Editorials
All-Time Great ‘Hausu’ Remains One of Horror’s Weirdest Experiences
“The power of cinema is in the strange and inexplicable.” – Nobuhiko Obayashi
Steven Spielberg’s Jaws created a defining moment in cinematic history on a worldwide scale. It brought the advent of the summer blockbuster, and its massive success inspired countries all over the globe to chase similar success. That included Japan, where audiences had previously lost interest in theatrical releases. Film company Toho approached filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi to develop a film like Jaws. They had no idea what they were in for; the filmmaker found adult brains boring. Instead, bouncing ideas off his young daughter and working with screenwriter Chiho Katsura, the filmmaker created a ghost-and-fantasy film that confounded everyone, save for the young audience that contributed to the film becoming a major hit. As with most genre fare, critical and cultural appreciation has long since turned around on one of horror’s most exceptional, and weirdest offerings.
House, or Hausu, isn’t a film that’s easily explained. Distilled to its most basic premise, seven schoolgirls travel to an aunt’s country home, which turns out to be dangerously haunted. What plays out is unlike any other haunted house experience committed to celluloid. It’s as though Alice went through the looking glass and then tumbled into the nine circles of phantasmagoric hell. On acid. The girls deal with dancing skeletons, extreme blood pools, floating butt-biting heads, and a house that attempts to eat them at every opportunity. A film that begins as over-the-top as this one does could quickly lose momentum in a lesser visionary’s hands. Here, Nobuhiko Obayashi manages to escalate the crazy, topping every zany moment that came before with something even more jaw-dropping.
Save for the basic premise, not much about what transpires makes much sense. Not traditionally, anyway. It’s absurd for absurd’s sake. Of course, that’s what the filmmaker wanted to achieve. This was always meant to be a child’s fantasy film, despite drawing from grim history. Having grown up in Hiroshima Prefecture, Obayashi lost many close childhood friends to the atomic bombing of the Japanese city in 1945. This permeates throughout the film, thematically. Though it’s a narrative saturated in whimsy and surrealism, it’s defined by two generations pre and post-war. Auntie (Yoko Minamida) lived through the war and tragically lost her fiancé to it. Her grief and wrath fuel the haunting, triggered by a group of schoolgirls who have never endured or experienced the hardship of war. For the briefest moment, the mushroom cloud appears on-screen, and the girls giddily say, “it’s like cotton candy!”
It’s not just the symbolism and foray into the bizarre that makes Hausu such an enduring cult favorite, it’s that it’s a collage of techniques, one endless string of technical experiments for the filmmaker. Nobuhiko Obayashi played around with composite shots, fisheye lenses, freeze frames, superimposed imagery, fade-outs, and any other trick in the book. As for special effects, he didn’t allow Toho’s special effects director to film them; Nobuhiko Obayashi wanted the effects to look fake. He had a particular aesthetic in mind, and he went for it with gusto.
Upon release in Japan, critics had no clue how to process this film. In short, critics and studio executives hated it. Even crew members that enjoyed their time working on the film didn’t think highly of the end product. Youth, however, adored it and made it a commercial hit. Perhaps not so surprisingly, Hausu was influential on kids that grew up with the film. Many of which went on to become filmmakers and critics themselves, giving Hausu the reappraisal it deserved.
Visually and narratively, there’s nothing like Hausu, and there never will be again. Nobuhiko Obayashi was a visionary who eschewed traditional rules. A studio tapped him to develop something in the vein of Jaws, but he had no interest in creating another animal attack film. He wanted to make a fantasy for kids, inspired by his childhood. One he looked to his daughter Chigumi Obayashi, credited for the film’s original story, to help him create.
The recent passing of Nobuhiko Obayashi means there’s a good chance you’ve recently revisited the masterful charms of Hausu. If not, I highly recommend watching through the streaming platform Criterion Channel. Unlike most streaming services, Criterion curates their offerings and offers supplemental materials. There’s a 45-minute interview with Nobuhiko Obayashi on the platform that doesn’t just provide a ton of insight into the film’s road to creation but also gives touching anecdotes from the filmmaker on working with the actors and crew. He offers his thoughts on the importance of fantasy and the inner workings of a child’s imaginative brain.
Nobuhiko Obayashi’s spirit, tenacity, and innovation as a filmmaker will be tremendously missed, but at least he left us with one of the most significant entries in weird cinema. Bizarre, bloody, and delightfully surreal, Hausu is an experience…to say the least.
Editorials
‘Bloodstone: Subspecies II’ Revisited: A Bigger, Bolder Follow-Up to Full Moon’s Vampire Cult Classic
Horror sequels are a peculiar thing. In most cases, follow-ups to scary movies tend to retread the same formula with different victims and more over-the-top scares. This is because audiences tend to be more interested in the antagonists of these pictures than anything else, with even main characters becoming disposable when the time comes to produce a sequel.
That’s why some of the most memorable horror sequels are the ones that actually manage to hold onto interesting survivors from previous films while also pushing the story forward instead of having the same thing happen again to a different group of people. From Scream 2 to Dream Warriors (and arguably even The Exorcist III: Legion), there are quite a few of these innovative sequels to go around.
However, if there’s one franchise that deserves more attention when discussing bigger and better continuations that make the most of episodic filmmaking, it has to be Ted Nicolaou’s Subspecies.
