The House Where Evil Dwells (1982)

               For anyone who wasn’t around at the time, there was a wave of anti-Japanese racism that washed across the United States in the early 80’s. There was even a term for it, “Japan bashing.” The emergence of Japan as a recovering economy in the 1970’s, coupled with a weak US manufacturing sector, lead to a sharp increase in Japanese imports and investment in domestic companies and industries. The oil crises of the 70’s helped spark a sharp increase in the popularity of smaller Japanese cars and a wave of consumer electronics like the Sony Walkman revolutionized media consumption and home appliances. To a certain kind of person this influx was seen as somehow threatening to American values. People burned Japanese cars in the streets, members of congress held a public destruction of Toshiba products, and anti-Japanese (and anti-Asian in general, these people couldn’t tell ethnicities apart) crime skyrocketed.

Almost but not quite Chinese Takeaway font.

              This shift in public sentiment was directly reflected in popular entertainment. As early as 1974’s ‘The Taking of Pelham 123’ there’s a set of Japanese officials portrayed as objects of derision and also of caution. Walter Matthau’s character makes fun of them to their faces during the opening scenes only for the men to reveal on their exit that they speak English just fine. Both Michael Crichton in Rising Sun and Tom Clancy in Debt of Honor found something sinister in Japanese business culture, seeking answers as to why their economy was seemingly outdoing our own. The looming economic might of Japan is the threat in the background of movies like ‘Back to the Future 2’ and ‘Robocop 3.’ The Cannon Group got itself a piece of the action and made an absolute killing with their series of evil ninja movies. While the ending of the Michael Keaton movie ‘Gung Ho’ indicates that eventually we’ll all get along the movie still treats all of its Japanese characters as vaguely strange “others,” even the characters we’re supposed to like. This all kind of evaporated in the 90’s as the US economy improved and Japan’s stagnated. I also think Japan was keenly aware of this sentiment and a lot of their cultural exports over the past few decades, from video games to anime and manga, have had a soft-power angle to them. It’s very much in their long-term interest to stay on America’s good side.

              ‘The House Where Evil Dwells’ arrived as the hysteria was really starting to ramp up, and its view on Japan is … I was going to write complicated, but there’s nothing complex about this movie. How about mixed. Of course there are no major Japanese characters in the film, the closest we get is Henri Mitowa as the character Zen Monk. That’s his credited name in the film so that’s what I’m going to call him. Mitowa was half-Japanese and spent some time in the internment camps during WWII before returning to Japan to reside in a monastery, so I mean good casting for that one role but it’s white people all the way down for the rest of the runtime. To be somewhat fair the movie only runs for 88 minutes and has to cram in a lot of explicit sex scenes, there’s really isn’t enough time for any more characters. The minor Japanese characters which do appear are portrayed just fine. Except for the evil ghosts, but I think that’s fair. There are a lot of establishing shots of Japan in 1982 and for the most part they’re not framed in a way that emphasizes the exoticism or the strangeness of it all, they’re mostly just normal street shots or travel montages. I’m familiar enough with Japanese customs to appreciate that it’s at least making an effort with the details, a character explains that you need to take off your shoes when entering a house and it’s not played for laughs, it’s just presented as the normal way things are done there. One of the leads spends a night at a hostess club and it’s pretty much the same way it’s depicted in the Japanese media I’ve seen. It gets close enough with its explanations of yokai and tengu and overall it’s respectful to the culture. It’s still a bunch of white people having an adventure in a foreign land but at least it doesn’t insult the hosts while it’s there.

              This restraint is likely because it was an American-Japanese co-production. There’s not a lot of documentation on the production, but the exteriors were all clearly shot on location in Japan while the interior sets seem to have been built there as well. According to the end credits some key members of the crew were American or British, including sound editing and script supervision, but most of the actual crew was staffed through Toei Studio’s Kyoto division. Being on the ground in the country and working directly with a local crew probably helped round off any rough edges.

              Direction was by Kevin Connor, who wasn’t quite a complete hack. His best-remembered films are probably 'Motel Hell’ and ‘The Land that Time Forgot.’ He also did a lot of tv movies near the end of his career. The screenplay was adapted by Robert Suhosky, who had previous written exactly one episode for a short lived 1977 tv series called ‘Code R.’ Everything online and the opening credits claim it’s based on the book of the same name by James Hardiman, and I don’t think I believe that. According to IMDB this Herbert person lived from 1919 to 2006 and that ‘He left England to travel the world as a merchant seaman in 1937. He was a survivor of a sea battle near Africa.’ I cannot locate proof of a book by that name or anything with that premise by an author of that name. I think the movie lied to us for marketing purposes and it’s such an obscure title that nobody has ever bothered to check.

