“Who are you?” I asked the pencil-necked geek hiding in what was formerly my Beanie Baby archive. 

“I’m Albert Simmons,” he said as he dabbed his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief. “I’m the accountant for the Gooselord and his gang.” 

“Where are my Beanie Babies?” I asked with clenched fists. “Did these hoodlums throw them on a bonfire?”

“No,” Albert said, shaking his head. “They were sold on Ebay for half their market value.” — To be continued. 

Tonight’s movie is 1977’s House from director Nobuhiko Obayashi. This is a Japanese language film and one of the strangest I’ve ever encountered. Director Ti West once remarked that the director of this motion picture used every camera trick in the book in the making of this movie. At its core, House is a haunted house movie with a sense of humor. It had remained relatively unknown here in the west until Criterion released the DVD a few years back.

House begins with an animated intro and for some reason I’m getting The Rocky Horror Picture Show vibe, but House is really its own animal. Our main character is a Japanese schoolgirl named Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) who is upset with her film composer dad because he wants to remarry after being a widower for ten years. She decides to abandon her dad during summer vacation and visit her Auntie (Yōko Minamida). Seems that Auntie never remarried after losing her husband during World War II and has become a recluse in her old house in the countryside. Joining her are her school friends Kung Fu (Miki Jinbo), Fantasy (Kumiko Oba), Melody (Eriko Tanaka), Mac (Mieko Sato), Sweet (Masayo Miyako), and Prof (Ai Matsubara). 

Kung Fu is called Kung Fu because she knows karate. Fantasy is prone to flights of fancy. Melody loves music and can play the guitar and piano. Mac loves to eat. Sweet is sweet I guess. Prof is smart because she wears glasses and doesn’t believe in ghosts. Gorgeous is gorgeous. And they all get taken out one by one by the ghosts and monsters inhabiting this quaint country house. Forget about ghosts and monsters. Even the furniture attacks them.

The chandelier shoots crystal shards at them, but Kung Fu kicks them away. The grand piano eats melody’s fingers before devouring the rest of her, kind of like the killer piano in Super Mario 64. I think Fantasy gets attacked by pillows and mattresses, but Prof doesn’t believe her because that’s just plain unscientific. Kung Fu makes short work of some of the ghouls before a dangling ceiling lamp sucks her up and tries to eat her. Kung Fu’s legs still manage to detach from the rest of her body and dish out more damage.

What else? There’s a ramen restaurant that features a bear as one of the cooks. A decapitated head bites Fantasy’s butt which was something you don’t see everyday. A man seemingly gets murdered by bunches of bananas. And at the center of it all is a fluffy white cat with glowing green eyes. Do I know what I’m talking about? Probably not, but House is a good time nonetheless, 

 Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, episode 575, episode 596, episode 597, episode 598, episode 599, episode 642, and episode 643) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.