japanese horror movies – Horror Ghouls

Hausu (1977)

Posted on October 25, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

In Tokyo, there lives a teenage girl whose name is Gorgeous. And yes, of course she is beautiful, and of course she’s also got a wealthy father and appears to be living a harmonious life with nothing to complain about. Her life turns upside down when her father, who has been widowed for a time, announces that he’s married a woman named Ryoko Ema. Who seems to be a very nice woman, by the way, ready to be the best stepmother she can. Gorgeous, on the other hand, throws a temper tantrum like a little, spoiled brat and hurries to her room, where she writes a letter to her aunt, whom she has never met, asking to come visit her. Gorgeous receives a letter back almost instantly. Of course lonely, old auntie is ready to welcome her! Gorgeous brings six of her friends along with her: Sweet, who is of course sweet as candy and with a personality as gentle as a lamb, Kung Fu whose specialty is martial arts (who would’ve guessed), Fantasy, who is constantly daydreaming and having her head in the clouds, Melody, who plays the piano like a maestro, Prof, who is an academic and intelligent girl, and Mac, who…loves to eat. And is of course “fat“ (she isn’t, really, but that’s Asian beauty standards for you).

On the way to auntie’s house they bring along a white, fluffy cat, who appears to the aunt’s harbinger of sorts. Prior to getting to the aunt’s cozy country house, they meet a watermelon seller who could’ve more or less been the “don’t go to the house“ kind of guy, but which does the opposite and tells them exactly how to get there. Greeting the girls in a wheelchair, the aunt seems to be very happy to welcome them. The always hungry Mac had of course bought a Watermelon from the seller they met earlier, and brings it as a gift which they leave in a well to keep it cold. And from now on, it doesn’t take long before everything inside the house turns into a spookfest of the purest insanity! It all starts with Mac going out to retrieve the watermelon, and doesn’t return. Worried, Fantasy goes to check on her, only to find Mac’s disembodied head which flies into the air and bites Fantasy in the butt. Nobody believes her, of course, but soon all kinds of supernatural shenanigans are happening all around the house, which is all so gaga loony that nothing can really prepare you for the enchantment of the House and its white fluffy kitty!

House aka Hausu (Japanese: ハウス) is a Japanese comedy horror film from 1977, directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi.

Toho Studios contacted Obayashi because they wanted to make a movie like Jaws and needed ideas. Okey-dokey then. If Obayashi was an Italian he would probably gone ahead and urged Toho to make a shark film and call it Jaws 2, but we’re in Japan, where the craziest ideas are allowed to take form! So he went to his pre-teen daughter Chigumi for ideas, under the presumption that adults only think about things they understand, so everything stays on a boring human level while children can come up with the strangest things that defy explanation. Thus, sharks and beaches were replaced with a fluffy white cat and a spooky country house that eat girls. Obayashi also used some of his childhood as inspiration for some of the key elements in the movie. He was born in Hiroshima, and during the atomic bombings he lost all his childhood friends. He decided to use these themes into the plot of the film, by creating a plot element of a woman’s ghost waiting for her love to return back home from World War II, a wait that lasted forever since her lover died, and this turned her into an evil spirit. The ideas were given to Chiho Katsura, who then wrote the script for the film.

Now that the big cooking pot had boiled and simmered into this psychedelic brew, the project was green-lit. Except…it had to be put on hold for two years, because no one at Toho wanted to direct it as they all thought it would be a disaster that would ruin their career. Obayashi himself originally proposed to direct it, but he was turned down since he wasn’t amongst the staff at Toho. He kept promoting the film until the studio finally caved in and said “alright then, since we can’t get anyone else to touch this thing with a 10-foot pole, go ahead and do your thing.“ And together with a bunch of amateur actors and a lot of pep, history was made.

If Toho Studios hoped for a critically acclaimed hit like Jaws, they were in for a nosedive on House. It mostly received negative reviews, but despite this, it ended up becoming a box office hit in Japan. Ironically, when the movie got a wider release in North America in 2009 and 2010, it was met with a much more favorable response and it was from here on that it gained a cult following.

