…in which it takes me over 7500 words to explain that I am lost for words…
[NB: Possibly NSFW: a little nudity, some blood, random body-parts, and a super-sized serving of WEIRD.]
Awww… Kitty!
#1 by Richard on August 16, 2017 - 10:18 am
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Another take:
http://366weirdmovies.com/house-hausu-1977/
#2 by The Rev. on August 18, 2017 - 5:05 pm
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Ooooooh, this is going to be good. I love this movie, and I can’t wait to see what you thought of it.
#3 by blake on August 19, 2017 - 7:55 pm
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I saw this for the first time this year. There are horror movies that I watch simply for the experience and chance to say, “I’ve seen that.” But this one that I really want to revisit later, to see what I missed and just enjoy the bizarre visuals and great photography once more.
#4 by ronald on August 19, 2017 - 9:43 pm
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I see that you didn’t include captions for the images, which I suppose proves that you were indeed literally at a loss for words. 😉
#5 by Braineater on August 20, 2017 - 9:58 pm
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You’ve reminded me of something I always meant to investigate, but which I’ve never followed up on. It’s seemed to me that just about every depiction of a human skeleton in a classic Japanese horror/fantasy film has been stylized almost to the point of absurdity — think of the chained skeletons in The Living Skeleton, for instance. I was wondering if the traditional social taboo on handling the bodies of the dead extended, in a sense, to handling anything representing the dead, except in the most stylized way. Or is that a ludicrously obvious question, and am I just the last to catch on?
Oh — and I think Chigumi may have plagiarized her story from her cat. My cats think Hausu is neo-realism.
#6 by lyzard on August 20, 2017 - 10:15 pm
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Well, it isn’t obvious to me—although I’m not the best person to ask, which brings me to a question of my own:
I’m trying to plug some holes in my watching of Japanese horror films, and need to ask—was there a significant supernatural horror film between Hausu and Ringu some twenty years later? I haven’t been able to identify one, but that seems like an improbably large lapse of years.
I’ve been calling poor Kara “Blanche” since I watched it, which is grossly unfair: she isn’t a demon hell-cat, just a whiny pain in the butt.
#7 by blake on August 21, 2017 - 7:17 pm
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I suppose there’s EVIL DEAD TRAP and SWEET HOME, the latter of which is considered to be the birth of the survival horror video game (both the game and the film came out the same year).
#8 by Braineater on August 22, 2017 - 5:13 pm
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There’s also Oshima’s Empire of Passion from the year after Hausu. It’s even got a haunted well in it… but not at all like Sadako’s.
#9 by lyzard on August 22, 2017 - 5:52 pm
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Ooh, yes. And that *is* available here, which I guess illustrates the difference between ghosts+sex and ghosts-sex.
#10 by Chentzilla on August 22, 2017 - 5:12 pm
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There’s also Tetsuo: The Iron Man, or is that a different subgenre?
#11 by lyzard on August 22, 2017 - 5:48 pm
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Science fiction / steampunk?
#12 by blake on August 21, 2017 - 7:18 pm
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Also, the EKO EKO AZARAK films predated RINGU.
#13 by lyzard on August 21, 2017 - 10:49 pm
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Thanks for those suggestions—they’re all sufficiently different from each other and the films that bookend them to underscore that this was a time of transition and experimentation. Sweet Home sounds as if it is something like what I’m looking for, though of course it’s not available here…
#14 by Braineater on August 22, 2017 - 5:10 pm
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It’s worth noting, too, that Eko Eko… and Ringu were inspired by popular publications (a manga and a novel), and Sweet Home had a game tie-in; it seems like Japanese supernatural cinema wasn’t innovating on its own anymore, and needed that cross-fertilization with other forms to get going again.
#15 by lyzard on August 22, 2017 - 5:47 pm
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I guess that’s the point I was making—there was one of those genre lulls that happen naturally enough, and a few spluttering efforts that didn’t reignite the cycle.