.

And then he says that it's been eight years since Gorgeous's mother died, we need to start making a home. Gorgeous, understandably quite upset. She throws the scarf off the balcony, which we get via just completely unnecessarily over the top and in state of X. And she runs to her room, which has wallpaper covered in gigantic purple roses, the color of a funeral home. And she starts talking to a portrait of her mother and reminiscing and we understand that she misses her mother very much. Meanwhile, back at school, we meet the rest of our seven man band. And apparently, according to Obayashi, this is a very Japanese thing.

The team. The team. The team. It's like the power of your team. Yes. I don't know if they're seven of them, so I won't stick to that. Oh, and it was like the seven samurai. Yeah.

Oh, boom. He uses the example of the seven samurai as a matter of fact. I didn't realize Seven was a thing. While here's Obeyashi to tell us more about it, quote, when people join forces to accomplish something a team of Seven is ideal, it's a long-standing tradition in Japan to have seven people on a team. And so he keeps mentions the Seven Samurai, mentions various occasions in military history, one or two of them in this case, sweet, are kind of not pulling their weight, but that's okay.

So we meet our Seven Man band, It's gorgeous is the first one named fashionable in Japanese. She's gorgeous and fashionable, which are very funny traits for like your lead character down. Yeah. Wonderful. Wonderful. Her friends are fantasy, who's something like a co-lead. She's very imaginative. She's a dreamer, specifically she wants to fuck their teacher Mr. Togo, real bad. Melody, she's a musician musician she put in our opening scene here And we got little examples in this opening scene very economic storytelling. Melody's playing guitar here. So okay melody Yeah, Kung Fu. She's the athlete and martial artist and a ball comes at them and Kung Fu is able to bat it out of the air nice

Proff she's the brainy one. She's wearing glasses, she reads a book. Sweet. She's sweet. Mac, she's always eating. We find out later that Mac is short for stomach and she's like, I hope Mr. Togo is sister who runs the Inn for our summer camp is a good cook.

Mm. That's our team and we'll go back over them a couple of times, but you can see, even in the way that they're framed, to some degree, we're not entirely supposed to take them seriously as Golden Hairs, I would say. They're very broadly drawn archetypes, and the film itself seems to know this. The Seven Dwarves.

Boom. Sure, there you go. You're welcome. Boom. Took me a little bit. You're welcome. Thank you. I'll walk you.

Sleepy. No, you got to listen. Yeah. It is like that. Yeah. All the seven samurai. We've got these sort of co-occurring calamities. Gorgeous now no longer wants to go to the villa with her dad because it means going with her stepmom and her wind machine and she's just not down with that. It's just so much luggage with the wind machine

and the full orchestra. You got to put it right there on the dashboards, Bloony, the whole time your lips get cracked. It's just sheer logistics. Yeah. I love how the stepmom is not she's not mean. She's not like the wicked stem. Others.

Her thing is oh she's the she's a nice. This is you could ever meet which makes it worse. Yeah, she's horrible because of how wonderful she is. She's so pretty and saccharin and nice and even as gorgeous doesn't receive her all that kindly. She is resolved to continue to try to get through to her She's like the most wonderfully nice beautiful young looking and she has her own wind machine step-mo Like anybody with even a mild sense of unease about their mother's death would hate this bitch to their core 100%

Makes sense. Yeah, she's objectively a better woman than your mother. What's worse than that? Fanta C and the rest, the other six dwarves, they can't go off to the end because now it's closed. I forget why the end's closed. It's not important. Back at Gorgeous's house, we see her writing to her aunt whom she's only met once at her mother's funeral about 10 years ago now.

And she asks if she and the girls can come and visit the ant at her country home. And all of a sudden, Gorgeous's mom's picture, her frame picture that she's been talking to, falls over and we see that it's been knocked over by a fluffy white cat. Not unlike the one that we met at Blockbuster earlier. Yeah, interesting how you did that. I knew, no, Mitch, Mitch always the bridge, making this the symbolism work. Like she breaks. And I recognized it. I was like, oh, Mitchel is the bridge making this the symbolism work. Richie Briggs. And I recognized it.

I was like, oh, that's clever. So it's been knocked over by a fluffy white cat and gorgeous adopts this cat kind of quite immediately and calls it Blanche. And so apparently, Japan has a history of spooky trickster cats. It's all cool. The back-and-neck-oh. If you remember back in episode 30, the Momo Challenge,

we talked about Yokai, which are sort of these folkloric Japanese demons that take all kinds of shapes. The history of Yokai has influenced the history of this Bakoneko character. I was watching a short on the Criterion channel to do with house. The film that they kept throwing it back to is like a very influential Bakoneko film

that is like, of an era and of a piece with house, but is very, very different is called KuroNeko. That's a great one. That's like, like, if you want something spooky, that's not scary, watch that movie. I think it's on Craterian. Does me. Well, as a matter of fact, I had given Mitchell access

to my Craterian collection and allowed him to put stuff in my list, so right there at the front of my list, KuroNeko, so I watched it right before we did. Oh, good. Did you like it? Oh, nice. I did. I did really like it.

I love that movie. I love that movie. It's what house would be if it were more akin to the sort of epics about feudal Japan that we're talking about. It's very enmeshed in Japanese ghost story. It's like the history of samurai. It's interesting. It's something more serious like that. It's still really, really good. It's still really really good. It's gorgeous.