Obayashi had, prior to this film, mostly worked in commercials and independent films, so the majority of the cast in House were not established actors. It was a mix of people he had worked with before, and some friends and family. His daughter even has a small role as the little girl in a shoemaker’s shop, and the shoemaker himself was played by the production designer. While being filmed in one of Toho’s largest sets, Obayashi made sure to have a playful attitude which caused everyone to have fun. The Toho crew felt the film was utter nonsense, but let’s be honest…it kind of is. But it’s the good kind of nonsense! The overall mix of complete nonsense, childish and upbeat tone with the horror elements reminiscent of the nightmare logic of a 5-year old, is what makes this movie such a unique experience, accompanied with a fitting score which was performed by a rock band called Godiego.

Visually, the movie leans towards a little kitsch and European fairytale vibe. There’s a lot of experimentation with practical effects, and insane imagery. There isn’t a single frame that looks uninspired or boring. The visuals fit so well together with all the spooky things happening all the time, as the girls are attacked by all kinds of things in the house: flaming logs, mattresses, and a finger-hungry piano…and something about a guy turning into a bunch of bananas. Because why not.

Nothing can really prepare you for the childish and golden insanity of House. Just sit back and enjoy the trip!

Director: Nobuhiko Ôbayashi
Writers: Chiho Katsura, Nobuhiko Ôbayashi
Country & year: Japan, 1977
Actors: Kimiko Ikegami, Miki Jinbo, Kumiko Ôba, Ai Matsubara, Mieko Satô, Eriko Tanaka, Masayo Miyako, Kiyohiko Ozaki, Saho Sasazawa, a white fluffy persian cat
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076162/

Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell (2012)

Posted on October 20, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell is the one and only Japanese Evil Dead, also known as “The Lost Evil Dead remake“, and one of those films you’ve never seen. Well, thanks to Tubi, the only horror streaming service you need, we randomly came over this hidden relic earlier this year, and had no idea what to expect — other than some bizarre J-horror insanity, especially with a nutty title like this.

The best way to explain this short and simple, is as if a manic fifteen-year old got his religious calling card after watching Evil Dead, grabbed the parent’s 8mm and made his own magnum opus on pure impulse with his friends in the backyard. In other words: ultra-cheap, very primitive and Z-grade schlocky yet filled with crazy energy and dedicated, stubborn non-stop passion. And when it’s also from Planet Japan, you know you’re in for something extra and special. The film is written, produced, directed and edited by Shinichi Fukazawa, who of course, plays the bodybuilder from hell. He’s also behind the effects and make-ups. And this is, as we speak, the only film he’s directed.

We meet the young hunky bodybuilder Shinji, not Ashu, (played by the director himself) and his ex-girlfriend and paranormal journalist Mika. Since Shinji is without a job and has nothing better to do than pump iron, he tags along with Mika to investigate a local haunted house. They also bring a psychic priest. But this is not just some random house though; it’s the house of Shinji’s dad, who once lived there with a mysterious girlfriend. Aside from the trippy horrorshow that’s around the corner, we also have a lot of dark secrets and lore to be revealed during the one-hour runtime. The film was shot in Shinichi Fukazawa’s parents’ house, and since it was planned to be demolished, the young director got a whole free set on a silver platter to go wild and fire on all cylinders. And so he does.

The fun begins after the first dull twenty minutes. It all starts when the priest gets demon-possessed and trapped inside the house with our two protagonists. What we have next is more or less what the alternative title is: The Japanese Evil Dead, with some flair of Resident Evil, and even some well-known elements from The Grudge before The Grudge — and an extravaganza of splatter effects of various sorts with everything from cheap rubber limbs, eyes popping out, neck-biting, ball-grabbing, head-crushing with a barbell and even more trippy stop-motion effects. And gallons of blood. All done in the most naive old-school way possible. And yeah, there’s no Evil Dead without a golden shotgun, waiting to be used with the catchphrase See you in Hell… Baby! No sugar for the bodybuilder.

