House

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House

1977

1h 27m

Mystery & Thriller

Comedy

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Watchlist

Watchlist

Tomatometer

Popcornmeter

90%

Tomatometer

42 Reviews

78%

Popcornmeter

2,500+ Ratings

In an effort to avoid spending time with her father and his creepy new lover, young Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) resolves to visit her aunt's remote mansion. With six of her closest friends in tow, including the musically inclined Melody (Eriko Tanaka) and the geeky Prof (Ai Matsubara), Gorgeous arrives at the estate, where supernatural events occur almost immediately. A severed head takes flight, household appliances come to life and a portrait of a cat seems to contain an evil spirit.

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Critics Consensus

House is a gleefully demented collage of grand guginol guffaws and bizarre sequences.

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Scott Tobias

AV Club

09/27/2022

House seems born out of restlessness and contempt for the status quo; it’s one of those movies that doubles as a piece of film criticism, intent on exposing and exploding all the tiresome clichés that commercial cinema constantly recycles.

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Carrie Rickey

Philadelphia Inquirer

09/27/2022

3/4

Too absurd to be genuinely terrifying, yet too nightmarish to be merely comic, "House" seems like it was beamed to Earth from another planet.

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John Monaghan

Detroit Free Press

09/27/2022

3/4

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?

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Brian Bisesi

Horror Movie Club Podcast

Oct 22

3.5/5

House's biggest strength and weakness is that it is utterly disorienting which can be very engaging for the viewer but can also keep you from being grounded in the film.

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Matt Brunson

Film Frenzy

10/20/2024

3/4

A gonzo horror flick that surely must have influenced Sam Raimi as he prepped The Evil Dead.

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Cole Smithey

ColeSmithey.com

10/31/2023

FIVE STARS

Visually and viscerally stunning from start to finish, “House” is much more than a mere masterpiece.

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Jack F

@MovieFan111 Nov 17

Not many people know about this movie. And that's probably a good thing. I did not like it. I mean, was it supposed to be scary, funny, something in between? Free on the Internet Archive.

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Jonathan K

@aFIREintheattic Nov 17

That was absolutely wild. The most bizarre, chaotic, hilarious, strange, and visually erratic movie I think I've ever seen. Had me cracking up. Probably said, "What am I watching right now? This is insane," a handful of times and I kind of loved it. There's nothing like it. It's singular. It's one-of-a-kind, and no one could ever make this again -- partly because of the technology we have now. No one would do a movie like this. It almost feels like a student project, but it's far too brilliant to be just that. Visually, it's something else. The editing is nuts, the sequences and the cuts are madness. The whole thing is that. Madness.

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mark s

Nov 4

This is simply the worst non-American made movie ever made. Usually, that would get me excited, as I gleefully seek out awful film. Problem is, it's not 'so bad it's good' awful. It's just awful on all levels. It's as though some stoned 12 year old boys thought they'd have a laugh and patch together a bunch of garbage spliced from random crap they found on the internet. Worse. They play the same cloying song over and over and over again throughout the entire 'film'. Stuck in my head forever! Simply bad in a bad way.

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Brian S

Oct 29

A kaleidoscopic fever dream collage of pop-art chaos and haunted-house absurdity. It’s disorienting, self-aware, and bursting with late-’70s energy, too psychedelically abstract to terrify yet too darkly uncanny to dismiss as mere camp.

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Erik S

Oct 15

Too unusual to be ignored, House doesn’t even attempt to orient the viewer with a visually consistent baseline reality. Even before the film breaches the supernatural, the images are intermittently conveyed rendered using painted backgrounds, slow motion and pixel animation just ‘cause. Love it or hate it, at least watch it to talk about it.

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Tim L

@timmingaround Aug 2

Just absolutely bonkers! Jaw dropped for most of the movie, cracking up as well, but like….what did I watch?

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Nobuhiko Ôbayashi

Director

Kimiko Ikegami

Oshare

Ai Matsubara

Gari

Miki Jinbo

Kunfû

Eriko Tanaka

Merodii

Kiyohiko Ozaki

Keisuke Togo

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Synopsis

In an effort to avoid spending time with her father and his creepy new lover, young Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) resolves to visit her aunt's remote mansion. With six of her closest friends in tow, including the musically inclined Melody (Eriko Tanaka) and the geeky Prof (Ai Matsubara), Gorgeous arrives at the estate, where supernatural events occur almost immediately. A severed head takes flight, household appliances come to life and a portrait of a cat seems to contain an evil spirit.

Director: Nobuhiko Ôbayashi
Producer: Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, Yorihiko Yamada
Screenwriter: Chiho Katsura
Production Co: Toho Company Ltd.
Genre: Mystery & Thriller, Comedy
Original Language: Japanese
Release Date (Streaming): Nov 29, 2011
Runtime: 1h 27m

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