House starts brightly, and looks positively promising/appealing when we’re introduced to these various schoolgirls and their variously quirky characteristics. This is the best part of the movie, confidently, cheekily, intelligently self-reflexive, making a bit and having a lot of fun. So far so good.
Things, or the hope of things, are maintained when these young women all get to this titular dwelling. There’s a mysterious aunt in residence, presenting an interesting and amusing enigma. This is a horror movie, and a winking one at that. These Little Indians (if you know what I mean) start getting knocked off, and the early violence of that process is as spirited and wink-y as the opening sequences.
Then, the nudity. It’s cool that director Obayashi’s daughter collaborated on this script, and that Obayashi, or the studio, or whoever it was resisted the urge to overly polish or tidy or correct that script. That decision results in some pretty straightforward dream-material, subject either to productive analysis or leave-it-and-love-it celebration. But it seems that in the end the daughter was eclipsed by the dad, or maybe the Roger Corman-like demands of the producing entity. Anyway, someone or something, in the end, straightforwardly eroticizes/objectifies all of these young women, and then annihilates them.
Am I a prude, and no fun? Sometimes! See what you think, if you want.
Still, that piano sequence!