And it has a great scene. Oh, the cinematography is beautiful, the lighting, as Obayashi says, fantastic. And there's a scene where two people are having sex and the woman turns into a cat halfway through. Oh, that happened. And fights him in the neck and he dies. Yeah, yeah. So, the way that I've put it with my apologies, sometimes you're not murdering that push, sometimes that push is murdering you. Amen. Thanks to consider. Amen, bro.

Thanks for coming to my heart. Yeah. Yeah. Take a pamphlet on the way out, the Triangles of a China. Yeah. Speaking of murderous pushes, Auntie sends a letter back to gorgeous saying, I'm so excited to meet you and your friends. I can't wait, great off to Auntie's house.

Yeah. We get a scene of dad and stepmom Emma fretting about gorgeous and Emma, who again, as we've discussed, is just like the most impossibly sweet person on the entire planet, resolves to surprise gorgeous at Auntie's house in a few days

and bring her back to the villa for the family vacation and all these nice soft sentiments. Cut to Mr. Togo. He gets up, he says hi to all his neighbors again, very, very fake sky, and he falls down and he pratt falls and his bucket gets stuck on his ass and then we get a stop motion sequence for no good reason. I don't think we do stop motion ever again after this He skids I gather this is like an obaiashi thing He's one of a stop motion sliding sequence. He slides down spins around The characters the child comes out and beats the drums on his bum Wamp wamp very comic relief

Cuties The girl set off a with blanched via train and bus to the house and they chat about blanched the cat and we get the line. Any old cat can open a door, only a witch cat can close a door. Ooh, such a... Sounds like it may be meaningful. So true. Love shit like that.

I would think the opposite. I would think that it would be easier for any cat to close a door because you just got to kind of bump it. Don't question the rules Taylor. Bump it hot. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry. That was Travis We also get the backstory of the ant from gorgeous, which is told in a very cool way that I don't again I don't think I've ever seen in a movie before it's a series of flashbacks with the girls commenting over top of the flashback as though They're watching it along with us long Long story short, it's 1941. Auntie lives in a small village where her father is a doctor. Her fiancee gets sent off to war and she's too hard-broken to see him off so she lingers

alone at home with a very familiar looking white cat. And again, we're kind of quickly getting the idea that maybe this cat is not good news. It is Carly Ray. The fiancee who has been sent off to war, aunties fiance gets shot down in his plane. He dies. We see Gorgeous's mother in her white Japanese marital dress. Well, the aunt stands next to her looking somewhat resentful.

And we hear that the aunt has lived alone ever since in this big old house. Giving piano lessons to the neighbor kids. And then we get the flash of a camera spliced in with footage of the atomic bomb which the girls comment on very cheerfully like oh my god look how fluffy it is it looks like cotton candy i love a morbid like a morbid yeah i come here yeah yeah very morbid and and it sort of reflects back on what we were talking about about the idea that these children

having grown up in an air of peace don't entirely understand the gravity of this, right? So then we're back to the present day, the bus drops them off at a very fake look and bus stop inside a young village. They cross the bridge holding hands with cheery music, courtesy of Go Diego and we got these little vignettes introducing our seven main players again because we haven't heard from them individually in a while. Right. Gorgeous, fantasy, kung fu, sweet, prof, mac, and melody.

Nice. They pass a melon stand. They ask for directions from the purvy melon stand guy, who we now know is played by the original composer of the film, a say Kobayashi. That's so wild. I love that. He's an interesting character because his head pops up to replace a very round melon,

and we get the sense that this character is to be melon-like in his form, in his gate. He's the melon man. He truly is the melon man. The melon man. John melon camp, if you will. He is the John melon camp. That's the genre this film is. It's a melon camp. camp if you will. He is he is the John Melanchamp and and the genre of this film is it's a melanchamp. Yeah they're going to camp. Truly in in all forms absolutely. A kugur melon camp if you like. Sure. Once he once we meet Auntie. The melanchman says John

Melanchamp says there's the house but he doesn say it. He says it like it is in the trailer He goes there's the He as they as the girls peel off he's talking to a melon that has a hat on he says oh We haven't had visitors for a long time the lady will be very pleased And he starts cackling again. We get the sense that maybe this guy is not is not like a lawful good melon man Spooky what's a melon? Vlad So they arrive at the house. It's a big overgrown mansion with a pair of gigantic double doors

The blanche the cat seems to open for them any cat can open a door. Yeah, as mission is a Moaniel cat can Jimmy a lot. Yeah. It takes a fucking genius to close the door. And then we see Auntie come out in her wheelchair. She is played by Yoko Minami da, who's a very experienced Japanese actress at that point, who's been in many, many things. She's a very frail, very beautiful woman with a shock of white hair and tinted glasses. Yoko Minami, that apparently, when she got brought on to be the aunt, it was like a big deal because she was like, women in Japanese film faced similar barriers to ones that we still see today except even more strict. We're like, the second you played a mother, that was it for you as well.

Oh. God forbid you played a frail wheelchair on to you with white hair, right? Like you're really narrowing yourself down there. And so apparently she said to like, oh by y'all she like, yo, you need to know that this is a big deal, but I like the script and you're paying me so I'm gonna do it.

And he showed up, he was very respectful of her, I think, because of that, he speaks highly of her because of that. And apparently later on in life, she would come down with Alzheimer's, unfortunately, and there was a documentary about her husband taking care of her with her Alzheimer's that aired on Japanese television. Oh wow. Whoa! Oh, that's very cool. That's very open. That's awesome. Yeah, perhaps, you know, surprise given that there's only one other regular actor in here

and she's quite young in her career, the woman who's playing gorgeous. So Minami Da, who's playing anti, couldn't do better. The hero. That's good, yeah. Amazing. And one of the girls asks Auntie, what happened to your legs? To which Auntie replies, don't worry, I have you now. I'm all right.