              There are really only three characters that matter in the movie. Our two leads are Ted Fletcher as played by Edward Albert and Laura Fletcher as played by Susan George. Albert’s career started off with a bang by starring opposite Goldie Hawn in 1972’s ‘Butterflies Are Free,’ then by the 80’s was doing mostly B-movie work. George had also had a pretty decent run in the 70’s, co-starring in ‘Straw Dogs’ in 1971 and ‘Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry’ in 1974. That movie keeps coming up, I really need to see it. The third character is their friend Alex Curtis, played by Doug McClure. Most of what you need to know about his career is encapsulated in the fact that he’s one of the key inspirations for the character of Troy McClure in “The Simpsons.” These are not terrible actors but the script doesn’t really give them much to work with. Edward Albert in particular always looks annoyed, and I eventually decided that the mustache and hairstyle he’s sporting for the duration combined with his natural resting bitch face makes him look like he’s always about to burst into tears.

              The movie opens in 1840, near the end of the Edo period and thirteen years before US gunships hauled up alongside the island nation and very strongly suggested it get over its isolationist phase. We see a young man enter the home of a young woman who’s clearly into him. There’s a slow and by all appearances unnecessary seduction montage as the woman plies him with food, plays a song on a koto, and also hands him little porcelain figure of a woman fucking a demon. Amazingly enough this will later become a plot point. Eventually they’re done with formalities and start getting it on just as her husband comes home. In a rage he grabs a sword and kills them both before turning it on himself. The openings titles play over shots of the destroyed room and corpses, which certainly sets a mood. Spoilers, these are going to be our ghosts for the rest of the movie. I will point out that there’s nothing about this setup that requires the tragedy to take place in Japan, jealous husbands kill cheaters the world over, but if you’ve already decided to set your spooky movie there it works as well as any other method for generating ghosts.

              Cut to modern day and three members of a family arriving to spend some time in Japan. The family is made up of husband-and-wife Ted and Laura Fletcher and their 12-year-old daughter Amy. They’re met at the airport by their family friend Alex Curtis, an American diplomat. During a car ride it’s established that Ted’s a writer of some description and a fan of Japanese folklore. Over the course of the movie Ted takes a bunch of random photos of a summer festival and some pearl divers, goes to drinks with some Japanese magazine editors, and rapidly punches the same eight or nine keys in the center of a typewriter in at least two scenes so sure, writer. We never do find out what kind of story he’s working on. We also never find out how Laura or Amy feel about moving to Japan. We never really find out anything at all about Amy for that matter, she’s so superfluous to the story that I even forgot she existed several times during the course of this short, short movie.

              Because of Ted’s interest in Japanese culture Alex has secured them a traditional-style house out in the countryside. Guess what, it’s the murder house from the opening. They establish that the house has been updated to include electricity and modern appliances (even a Western-style toilet, which is never seen again so I don’t know what the point of showing us that was) and it does seem like a nice house, although the lack of air conditioning would make it a hard pass for me. The first sign of anything ‘supernatural’ is at the nineteen-minute mark when Laura gets spooked by a light that keeps turning itself off. She’s really freaked out about it and a number of scenes later brings it up again. Weird. Ted blows her off, which is incorrect because this is a ghost movie but you can see his point. A minute or two later, after they’ve gone to bed, Ted wakes up in the middle of the night to see all three ghosts just standing directly in front of him, clear as day.

              A brief word about the way they shoot the ghosts, because it’s more interesting than anything else in the movie. To steal from IMDB trivia this time: “The visual effects sequences featuring the Japanese ghosts were filmed utilizing an old German camera technique known as "Shauftausen" … you shoot the scene with one camera through a right-angled mirror. The ghost actors are on a black velvet background so you can control the density of their image as you shoot, ie you fade them in and fade them out and line them up easily with the 'live' actors.” This translates on screen to a better visual effect than William Castle’s Illusion-O, but not by much, the two layers of actors are obviously shot separately from each other and syncing the two for specific effects like flipping a bowl or stabbing a sword into a table happens far too infrequently.

              So after Ted sees the ghosts there’s a pretty explicit sex scene that lasts for a full two minutes and twenty-five seconds. According to the director this was a specific ask from the producers. At least they listened to Susan George’s demands and she got to keep her panties on during filming.

              The premise of the movie is that the ghosts keep messing with the family, which doesn’t happen as often as you’d think. The three ghosts are portrayed as working together, they’re even shown as having little ghost confabs in the hallways, but for most of the movie it’s only the woman ghost, named Otami, who actually does anything. Before much in the way of shenanigans start Zen Monk (I’ve now decided that his name is a complete coincidence) shows up to deliver a warning and when Ted doesn’t listen lets him know he’ll be available later in the movie when he changes his mind. After that Laura finds the little demonic figurine in a crack in the floor and shows it to Ted. He recognizes it as a netsuke, a small ornament worn on kimonos as anchor points for attaching pouches or small boxes as traditional kimonos don’t have pockets. He notes that it’s pretty old and she decides to hang on to it. As soon as she does Otami possesses her and she starts to say some weird stuff about Alex, wondering why he never married and how she would’ve jumped on him. As soon as the ghost leaves her she’s aghast and apologetic about what she just said and her husband brushes it off.