The production of Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell began in 1995 and making the film took 16 days. I’m kidding, it actually took him 16 years! Most of which I guess has to be editing stuff with some hardcore OCD involved, because, seriously. Body Builder in Hell got its first official release in Japan in 2012 when Shinichi Fukazawa self-distributed the film on a 100 limited DVD-R, in pure underground-style, before it was shown in theaters, only in Japan, of course. It was released on Blu-ray from Visual Vengeance in 2022. But if you expect some image restoration for your big 4K screen, you’d be disappointed. It’s necro like a death metal cassette tape from 1989, and that’s also the point, I guess. On the other hand, you get a c o o l poster. And owning a physical copy of this rare little gem is cool in itself.

Writer and director: Shinichi Fukazawa
Also known as: The Japanese Evil Dead
Country & year: Japan, 2012
Actors: Shinichi Fukazawa, Masaaki Kai, Masahiro Kai, Aki Tama Mai, Asako Nosaka
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6403680/

The Slit-Mouthed Woman (2007)

Posted on December 15, 2023June 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

In a Japanese town, stories about Kuchisake-onna (The Slit-Mouthed Woman) are spread around. She’s a woman who’s got her mouth slit from side to side, dressed in a coat and wearing a face mask to conceal her looks. Carrying a rusty pair of scissors in her hands, it is said that she kidnaps children and kill them. She also asks those she meets on the street if they think she’s pretty, where the wrong answer will lead to horrible consequences. All of this, of course, sounds like a bunch of superstitious baloney, and only the children are taking this ridiculous story seriously while the adults just scoff at it. That is, until several children start disappearing. One day, a child even gets kidnapped right in front of the school teacher Matsuzaki. Together with her colleague she tries to uncover the truth about the legend of the “slit-mouthed woman”.

The Slit-Mouthed Woman (aka Carved) is based on a Japanese legend about the Kuchisake-onna, which is said to originate from sometime between year 794 and 1185, where the story is that a beautiful woman was mutilated by her jealous husband. He suspected her of being unfaithful to him, and thus he wanted to destroy her appearance. Later, it is said that she became a vengeful spirit who wanted to inflict the same pain and suffering on others as she experienced herself. The legend has many variations, and this movie has its own way of telling this story, set in a modern time.

The movie is directed by Kôji Shiraishi, who seems to have been directing a load of movies every year for quite some time, and is also the director of the found-footage/mockumentary horror movie Noroi (2005). Like many J-Horror movies, the supernatural is looming over everything, but the difference here is that it’s also mixing elements from a typical western slasher flick, which makes it an interesting combination. There is a bit of mystery, tension, and murders, all merged with the unmistakable dread-filled atmosphere of the supernatural J-Horror film. The makeup of The Slit-Mouthed Woman is decent, she’s genuinely creepy despite seeing her in full daylight most of the time, and unlike many J-Horror movies with ghostly villains, this one has a lot of scenes shot during the day.

The movie has a dark atmosphere and relies on some drama in order to fuel the characters as it becomes clear they also have their inner demons to struggle with, which they must come to terms with before trying to take on The Slit-Mouthed Woman. While the movie is somewhat predictable, and is not able to avoid the mistake of slowing things down a little too much during the second half of the movie, it’s still a very decent J-Horror movie about a well-known Japanese urban legend.

Director: Kôji Shiraishi
Writers: Naoyuki Yokota, Kôji Shiraishi
Original title: Kuchisake-onna
Also known as: Carved
Country & year: Japan, 2007
Actors: Eriko Satô, Haruhiko Katô, Chiharu Kawai, Rie Kuwana, Kazuyuki Matsuzawa, Kaori Sakagami, Sakina Kuwae, Yûto Kawase, Rio Nakamura, Ryôko Takizawa
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0891520/

Guinea Pig 5: Mermaid in a Manhole (1988)

Posted on August 1, 2023September 16, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

– I smell rotten fish.