She finds out that Mack has purchased one of the melons from the creepy melons guys a gift for Auntie we get together for a big group photo and out of nowhere blanch the cat's eyes shine and the camera flies into the air and shatters on the ground. No pictures here no photography. So we enter the house and Auntie says Shandier chan shine on them which the chandelier comes to life and it shines on them and they love it No, no, no, she's not flicking any switches here. She's just speaking to existence wireless baby Unfortunately bring back the clapper why isn't the We've lost

Reject maternity embrace tradition Why isn't the like we've lost Reject materiality in brace tradition Unfortunately the chandelier starts spewing shards everywhere and this is the first time that we see Kung-Fu's martial arts prowess and we got to listen to her wicked musical theme She's able to kick them all away and we sort of lose this threat of this chandelier spewing out Shards everywhere. We kind of just move the girls they're like that sucks. Just kind of move on. Melody starts playing the piano in the other room because she can play instruments naturally. It's the house theme song. Thank you Melody. No prob. That's me. We see Auntie's late father's clinic with its

chattering skeleton and Auntie says oh this used to be a prosperous town but now there's no visitors and we get the sense that the girls start to feel a bit of pity for this old Mac offers to cook. Of course, she loves food. Anytime you hear from Mac, assume she's eating. I know. That's a wrap. Sweet offers to clean.

Auntie accompanies Mac and Gorgeous to the backyard where they lower the melon that Mac has brought down the well on a road to keep it cool. And Auntie says, as the water glimmers and a slightly sinister after face she says Mack you sure look tasty being round and all. Yum yum yum yum. You love to hear that from your friends and yeah yeah you love to hear the older generation bonding with the younger one. Maybe we can find common ground amongst them Inside auntie goes for lie down to preserve her energy in the girls eat dinner

We notice there is a portrait on the wall that's the spinning image of blanche It looks like the kind of thing you might buy a thrift store. It just looks like someone's way cat It's an important okay, me. Oh, Matt gets up to go to the bathroom and get the melon, and after some time she hasn't come back. Uh-oh. So fantasy goes out to the wall to check on her. She sees the rope is still down the wall and she lifts it up and instead of a melon, out comes Matt's head, which is still animate.

Disembodied, nobody there. Disembodied, yes. Disembodied head, very important distinction to make. It floats into the air and it bites fantasy on the ass. It takes out a big old bite of her caboose and she screams and screams and screams. And then the head of vomit, so blood and falls back down the well.

As you did. Just yeah, regular Monday, really. This is one of the scenes that apparently came directly from the daughter, Chagumi, the little girl. Oh, cool. When she went out to her grandparents, a lot of these I gather are things that take place at like the grandparents' home.

Yeah, well, that's it. She goes out to visit them, and she remembers them dropping a while, sorry, I'm melding down the while on a rope to keep it cool, and she's like, that would be so scary if it came back out as a head. And so we're good. And here we go. Grandparents' houses are scary.

I have to say, when you're a kid. Because you're spending enough, you're spending enough you're spending enough time there that they're somewhat familiar to you but they're not so very familiar to you. I think the stuff they have on the walls is weird often. It's not what you're used to. It smells a bit weird. There's a lot more like medicine and peanuts and it's yeah. It's you're in touch with the older world.

Like your your parents are not putting melons down the well to keep them cool but your grandparents are. Yeah, yeah, you're in touch with the older world like your your parents are not putting melons down the well to keep The cool but your grandparents are yeah, yeah, exactly your parents have an ice box your grandparents don't yeah Fantasy of course runs inside to get everyone and auntie comes in she's saying it's so noisy what's going on? She seems much more alert and energetic all of a sudden Fantasy says there's a decapitated head in the well and actually they make the same comment something like I saw ahead I saw ahead and someone's like everybody has a head she's like no it was disembodied Auntie stands up all of a sudden when she hears about this is a capitated head she stands up and everyone's very surprised

And Auntie simply says you gave me energy We go to the well and yank up the rope to find a Melon perfectly chilled. Everybody says, all fantasy, your active imagination, classic fantasy, sits down to eat. Okay. This is when we get another very good scene that like we sort of start to get the sense that perhaps the smell is actually maxed head and we don't know it. Right. The best part of this scene is when fantasy looks at that

auntie and she opens her mouth a little. The eyeball. Is she an eyeball is in her mouth? Yeah! And she kind of makes it look like quickly right and left and then closes her mouth again and wink. But it's great because like her mouth becomes the eye socket because the eyeball kind of moves. We sort of are getting the sense that like, fantasy is maybe the only one who's actually seeing what's going on here, but because she has this reputation for having her head up her ass,

nobody is really believing after all. I am. I am glad to see. I'm glad to see. Sweet puts on a little made outfit and she decides she's gonna go do some cleaning. Everybody's sharing their theories on Remakwatt, my personal favorite quote.

I bet Mac went to the potato field down the road because she loves big potatoes It's not the right group of friends for her while sweet as cleaning she sees blanche the cat shadow as blanche like any non-witch cat Opens a mysterious door for her a doll beckons her in saying her name over and over Blanche's eyes flash the doors close behind her and there's only one type of cat A doll beckons her in, saying her name over and over. Sweet bo-chan, sweet bo-chan. Blanch his eyes flash, the doors close behind her, and there's only one type of cat that can close the door like that. Magic cat. We got a witch cat.

