HAUSU
Collectively these girls inhabit a world straight out of a seventies Saturday morning cereal commercial, one in which people rise to greet the day with arms outstretched to the sun as cartoon rainbows play across the horizon to the strains of treacly soft rock. As Obayashi presents it, you wouldn’t be at all surprised if one of those freaky psychedelic football mascots from Syd and Marty Kroft’s PuffnStuff or Lidsville were to bound into frame at any moment. Oshare’s life outside of the group, however, is presented a little differently, though in no less cavity-promoting terms. Hers is a world of movie-fuelled romanticism with the kitsch level pushed to belligerent extremes (think Douglas Sirk on eleven): Beyond the balcony of her father’s high-rise flat, a permanent artificial sunset stretches across the sky like a glorious, lurid bruise, and, as we watch Oshare, all of the camera’s means of idealizing dewy young womanhood–gauzy soft focus, halo lighting, fan-blown hair captured in dreamy slow motion–are amped to the level of the grotesque. Taken together, the world that’s presented in the first section of Hausu is one in which a malignant, over-ripe greeting card sentimentality has poisoned the very atmosphere. And, given that, it should come as no surprise that rottenness lurks just around the corner–or, at least, just a short train ride away.
#1 by Blake Matthews on April 7, 2008 - 4:43 pm
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Does the kung fu girl get a cool, kung fu-related death?
#2 by Joshua on April 8, 2008 - 7:49 am
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For the record, Amazon Japan lists this film here. There’s nothing in the listing about PAL/NTSC, but the only language listed is Japanese. Plus it’s about $50 American. Maybe grey market is the way to go for the time being…
#3 by The Rev. D.D. on April 9, 2008 - 10:39 am
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“…I would like to begin this review by stating that Hausu…is not for everyone.”
You had me at “…we watch Melody getting eaten, and then digested, by a grand piano…”
#4 by Todd on April 9, 2008 - 12:13 pm
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Yeah, that piano sequence alone is pretty much worth the price of admission…
…though, having said that, perhaps not if the price of admission it $50. I went back and ckecked on the German DVD release over at Amazon.de, which is where I bought it a couple of years ago. Of course, back then it came out to about $20 and now, with the current exchange rate, its $36 +post., so, yes, grey market might be the way to go for the time being.
#5 by Todd on April 9, 2008 - 12:59 pm
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“Does the kung fu girl get a cool, kung fu-related death?”
Why, yes, she does. It involves a kung fu fight with a lamp every bit as epic as Santo’s battle with a lamp in “Profanadores de Tumbas”.
#6 by lyzard on April 9, 2008 - 4:33 pm
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I would just like to say that being part of a community where conversations like this take place delights me to the very core of my being.
#7 by Todd on April 9, 2008 - 5:59 pm
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That’s a good thing, Lyz, because I can go on forever about films in which people fight with lamps. Or, that is, I could if I hadn’t already completely exhausted the topic in that one sentence.
#8 by Blake Matthews on April 9, 2008 - 6:05 pm
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I’m sure there must be some HK flick out there that involves some crazy fight with a lamp.
#9 by lyzard on April 9, 2008 - 6:43 pm
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They kind of fight with the Lamp Of Evil in Amityville IV. Which I find tops the AV Club’s list of The 23 Most Ridiculous Movie Adversaries:
http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/night_of_the_killer_lamp_23
#10 by todd on April 9, 2008 - 7:23 pm
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And that’s another delightful thing about being part of this community: One can never presume to have had the last word on the subject of cinematic battles between humans and lamps. Man, those lamps are bastards.
#11 by Matthew Fudge on April 10, 2008 - 3:57 am
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Hey! Some of my best friends are lamps.
#12 by The Rev. D.D. on April 10, 2008 - 10:06 am
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I think I’d have put the titular beasties from Slugs on that list, maybe even over that lamp. I mean, a lamp can lie in wait until you’re close enough to strangle or sic flies on. But if you see a bunch of slugs just hanging around, you’re immediately suspicious. And if they all start oozing toward you…you just slowly amble out of the way and call your local malacologist.
I think the Tabonga should’ve been on there too, for much the same reason. Plus it’s just ridiculous-looking.
My favorite on there is “general proximity to nature.” Heehee.
#13 by El Santo on April 10, 2008 - 11:46 am
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Re: that AV Club article…
“George Berry’s inexplicable surreal-camp-horror film [Death Bed: The Bed that Eats] recently earned a mention in Patton Oswalt’s comedy album Werewolves & Lollipops, in which he suggested Rape Stove as a possible sequel.”
I’m very nearly embarrassed to say it, but I now find myself wishing that somebody would actually make Rape Stove. They’d have to really mean it, though, or it wouldn’t be half as funny.