A man credited as The Artist has recently lost his pregnant wife to cancer and lives alone in his crampy, depressing crib somewhere in the urban jungle of Tokyo. The only thing left in his vacant life is his art painting and two gossiping neighbours living in the apartment under him. To keep his sanity and inspiration going he often visits the nearest sewer system, something which we artists all do. One day while visiting the sewer, he stumbles upon a young mermaid, whom he instantly gets attracted to. Who wouldn’t. He immediately starts to draw her before he takes her with him to his apartment where he puts her in the bathtub. And it’s all kawaii from here on with a cute love story which’ll make everyone’s heart melt. Uhm, well, not exactly.

Because there’s something really wrong and messed up with this mermaid, you see. The Artist tells us that there once was a river where the sewer system was built on, which the mermaid seems to have been stranded on. And it appears she’s been stranded too long in the sewer which has infected her, and her body starts to fall apart in very grotesque ways because of that. The Artist is anxiously optimistic though, and does whatever he can to nurture and save her.

And there’s only that much I can say without spoiling the whole thing given its one-hour runtime with an actual story to tell. This is also the second last film in the Guinea Pig series which steered completely away from the snuff/found footage-style of filmmaking to the traditional approach. We have the other films in the series which focused more on splatstick comedies filled with cringe kindergarten-level humor aimed for six-year olds, and no one seemed to take this seriously other than Hideshi Hino. In other words; Flower of Flesh and Blood and Mermaid in a Manhole are those two in the series that’s worth watching.

Like Flower of Flesh and Blood, it’s based on Hino’s manga with the same title, and open for any interpretation as it’s sprinkled with metaphors all over the place which will leave you down in the deepest mental rabbit hole, and lost far under any icebergs. On the surface level, the film works as a tragic and morbid body-horror love story with its plenty of gore, bodily fluids and lots of worms, projected from a deep psychotic feverdream by David Cronenberg – and is a perfect watch while enjoying sushi. Yum!

A box-set of the Guinea Pig series was released first time on DVD outside of Japan twenty plus years ago by Unearthed Films. It’s of course out-of-print and only available if you’re willing to pay an insane ridiculous fuck off-price. As much as I’m a supporter of physical media I can’t say with a good conscience that it’s worth it. Nope, sorry. They’re not on any streaming services, but all of the films are on YouTube and a playlist can be found on archive.org.

Writer and director: Hideshi Hino
Original title: Ginî piggu: Manhôru no naka no ningyo
Country & year: Japan, 1988
Actors: Shigeru Saiki, Mari Somei, Masami Hisamoto, Gô Rijû
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0161638/

Prequels:
– Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood (1985)
– Guinea Pig: Devil’s Experiment (1985)

Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood (1985)

Posted on July 28, 2023September 17, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Flower of Flesh and Blood, the second installment in the Guinea Pig series, was made simultaneously with the first one, and they couldn’t be more different from each other. This one is written and directed by Hideshi Hino who had already established himself as a horror manga artist with his nihilistic and misanthropic one-shot comics Hell Baby (1982) and Panorama of Hell (1984). Besides of making horror comics Hino was also interested in working in the film industry, and directing a short film under the Guinea Pig banner, based on one of his own comics, would be a perfect arena to test the bloodsoaked waters.

It’s night in Tokyo and a young woman is being stalked by a car as she walks down the street. A person comes out of the car and kidnaps her. She then wakes up in some torture chamber with bloodstains on the wall while tied to a bed and it’s all bad vibes, to put it that way. We then get introduced to the killer – a ghastly-looking man with a pencil mustache, white face painting, red lipstick, a demonic grin and he’s dressed like a Samurai. Welcome to your worst nightmare. If she wasn’t terrified enough already he gives her a quick foretaste to come by holding a chicken, cuts its head off and tosses it at her as he says This is your fate! He then jabs her with a big dose of some strong drug which knocks her right into wonderland before he gets ready for the killing ritual. The only thing missing is some classical background music.

To keep some of the snuff elements, the killer looks at the camera as he breaks the fourth wall by saying something to the viewer in a disturbing poetic manner. It’s all in Japanese with incoherent subtitles from google translate but let’s just pretend he says something like:

What you are now about to witness is hundred percent real! No fake amateur bullshit!