Witch cat, classic witch cat scenario, Bakaneko. Mm-hmm. Meow. Meanwhile, Gorgeous is taking a traditional Japanese style bath. Yes, the passing kung fu to heat up more water for her to which kung fu replies, all right, you're a stylish princess, which is a great aspect of this film that if you ever forget who everyone is, they will remind you just like that.

Taylor, you're a stylish princess. Thank you. Anything you want. We see both of them encounter some supernatural shenanigans here. A big tangle of supernatural hair crawls up, gorgeous bear back before receding a gunfire, goes to chop wood and is attacked by flying burning logs. She dispatches the logs, which she perhaps too pragmatically puts down to an illusion.

Back to Auntie and Blanche, they are loving it. Auntie is dancing around the house in pure delight. She has so much energy. She likens it to a childhood experience at a restaurant where she just had her option of anything on the buffet That she wanted and everyone's saying but where's fantasy's like okay, but where's Mac? She's like She's delicious. Don't worry. You'll see Mac and throughout the movie She's just like mysteriously feeling much much better and having more ability to move around. The more girls die, the more on T is loving life. Yeah, like the more she is just like,

yodda, yodda, loving it. She's like, did I tell you that I look 30 years younger now? By the way. And then after she says, oh, don't worry, LC Max, she then just disappears through the fridge, much to fantasy shock. And then she appears in the foreground of the shock, crawling along the rafters, and she turns to the camera and winks at the viewer. Oh! We now see people being seemingly back and supernaturally into various rooms.

Melody goes into the piano room, and starts playing the theme again, and the keys start to play, start to flash different colors. Gorgeous goes up to Auntie's room and sits at her vanity as we begin to see visions in the mirror of Auntie Dressed as Gorgeous, a demonic version of Gorgeous,

the mirror cracking and weeping blight red, bright red blood and footage of the atomic bomb as her face cracks off and falls apart and she turns into a human inferno. Forgot that part. Damn dude! Going back to our girl suite, she's locked in the closet, bad news. In a series of scenes that seem to have been filmed through a swirling plexiglass floor,

she is beaten to death by frutons. It's the only way to put it. Oh, I remember this one. Yeah, I thought you remember that. Yeah. Yeah. This one stuck up to me the most and it's the one I think that most sticks out to me as being conceived of by a child. As you might imagine, Jagumi had a hard time getting the frutons down at grandma's house without room to be terrible if they beat me to death. Yeah. And here we are. So right around this time, the remaining girls Kung Fu prof and fantasy start hearing melody,

going nuts on the piano in one room and sweet screaming in the other, Kung Fu and fantasy go to check on sweet, who seems to have completely disappeared under a pile of futons, only her underwear is left behind. They sniff at the sick fox. And Melody seems to have bitten by the piano. She's like, it's like the piano bit me.

This is something that Mitchell Collins can relate to, surely the churnal piano enabling on a finger. That happened to me once. Mebles. More next Halloween. Oh. Oh. They also realize that Gorgeous has gone missing

to which one says, I bet she's putting on makeup as usual. She must be upstairs. Let's go. These shitty friends. Yeah, huh. Well, it's not a wrong instinct. She was actually upstairs putting her making and share a reflection detector along with Yeah, which atomic bombs atomic warfare. Yeah, absolutely. She was she was

To overcome all at once She couldn't do it and when they get up there, they do find her but she's acting very different up there they do find her but she's acting very different. As the girls chat about Mr. Togo, fantasy boy friend, someone mentions that they hope he's still coming to save them and I guess he is coming to them. He is genuinely coming to them. I don't remember what. But someone mentions that they hope he has a plane that he can fly on on and Gorgeous says a plane and we hear the noises of a war plane And so whoever this version of gorgeous is she has some trauma around planes in the war the old gorgeous can't The phone right now. Yeah

No, well speaking of the phone the group suggests he is a phone in a very space-to-gorgeous pick-up So actually gorgeous can come to the foot. She goes to the phone. The group suggests he has a phone in a very space-so-gorgeous pick-up. So actually, Gorgeous can come to the phone. She goes to the phone immediately out of the box and it's next thing she does. But she picks up the phone and she hears but does not react to the voices of her dead friend screaming, help me, help me. She sets the phone down and dreamily announces that it's out of order. She volunteers Uh. She volunteers to go to the police station and bring back help and she tells them to stay where they are and she says, in her aunt's voice, I'll be back. Mm-hmm.

Off goes gorgeous singing a vocal version of the theme song, Juggling Balls of Energy. The other girls attempt to follow her but the door and all the windows are locked, the house itself. Hurls everyone around and cacles and cacles and cacles. Wild. It's wild stuff. Wild. Cut to Mr. Togo stuck in traffic.

How a plane after all. Oh no. No, he's in his little doom buggy is a little Mad Max. Foggy. That's the real hard. From Christmas. Yeah. Yeah. vehicular congestion. Yeah. Yeah. That's rough. Port infrastructure battered and planned it. Exactly. Cut back to you. The four girls are walking in a big circle just around the living room, Yeah, yeah, that's rough poor infrastructure battered and planning exactly

Cut back to you the four girls. They're walking in a big circle just around the living room trying to figure out what's going on Melody reasons all aunties obviously got some sort of Door locking mechanism after all she went to a musical school in Tokyo so she must be educated They go to look for Auntie, but they don't find her only a half-eaten human hand and max hair ribbon but they don't find her only a half-eaten human hand in Max Hair Ribbon. Hmm. Prof in a moment of deduction says, maybe, nevermind. The group split up. Fantasy, she's with Melody,

who's playing the piano to cheer us all up, while Prof and Kung Fu go off to the front. Right. Prof and Kung Fu find gorgeous upstairs, even though she's supposed to have left. She's dressed up in the same bridal outfit that her mother once wore. Kung Fu sees that gorgeous doesn't have a reflection

in the mirror, EG, the same gorgeous. They also find sweet, whose dead body has unfortunately been crammed into the gearwork of a grandfather clock. It's tight. It's a good one. Which has been chiming throughout the movie. This is another one where it was a specific grandfather clock that tormented Jigumi as a child.

