Director: Nobuhiko Ôbayashi
Writers: Chiho Katsura
Stars: Kimiko Ikegami, Miki Jinbo, Kumiko Ohba
Buy from Amazon: https://amzn.to/2LyKqLd
1 Hour, 27 Minutes
Gorgeous and Fantasy are friends in high school. Gorgeous’s father works for the film industry and he’s just back from Italy. He brought his new wife, who is going to be Gorgeous’s mother, which is news to her.
The next morning Gorgeous meets up with her six friends: Mac, Prof, Sweet, Kung-Fu, Fantasy, and Melody. Gorgeous invites them all to her aunt’s house in her dead mother’s hometown. Her uncle died in the war, and her aunt never remarried.
They take the bus and run into a fat man in a shop that points the way to the aunt’s house. “We haven’t had visitors in a long time. The lady will be very displeased,” he tells his watermelon. They meet up with the aunt, and almost immediately, one of the girl’s camera breaks. The aunt used to teach piano, but she hasn’t in a long time.
Soon, Fantasy finds Mac’s head floating in the well. It smiles bites her in the butt. When the other girls go to look, it’s just Mac’s watermelon. Later, Kung-Fu has to fight off some attacking firewood. The aunt is eating bits for Mac’s corpse and doing various witchy things around the house.
Gorgeous spends too much time watching herself in the mirror and burns up. Melody is playing music on the piano while the skeleton keeps time. Then the piano bites her finger. Sweet is eaten by pillows and mattresses in the supply room.
The ghost of Gorgeous goes outside. Suddenly, all the doors and windows shut and lock, and everyone is trapped inside with no power. Kung-Fu tries to kick the door down, but has no luck. They find Mac’s hand and start to get concerned. The piano bites off melody’s fingers, then it swallows her whole.
Gorgeous returns, explaining that the aunt has been dead for years, but her body remains, eating all the unmarried girls who come to visit. Finally, it’s Kung-Fu versus Gorgeous Ghost in one of the most unique battle scenes ever.
Commentary
This could only be called a “live action anime.” The visual style is something like a cross between an anime and H.R. Pufnstuf.
The visuals are way out there, and completely unique. It’s done in a washed-out, soapy-opera style, with fake clouds and over-the-top artificial sets, strange musical bits, cartoon segments, and oddly inappropriate bits of humor. All of the girls are named after their primary attribute, and they’re mostly all sterotypes based on that type.
There are two very simple little short music segments that are repeated over and over throughout the film, and they really start to grate after the first half hour.
Overall, it’s silly, the acting is truly atrocious, and the story is not much better, but I still recommend seeing this, just you can see this; the visuals alone make up for the problems with everything else.