              Stuff starts to very slowly happen. While he’s at a festival taking pictures Ted sees Otami and is clearly smitten with her, snapping a ton of photos. When he develops the pictures she’s not there, spoooky.  Some unknown amount of time later Laura gets a phone call from Alex inviting both her and her husband to an embassy function. While they’re chatting Otami possesses her again (or as it’s shown on screen her partially transparent form sits on top of Laura and then they fade her out) and she starts pointedly flirting with Alex. When the phone call ends and Otami leaves Laura’s clearly deeply confused and slightly panicked about it, and then the scene ends.

              Later they’re getting ready for the party and Laura grabs the netsuke with an odd expression on her face. As soon as they arrive Alex points Ted towards some magazine editors and offers to dance with Laura. They get about twenty seconds in before she tells him to take her outside, where they wander behind some trees and start fucking. One thing that struck me after watching the entire thing was how bad a friend Alex is. Laura’s possessed, what’s his excuse? And it wasn’t like it took a lot, about thirty seconds over the phone and the man is clearly down for it.

They're upset they can't peep on her affair anymore.

              The movie continues and something like a series of escalations occur. While Ted’s drunkenly dancing with a hostess at the bar with the magazine editors he briefly sees her as Otami before being escorted away. Laura gets sprayed with some water by a malfunctioning faucet and immediately brings it to Ted as evidence there’s something nefarious about the house. She’s right, of course, but this is hardly compelling evidence. Maybe she’s reflecting on her actions at the party and in a state of shock, unable to explain them, and she’s using this as an excuse to get out of the country. I dunno, the movie never tells us anything like that, it would’ve been some nice characterization. The two start bickering over money and his work habits, one of the male ghosts stabs a sword into the table next to Ted, that sort of thing.

              Eventually Ted wanders over to the temple and talks with Zen Monk again. The priest explains the story from the opening, how a bored samurai’s wife seduced one of his students and it went pretty badly. Then the movie flashes back to before the original flashback to show Otami stealing the netsuke from a local witch, which adds absolutely nothing to the story but thanks for the neat witch visuals, movie. Ted goes to take some photos of traditional pearl divers, which is cool, then falls into the water when he sees one of the divers as Otami. She starts pulling him down into the water, but then he’s rescued by the other divers. Meanwhile Laura calls Alex over for another raunchy sex scene.

              Later that night Laura learns that Ted’s in the hospital due to the near-drowning and tells a young Japanese woman who’s suddenly just there to watch Amy for as she rushes out of the house. Pretty sure we’ve never met this character before. Later that night a bunch of crabs crawl all over the two as they’re sleeping, then two giant crabs show up to chase Amy out of the house and up a tree. She falls and hurts herself, which means when Laura brings Ted home from the hospital they have to turn right around and go back.

              Now convinced the place is haunted they ship Amy back to America. Ted and Laura have a fight about leaving and he smashes a tengu mask with a sword they have lying around, which sends her into convulsions. Ted runs off to talk to Zen Monk again while Laura calls up Alex and breaks things off. This pisses off the ghosts something fierce for unclear reasons. Zen Monk performs an exorcism and slaps a seal onto the outside of the house, firmly telling the both of them not to let anyone in or out of the house until the next morning. The moment he leaves Laura confesses about the affair. While Ted’s still processing this Alex shows up at the front door. There’s this goofy little moment where Ted strides over and dramatically flings open the door and the three ghosts quickly hustle back inside, heads down so they don’t cause a fuss. We don’t get to find out what Alex wanted because Ted instantly slugs him and they start to tussle. Under the ghosts’ influence the fight escalates to swords and eventually they recreate the deaths from the beginning of the film: Ted beheads Alex, kills Laura, and then himself. The ghosts pick themselves up from inside the dead bodies and hustle back out of the house. The end credits are over a recreated shot from the opening titles, only this time with different bodies in the background.

              So what was the point of all of that? The plot summary on the wiki states that ‘the ghosts are plotting to re-enact the mass murder-suicide so their souls could be free from the confines of the house.’ I have to emphasize that at no point in the movie is this information conveyed to either the characters or the audience. I could certainly buy that explanation, it would explain most of their actions over the course of the movie, except for a couple of minor things, such as: how does Otami appear to Ted multiple times outside of the house, and why? Why does she try to drown him if she needs him for the eventual murder-suicide? Maybe they attack Amy to get her out of the house, but why turn into crabs? Why mess with lights and faucets and swords when you’re not trying to get these people out of the house? Why fuck with them at all? Out of everything they do the only things that seem goal-oriented involve getting Laura to sleep with Alex. That’s really all they need, why the rest of that nonsense?

              This movie is not scary, not sexy, and not particularly interesting. The characters are flat and boring and despite their clear access to Japan they simply don’t take advantage of the opportnity to feature authentic locations. You can’t go to one Noh play or have one sushi lunch? I’m not even sure any characters other than Ted travel to a real location. But it does have ghosts and they do ghostly things, I have to give the movie that. The movie is currently available in a blu-ray double feature with the 1986 movie ‘Ghost Warrior,’ aka ‘Swordkill,’ a Charles Band movie about a samurai unfrozen from a block of ice after 400 years who has to battle his way to freedom. That sounds like a much more enjoyable movie than this thing.