Oh, nice, yeah. I remember my grandparents had one. And the sound of it, how big it was, hated it. It scared me. They resonate, huh? Your parents have that craftsmanship. What? No, they have one that sounds like one.

Yeah, they have one that sounds like one. Yeah, I don't love the sound. It's just now. I don't like it either. Yes No, they have my parents on the clock guys have a just like a smaller clock that sounds loud as fuck I will I know that my dad is not full and advantage clocks I would bet dollars to donuts that there's a specific antique clock that we can trace this So and unfortunately that's not the last kill we're going to get. They hear the piano again. There we go. Here we go.

Here we go. Unfortunately, as Melody has been playing the piano, she has become slowly entranced and the piano has begun to eat her. At first it bites off her fingers and she looks at the bloody stumps and giggles and then it eats her hands and her wrists and her arms and it sucks her in little by little. We see her legs flying out. We see her body all mangled in the piano wires as we get more of that beautiful red MS paint blood that's just flat one color bright red. Her head floats by and makes saucy innuendos. I think fantasy maybe faints here and finally Kung Fu and prof arrived to revive her. We're finally on the same page. Gorgeous as it goes now. This haunted house is consuming us for a while. The fingers play the piano.

That's how we close it as we see melodies disembodied fingers plonking out the theme to the movie. One noted a a tie and this is again as Mitchell eludes This is piano lesson trauma from like a teacher who would slap Chigumi's hands and all the moments were a quick finger work And she gets stuck in a crack and pinch her skin when it finally like gets to that culmination where you see the Disembodied fingers playing the piano. It's like poetic cinema. So good. So good. I will say the knowingly saucy,

sexual way the film occasionally treats its young female characters is the one thing that stands out to me as not having been written by a younger. And that's, it's a thing that has come up. It comes up in some of his other movies. Yeah, we discussed this a little bit during our Egg of the Christie episode, number 80s. I think a lot of understanding and joying and coming to appreciate art from the past involves like appraising it honestly and understanding where those things that you would change about it from an ethical perspective lie. Speaking of the devil, we fantasies just waiting for Mr. Togo waiting for, you know, her name shining on him to come save the day. Cut to Mr. Togo, he's eating noodles that are standing staffed by a bear.

He's nowhere near the house. Next, cut back to the house. The girls are reading from Monty's diary to trying to get to the bottom of things, and then Gorgeous's giant head emerges from one of the doors. She says she's in her natural supernatural world, though, and she explains the how and why the aunt herself actually died many years ago but she was so desperate for the love that was like cut out of her life by the war that her body remained alive after her death and now she eats all of the unmarried girls who come to the house because that's the only way she can wear her bridal gown.

of the unmarried girls who come to the house because that's the only way she can wear her bridal gown. And Gorgeous finishes. Now it's your turn. Just let me eat you. And of course the house starts go and nuts, it's growing in size, it's flinging the girls around every extravagant, brokery ridiculous cinematic effect you can possibly imagine. I was just gonna say it kind of has like Allison Wonderland vibes. Like just the way that it's like opium fuel volts insanity. The very first time I watched this was with my friend Jay and the one review that I read ahead of time says don't do mushrooms and watch this. And so we didn't.

And at the end I was like I'm really glad we didn't do mushrooms. Yeah. Good idea. The house it Mitchell stopped getting ideas the house itself starts kids looks over at Josie. I do like to eat mushrooms and watch movies. Yeah well be careful that's all in the same or you know as we say as the BCLC says no your limit play within it which we also talked about on the Jordan River Beach that day after I told you about that Halloween thing that I am never going to do. Right. Yeah. That's a story story from another day.

Story for another day for literally a year from now. The picture of Blanche, the cat now starts this shitty thrift store painting turns into a shitty evil thrift store painting with glowing eyes and things. Everybody's doing their version of coming up with a solution. Prof is reading Kung Fu is kicking fantasy also there. Kung Fu tries to she runs to try the phone it wraps herself around her neck. She gives it a Kung Fu kicking it explodes. The the ghost of Gorgeous Lash Auntie is clearly not happy about how good Kung Fu is a Kung Fu. So it attacks her directly and we get a backyard fight sequence with smog.

