House: The Housemaidens
By October 26, 2010
A coming-of-age story about a clique of teenage schoolgirls who will never grow old and a demon spirit in the guise of a spinster who was never young, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s eye-poppingly demented Read more »
- Japan
- 1977
- 88 minutes
- Color
- 1.33:1
- Japanese
- Spine #539
SYNOPSIS: How to describe Nobuhiko Obayashi’s indescribable 1977 movie House (Hausu)? As a psychedelic ghost tale? A stream-of-consciousness bedtime story? An episode of Scooby-Doo as directed by Mario Bava? Any of the above will do for this hallucinatory head trip about a schoolgirl who travels with six classmates to her ailing aunt’s creaky country home and comes face-to-face with evil spirits, a demonic house cat, a bloodthirsty piano, and other ghoulish visions, all realized by Obayashi via mattes, animation, and collage effects. Equally absurd and nightmarish, House might have been beamed to Earth from some other planet. Never before available on home video in the United States, it’s one of the most exciting cult discoveries in years.
Cast & CreditsOpen
Cast
| Gorgeous | Kimiko Ikegami |
| Kung Fu | Miki Jinbo |
| Fantasy | Kumiko Oba |
| Prof | Ai Matsubara |
| Mac | Mieko Sato |
| Melody | Eriko Tanaka |
| Sweet | Masayo Miyako |
| Mr. Togo | Kiyohiko Ozaki |
| Daddy | Saho Sasazawa |
| Watermelon man | Asei Kobayashi |
| Auntie's fiancé | Tomokazu Miura |
| Teacher | Fumi Dan |
| Godiego | Godiego |
| Ryoko Ema | Haruko Wanibuchi |
| Auntie | Yoko Minamida |
Credits
| Director | Nobuhiko Obayashi |
| Producer | Nobuhiko Obayashi and Yorihiko Yamada |
| Concept by | Chigumi Obayashi |
| Screenplay | Chiho Katsura |
| Cinematography | Yoshitaka Sakamoto |
| Production design | Kazuo Satsuya |
| Music | Asei Kobayashi and Mickie Yoshino |
| Songs performed by | Godiego |
| Editing | Nobuo Ogawa |
| Director of special effects | Nobuhiko Obayashi |
Disc Features
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
- Constructing a “House,” a new video piece featuring interviews with director Nobuhiko Obayashi, story scenarist and daughter of the filmmaker Chigumi Obayashi, and screenwriter Chiho Katsura
- Emotion, a 1966 experimental film by Obayashi
- New video appreciation by director Ti West (House of the Devil)
- Theatrical trailer
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic Chuck Stephens
From the CurrentView the Current »
Film Essays
Photo Galleries
Videos
On Five
At Work with Curtis Tsui on Paths of Glory
August 05, 2010
I work in the editorial department here at Criterion, and I’ve recently taken it on myself to do a little poking around at the office, to find out what my colleagues have going Read more »
Contests
Caption Contest Winners
October 06, 2010
Last month, we asked you to give us a hand in creating brief ad taglines for our October titles. The response, in comments on the Criterion Current, was so overwhelming that we had trouble narrowing Read more »
News
Introducing Kuroneko
October 22, 2010
Hot on the heels of the hit theatrical run of Nobuhiko Obayashi’s cult sensation House, Janus Films is premiering another unsung Japanese horror movie with a feline twist. Kuroneko (Black Cat), a Read more »
Clippings
Top Ten by Design
January 07, 2011
If you’re a movie lover, you’re probably overdosing on year-end top ten lists these days. Odds are, though, none of the ones you’ve seen are quite like this one by Sam Smith, the graphic designer who Read more »
Entering House
November 05, 2010
In a new interview at the blog Hamster Triathlon, Criterion’s Curtis Tsui reveals that he was a fan of Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House long before it became cinema’s cult crush object du jour. Tsui, who produced Read more »
Introducing Nobuhiko Obayashi
November 13, 2009
Japanese director Nobuhiko Obayashi, who made the utterly bonkers 1977 kinda-horror film House, currently getting a first-time American theatrical run from Janus Films, is profiled by Paul Read more »
Press Notes
Press Notes: House
November 02, 2010
How to describe the indescribable? A slew of critics, slain by Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1977 House, take up the challenge. Stuart Galbraith IV writes for DVD Talk that the funky film is “like a cross between Read more »