The Full Moon classic spawned an indie horror icon, but bizarre sequel Bloodstone: Subspecies II is even more beloved than its predecessor.
Building a Bigger Vampire Saga
While the film itself takes place almost immediately after the events of the first movie, Bloodstone only entered production a couple of years after the release of the original as both Charles Band and Nicolaou weighed the pros and cons of returning to Romania to continue the series. In an effort to maximize efficiency, the team decided to invest in a trilogy where parts II and III, now fully written by Nicolaou, would be filmed simultaneously over the course of a single grueling shoot.
Much like the first Subspecies, Bloodstone’s low budget meant that the filmmakers once again had to cut corners and re-use as many of their resources as possible. Thankfully, the process was much easier this time around as Nicolaou, with the help of Romanian cinematographer Vlad Paunescu and his wife Oana, became more acquainted with local customs and made new friends. Shooting abroad still came with its own unique set of challenges due to a lack of translators and the occasional safety concerns, but the crew managed to make things work by filming things guerrilla-style and setting up shop in abandoned caves and real medieval ruins.
The director’s newfound contacts, coupled with the relative success of the first movie, meant that he was basically given free rein over an assortment of shooting locations usually considered off-limits for indie horror. That’s why Bloodstone features insanely ambitious lighting and effects work even during scenes shot in the middle of a bustling Bucharest. The filmmakers went so far as to project Radu’s Nosferatu-like shadows over local monuments as if he were a Romanian boogeyman, an idea that was actually encouraged by local cinephiles.
In fact, many of the more elaborate scenes here had originally been planned for the first movie before being discarded due to the lack of available resources. It was only with the support of Romanian fans and filmmakers that Bloodstone was able to give Radu a chance to be even more menacing the second time around.
Michelle’s Transformation Takes Center Stage
However, when it came to the American part of the crew, not everyone was able or willing to return for another round of Romanian adventuring. That’s why Radu’s human-loving half-brother Stefan (Michael Watson) is unceremoniously killed off at the beginning of the film while the role of Michelle had to be recast. Denice Duff took over for Laura Mae Tate, with the character now being joined by her sister, Rebecca, played by Melanie Shatner (yes, that Shatner).
In the finished film, we follow Michelle as she awakens to her new life as a vampire and discovers that Radu has murdered her lover. Struggling with grief and her newfound bloodlust, Michelle contacts her sister overseas, with Rebecca soon travelling to Romania on an ill-advised rescue mission. Meanwhile, Radu (Anders Hove) reaches out to his undead Mummy (Pamela Gordon, underneath heavy layers of impressive makeup effects) and promises to deliver her the coveted Bloodstone artifact while also making Michelle his eternal consort.
Revisiting the movie, I was impressed with how introspective this story is when compared to the original. The sequel assumes that you’re already familiar with the previously established characters, so the story wastes no time in exploring the immediate aftermath of the previous film’s events. From Michelle’s reluctant transformation into a creature of the night to Radu’s obvious mommy issues, Nicolaou is way more interested in pushing these characters into new and uncharted territory rather than recycling existing plot points.
Practical Effects and Gothic Atmosphere Still Impress
Yet, much like the first film, it’s Romania itself that makes the movie worth watching. The ruins of Castle Vladislav are even more majestic now, and visiting the moody streets of Bucharest with its surprisingly punk-rock nightlife made for a nice change of pace when compared to the original film’s quiet village setting. Once again, the abundance of interesting locations makes the movie feel much more expensive than it really is, with the filmmakers surrounding our characters with a living, breathing environment that would be impossible to recreate in a studio.
The increased freedom also allowed Nicolaou to flex his filmmaking muscles and tackle more ambitious blocking/composition in the sequel. The low budget and tropey script mean that the visuals don’t always work, but it’s consistently clear that this neo-expressionist style could only come from a passionate team attempting to pay homage to the shadowy horror classics of yesteryear. If the retro atmosphere isn’t enough for you, there’s enough practical gore here to satisfy even the most demanding of horror hounds!
Radu himself is also far more interesting now that Hove is more comfortable working alongside an international crew, with the actor having gone on record explaining that, while he spent more time drinking vodka than working while shooting the first movie, the sequel was a much more creatively satisfying experience for everyone involved. The character’s relationship with his abusive Mummy is also a highlight of the expanded mythology, especially since the practical effects that bring her to life are just as freaky now as they were back in ’93.
My only real gripe with the horror elements of the picture comes from the glaring absence of the diminutive stop-motion minions from the first film, though I guess the surprisingly entertaining addition of Professor Popescu (Michael Denish) and his archeological antics mostly make up for that.
Bloodstone: Subspecies II is obviously the middle chapter of a trilogy, with the ending feeling a lot less definitive than its predecessor as several plot threads are left to dangle in the wind, but I appreciate how the flick explores new ground while remaining faithful to nearly all the ideas that made the original such a good time. While I don’t think it’s as big of an improvement over the first movie as some fans make it out to be, Bloodstone is definitely worth revisiting if you’re a fan of old-fashioned vampire yarns.
Tune in next time for the thrilling conclusion to this initial trilogy, Bloodlust: Subspecies III!
You must be logged in to post a comment.