Part of Weekend Classics: Animal Kingdom

How to describe Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s 1977 movie HOUSE? As a psychedelic ghost tale? A stream-of-consciousness bedtime story? An episode of Scooby Doo as directed by Dario Argento? 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, only to come face to face with evil spirits, bloodthirsty pianos and a demonic housecat. Too absurd to be genuinely terrifying, yet too nightmarish to be merely comic, HOUSE seems like it was beamed to Earth from another planet. Or perhaps the mind of a child — the director fashioned the script after the eccentric musings of his 11-year-old daughter, then employed all the tricks in his analog arsenal (mattes, animation and collage) to make them a visually astonishing, raucous reality. (Synopsis courtesy of Janus Films)

See also: CatVideoFest 2024 (Fri-Thu, Aug 2-8)

“Delirious, deranged, gonzo or just gone, baby, gone -- no single adjective or even a pileup does justice to HOUSE.” —Manohla Dargis, New York Times

“A silly, surreal cross of Japanese horror, anime and just plain weirdness, this 1977 fever dream of styles makes you wonder: How did this ever get made?” —John Monaghan, Detroit Free Press