Hausu (House – Criterion Collection) (Blu-Ray)
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 a series of mattes, animation, and collage effects. Equal parts 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.
Blu-Ray
- 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 director 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 film critic Chuck Stephens