They battle each other in Mortal Kombat one on one. It's very chaotic. It's a lot of fun. I can't imagine anybody watching this wouldn't enjoy Kung Fu in particular. She's a great character. Very active. She gets all the cool moments and all the fun lines. Cut to Mr. Togo. He's in the village, but he can't find the house. Oh, Mr. Togo. Cut to the house. Proff remember is that Auntie mentioned Blanche in the letter and she tells Kung Fu, this sparks something in her. She tells Kung Fu destroy the portrait of the cat. Kung Fu attempts to do just that but she's delivering a flying Kung Fu kick to destroy it and a hanging light fixture grabs her and eats her up head first. Her legs are kicking furiously out of the light fixture. We see some insane green screen effects as the disembodied heads and legs and hands of everybody who's

died are floating around in the anti-supernatural world. All of them. And then blanches the blanch portrait, powers up and it gets even more evil looking. And we're sure this is the end, but then Kung Fu's legs fly out of the light fixture to deliver a final coup d'état of this portrait and it shrieks and starts vomiting blood everywhere. Auntie goes shrieks and she starts leaking blood everywhere. Oh we hear this cats screaming. That's how it works. Probably some of that there too. Some of that there too too Yeah, me oh me oh me oh Some of that The house is filling with blood just gallons and gallons and gallons of bright red blood

Proff reads the diary to talks about how he'll come back and save me and fantasy knows in her heart that this means mr Togo she screams for him Why isn't he here? He promised me cut to Melon stand Melon man Hmm Mr. Togo rolls up in his dune buggy with the funky 70s rock that's been accompanying him throughout the film He meets the melon man and he asks some where the girls are and the melons guys like oh, they were they were eating Like they were eating

He asks mr. Togo if he likes melons and togo says no, I like bananas he likes melons and togo says no, I like bananas. Amen, bro. Somehow that is enough to send the melon guy backwards and he disintegrates into a cartoon skeleton screaming and Mr. Togo runs to the front seat of his dune buggy in Iraq, back in fourth and horror. But skeleton looks so cool too. I know I keep saying this, but it's such a fun skeleton.

Cut back to the house. The final two fantasy and prof are floating on a door just like Jack and Kate. I mean, it's not the cold Atlantic. It's hot blood. Prof is reading the diary, but her glasses fall off and into the hot blood. And unfortunately, that is the opportunity

that a jar with teeth needs to swim through the blood and drag her off the door. Henshaw, some nasty. I didn't even know it was a jar. I thought it was like a pie-byte to look this one up. Her body worlds round and round under water and is ultimately dissolved by the blood. And the way this effect was done is it's like a chroma key thing where they suspended her and rotated her in mid-air as they poured blue paint on her which slowly made the

body seem to design. We get a reprise of the house theme as fantasy drifts on her door to the stairwell, the top floor, has not yet been consumed with blood. Fantasy sees gorgeous in her beautiful bridal gown looking radiant holding blanche. She has a tiddy out. We see in the reflection of the water that this is actually auntie with a titty out. Fantasy doesn't seem to realize that she just seems happy to see her friend. And the last we see a fantasy is gorgeous pulling her towards her chest and

stroking her hair and then gorgeous eyes flash. Cut to Ryoko Emma. Our beautiful soft stepmother with her wind machine, which is not calm down at all. Her hair is breezy, her diaphanous garments are flowing in beautiful translucent as she drives toward the house to see gorgeous and invite her to the villa. She is wearing a sheer peach blouse and white pants. She's not afraid of sitting on an ice cream sandwich whatsoever. Her dramatic theme is now a vocal love song with Schmaltz, Selirik's The Effective. Why don't you move into this house as my wife? Let's start a new life together, you and me. Why not?

We see her walk by the Mellon stand. We're Mr. Togo's car is parked in the driver's seat rather than Togo himself. We see a gigantic pile about the size of a man of yellow bananas. bananas. And the implication here is that through some combination of sorcery and fright Mr. Togo is now this pilot. He is the banana man. He prefers bananas to melons. There you go. Well, he got his wish. Emma continues toward the house flicking her hair saying hello to a nest of baby birds. And

when she finally arrives, who should greet her but gorgeous and beautiful white traditional Japanese attire she greets her stepmother and invites her in for which Emma is very grateful Emma asks gorgeous where are your friends? Twitch Gorgeous replies they're still sleeping but they'll get up soon they wake up when they're hungry. Blanche the cat scampers by as Emma extends her hand to her new stepdaughter. Gorgeous takes Emma's hand and the host love theme swells as Gorgeous's eyes flash and Emma is completely emulated and flayed. Every single part of her catches fire except for her diaphanous white scarf. We then hear the following line from Gorgeous. Even after the flesh perishes, one can live in the hearts of others, together with the

feelings one has for them. Therefore, the story of love must be told many times, so that the spirits of lovers may live forever, forever. The one thing that never perishes, the only promise, is love. And credits over a fake Beatles song by Godiiego as you see our actors playing in a field Little shots them dancing next to a cartoon image of the house. Are you gonna say that? That final quote in our wedding is that part of your like MC I Can I won't

You're feeling out babe feel your gut. your gut, yeah, play with your gut. Play with your gut, is that what you said? Play with your gut. Play with your gut. Fought reactions now that you've been reminded of the film and its many effects and its many outlandish kills. One thing I have that's not overall reaction but a specific image that I remember that you didn't linger on but that I really like a lot is you were like talking about this movie distinguishing it from these older types of Japanese movies. Sure.

And like especially ones that take place in the feudal era and I don't know I think a lot about like there's this great book by Tana Zaki called In Praise of Darkness that's about like Westernization of Japan and about specifically the Westernization of Japanese aesthetics and he talks a lot about the architecture of houses in that book and and I didn't really occur to me watching this movie ever but then you talking about it made me remember this ending scene with when the aunt is like at her most beautiful at her most youthful. Radiant, wearing little white pants, she's wearing a very modern woman's outfit as opposed to the very traditional outfit. But the house kind of like reverts back in its final form when everything like it's when shit hits the wall and you know we've gone down the rabbit hole and the limbs are flying everywhere. The kind of final image we get of the house it's a very traditional Japanese house.

It's no longer this haunted mansion, Victorian thing that like the house icon it goes. No, it's got sliding doors, it's tiny screens, and they kneel across a low table from one side or to extend a hand to one another. Yeah, that's true. And it's like we go back to the old world, we go back to like that older style.

It's not necessarily the older style of filmmaking, obviously not, but it's like the old world that those films depict and like the pre-industrialization, the pre-atomic bomb. You know, it's like we're going back in the past and I don't know. There's something like really dope about that and haunting obviously. But I love that it's tied up. I guess I brought it up because it's tied up with the house. And after all, that's what movies call it. I mean, you can't deny the importance of the house in this narrative of the movie's going to be. So yeah, but I like how it's like, it's not cheap and it's like, I would say that it goes deeper than JAWS.

JAWS is a cool movie, but I would agree. Yeah, it's like having the sort of the main threat be this house and then the house changes forms, that changes form at the end, it like show us the, that's the thing that the house really is underneath at all. It's like, it's cool to me. Wait, how does that connect to the darkness book? Oh, well, he talks about like, with like lighting, western lighting. How like western...

Oh, lighting crew! That's funny, that's a funny comparison. Yeah, interesting, but he talks about western lighting, how like Europeans, white people love everything illuminated. We want to see things. And with music, we want a clear discernible melody. We want to know things. We want to understand the world. We want to know the answers to everything.

And he loves a Japanese house. You go outside and you have to get your feet wet a little bit. And you have to be in the chilly outside while you poop, and you go back inside to go to bed. And there's these things that are maybe uncomfortable, like your house is gonna be dark and shadowy. You're not gonna exactly be able to see everything as clearly. But that mystery, like that shade, that darkness,

is like the spice of life. It's like the beauty of life, and it provides much deeper meaning than just being able to see things whenever you want to. Right. Oh, I think something that kind of stuck out to me in like remembering the film is there is like this cartoon register of color throughout. Like you were saying that MS paint blood, the red blood, but there's also like there's also a lot of shadow, it seems like. Like that shadow is what's making it kind of scary

and spooky, because it's not like a two-dimensional cartoon vibe where it's like bright and primary. It has that and shadow, and it's like, I don't know. It has your right, it has both, it's a very saturated, colorful, at times even like hand-painted feelings. I thought about it. Yeah. At other times, they're like running down

these like very dark and hallways and you can see like, it'll only be let by the moonlight or whatever they're doing. Right, yeah. Or whatever. But like the melody, the piano, Kellet's got very bright effects and some green screen work.

The actual like room that it takes place in is very dark. Yeah, yeah, and I think it does remind me. I mentioned at the very beginning when I was trying to guess what you were going to talk about, but this is a spear yeah, with the saturation of the color, but there's so much dark. Yeah, very bright, bright neon reds, neon yellows, neon blues for sure, for sure. I wonder which one came first and if there's any cross. think came out similar times. Oh shit! They both came out in 1977 so they were contemporaries. Oh my gosh that's kind of cool! That's cool! That's really

cool. They're good double-feet. Great double-feet. And very interesting when you compare them to like what's going on around that time in American Horus and you got Friday the 13th you've got Halloween. Yeah, these very conventionally lit let's say dark realistic there's not these like saturated bright neons and over the top fantastical killers and these sorts of things. So what is the reaction contemporary in 1977, the Eurosis Period House, to this film that even now stands out as notably weird, I would say. It is a tale of two receptions. Film critics largely either ignore or deride it, despite their initial enthusiasm. Toho ends up

hating it. Oh no! Even as it goes on to be a commercial success, Obeyashi has a script that has all the notes of from Toho on it, and they're all to the effective. I had fun, but the movie was awful nonsense. Or please make a memorable masterpiece next time. Oh. Um. I wondered like, how would you not expect that

from the script though? Like the piano eats her fingers. And- Yeah, they were, they were into it when they signed that on the dog in the right three hours after the fact. I've heard some people have reactions to this movie in particular, where it's like everything looks fake.

You know, it's like the matte paintings that I love so much, for instance, that like it didn't look real, but that's the joy of the movie. You know, I think, and the good is a lot of stuff like that. And deliberately so. So, yeah, and I think and the good is a lot of stuff like that and deliberately so yeah And I think if if you're looking at a movie trying to like find all the seams

Then you're gonna find them all over the place with this movie like it MS paint blood and she'll like that Yeah, yeah, it's a movie. It's a movie the glorifies the glorifies the Artificiality but then also at the same times there are sometimes where I'm looking at a very artificial Heighten-seeming thing that has like a crazy backdrop and the character did it and I'm literally like okay so how did you do this? Totally. And I suspect the answer is probably a combination of like collage and a fake sky and green screen. Like there's all kinds of shit where I'm like I don't even know how you did that. That's very cool. It's very advanced. But it's like when you go to the theater you know you go to a great play that has cool set design.

It's like a cardboard cutout is the house behind them. But eventually you get sucked in. You get completely transported and the magic takes over. And like that is this whole movie, I think. For sure. One Toho Big Shot tells one of the producers. I didn't want to have a hit with this sort of movie. Another memory from Toho says, unfortunately, the movie is a huge hit kids love it

And indeed the teenage audience has been pulled from its televisions and back to the cinemas Chigumi's friends tell her you're done made a weird movie finally finally movie we can watch Obayashi expresses pride that the movie won young people back to theaters quote movie we can watch. Yeah, I do. That's the highest compliment. Uh-huh. Obeashi expresses pride that the movie won young people back to theaters. Quote, I put my pride on the line and made this film with faith in my love for cinema. I was proud for the fact that with house, I had made a real filmmaker's film in the classic sense. That's why I put a movie at the beginning to indicate that this is what cinema is all about. Yeah, boy. A boy. A podcast.

A podcast. A real podcast. A real podcast. Yes. Ovi actually becomes a beloved and iconic Japanese filmmaker whose many feature films are studied for their brilliance. In 2016, he is diagnosed with stage 4 terminal lung cancer. And given months to live, he takes this as his cue to finally start production

on Hanukatami, his passion project, 40 years in the making, which is released in 2017 to Bountiful Acclaim and Awards. He is even able to finish another final film, Labyrinth of Cinema, before he dies in 2020 of lung cancer at the age of 82. Wow. Wow. Yeah, it's kept making films even on Death Story.

Wow. In the late Aughts, Janice Films, a Criterion collection affiliated imprint brought house to the West for the first time to be enjoyed by a new generation of film audiences, film makers, and film lovers. Present company included. Though Obiashi has passed on us, have other key people in the film's creation, like Chihokatsura, who co-wrote the script in Yoko Minami-Dahu Pladanti, House remains a monument to playful creativity, a wonderfully unpretentious and accessible example of Art House theater that absolutely

anybody listening should seek out and enjoy. The only downside that I can think of is that if you get too scared, you may turn into a large pile of bananas. Whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo We did it. We did a game. We made it across the finish line. Wow. Great. Great. Great episode. Yeah, that's cool. I haven't seen that. It's been years since I've seen it. Yeah, we watched it. It's really good. It's really in the pandemic. Yeah, I don't think we did it as much justice as we should out for your first wall. Seeing it because I think it was like our second movie of a double feature.

We hit play, I'm pretty sure at like 1130 p.m. Oh dang. Well interestingly, House was originally screened as I believe the second movie of a double feature. And it was partnered up with some romance. That's funny. That's so funny. Which is the funniest thing I can imagine.

That's it. Because it's so much its own thing. Yeah. And speaking of double features, if you were into today's movie discussion, why not join us over on coffee, KO-Hi-F-N-F-I-DOT-COM slash bitter sweet-imp for me for $3 a month, you can access the Better Sweet Film Club. It's me and Josie discussing movies. We've started off with a double feature, both Lucha Libre inspired, influenced, infused movies. Here's a little preview. We kind of get him doing the little flyover tour of the wax works in his museum.

And so he says, you know, here's the famous American cowboy Gary Cooper. Here's Gandhi, here's Joseph Stalin, he's got the inventor of the Gellatine in a little prop Gellatine. And if you're anything like me, Josie, you were sitting there like, Gandhi is gonna attack some people.

This is sick. I'm so into this ride. No for sick. I'm so in for this ride No, for real. I was like Gandhi Stalin Gary Cooper. I was imagine all Santos gonna have such a good fight See with Gary Cooperies could be all pistols. Linging I was so disappointed What did you think of that? Josie and Mitchell's a pretty good clip right? Yeah, that's great. Oh my gosh dude Yeah rockin it and I'm so excited for upcoming screening. Yeah, we're gonna be,

we'll start to, dinosaur baby, we're gonna be watching dinosaur. Yeah, I will be watching that, too. It's the beloved Disney classic. Can't wait to watch it. How high are we all gonna be when we watch it? I'm gonna get high as a fucking, I'm gonna be,

high as a Stigosaurus neck. Yeah, I'm gonna insert, you're fucking... Oh, I'm gonna be higher as a stegosaurus neck. Yeah, great answer. Great answer. Start right that down. Thank you so much for joining us for three seasons of Bitter Sweden for me. If you liked the show, please leave a review, subscribe, follow us on Instagram, a Bitter Sweden for me, or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it. We've got new episodes every other Sunday. Thanks for joining us.

With the sources I used for this episode of Better Sweden for me, included the movie itself House directed by Nobu Hiko Oveashi, as well as the movie Emotion, also directed by Nobu Hiko Oveashi, and Kuroneko, directed by Kanadoshindo. I watched a compilation of Nobu Hiko Oveashi and Kuroneko directed by Kanadoshindo. I watched a compilation of Nobu Hiko Obeyashi commercials with English subtitles hosted on YouTube by MatchboxSinne. I read Beyond House Nobu Hiko Obeyashi by David Hudson for the Daily for Criterion Collection April 13th, 2020. Nobu Hiko Obeyashi, Vagabond of Time, published November 10th, 2009 by Paul Rokai and Midnight

Eye, Visions of Japanese Cinema. I watch the Criterian channel featureettes including Nobuhiko Oveashi and Kruehn House, House Appraisal, Double Exposure House, and House, Trick or Truth. And I read the Wikipedia pages for Nobuhiko Oveashi, Buck and Echo, and House. Thank you to our monthly coffee subscriber Jonathan Mountain. If you want to become a monthly subscriber and get access to the Bittersweet Film Club, our monthly movie club that we're just now starting, but it's already pretty good, you can join us at KO-Hip and FI.com slash Bittersweet and Canadian.

Our interstitial music was followed me by Uncle Krakker. The song you're currently listening to is the main theme of Housefight. Go Diego and Asai Kobayashi. We also used the Munsters theme from the Munsters and the best jazz club in New Orleans by Pablo Argento. Their student for me is a proud member of the 604 podcast network to stay frigging sweet like a box of Halloween candy. Thank you so much for joining us and congratulations to Josie Mitchell.

You deserve all the happiness in the world. box of Halloween candy. Thank you so much for joining us and congratulations to Josie Mitchell. You deserve all the happiness in the world.