The one who took the bait was Charlie Sheen, of all people, after he got a VHS copy of Flower of Flesh and Blood from the film critic Chris Gore in the early 90s. This story is widely known and legendary but here’s a breakdown: When Sheen saw the film, he got shocked as he thought he’d just witnessed a real snuff film, and reported it to the FBI. They confiscated Sheen’s copy and launched an international investigation to track down those who was involved in the film, including the American distributor and Fangoria writer Chas Balun. FBI eventually found Hideshi Hino in Japan who then showed them a making-of documentary of the film while he probably laughed his ass off and were forever grateful for the global hype and free advertisement, thanks to Charlie Sheen.

Compared to the first one, Devil’s Experiment, this is on a whole another level on all aspects like day and night, with the same runtime of 40 minutes, and works so much better for its purpose. This one is also shot like a more traditional film with use of different camera angles, competent use of lighting to create a rotten atmosphere and a great showcase of really impressing shock effects which will make every weak stomachs turn to pure panic attack. Even though there’s some cheesy and out of place sound effects here, this is overall a nasty piece of straight-forward horror gore show and top tier torture porn with a flavor of visual stylishness, plain and simple. Not for everyone (no, you don’t fucking say) which could as well share the same universe as Nacho Cerdà’s wet’n sticky necrophilia dream Aftermath (1994). But for us lower level horror ghouls with a more morbid appetite for sick undergroundish stuff like this and just want to see a cute and drugged-out Japanese girl being brutally dismembered to the unrecognizable with as real-looking effects as can be, wrapped up with a nice dessert of maggot-infested body parts, well … this is a perfect gore meal – just for you. Itadakimasu!

Writer and director: Hideshi Hino
Original title: Ginî piggu 2: Chiniku no hana
Country & year: Japan, 1985
Actors: Hiroshi Tamura, Kirara Yûgao
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0161635/

Prequel: GuineaPig: Devil’s Experiment (1985)
Sequel: Guinea Pig 5: Mermaid in a Manhole (1988)

Guinea Pig: Devil’s Experiment (1985)

Posted on July 25, 2023September 17, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

In the mid-1980’s the amateur filmmaker Satoru Ogura wanted to shock and disgust with a series of grotesque films. Sounds cool enough. His first (and only) film was Devil’s Experiment, a 40 minute “faux snuff film“ which became the start of the notorious, bizarre, goofy and overhyped Guinea Pig film series.

In the Devil’s Experiment we witness a young woman being tortured by a group of people while someone filming the whole act handheld in found-footage style. The torture happens in several stages/segments. They start soft by smacking her in the face while being tied to a chair. After she’s been bruised up they kick and throw her around the floor like a rag doll. In the next segment she sits on a rotating chair as they are spinning her a hundred times or so, which seems more like a harmless prank than torture, but whatever. They shove a bottle of whiskey down her throat to make her puke so we can go over to the next segment.

And already some minutes in there ain’t a single moment of realism here and I have a hard time to believe that anyone who saw this on VHS in the 80s thought they were witnessing a real snuff, because … bro, c’mon, seriously… This is amateur hour-boolshit on its lowest to such extent that it just made me shake my head and chuckle. This shit was actually promoted as a real snuff film when it circulated on the VHS market in Japan, you see, and still to this day it rises concerned questions from naive numbskulls if this is authentic or not.

Then there’s the acting, and oh my lord, haha …

The lady who portrays the victim couldn’t care less. She seems bored most of the time and acts more as if she’s sitting on a vibrating chair on The Howard Stern Show while she makes some cute moaning sounds such as:

uuhh … iuuing … uhh … tahh … iiimghh …

Then they peel her skin and rips off her fingernails with a plier. An her only reaction is:

ahh … ehh … uhn …

There’s also a moment where she smiles. Director Ogura auditioned a bunch of women who was eager for this role and this was the best he could pick.

In another segment they pour some frying oil over her while she’s tied to a bed. Her reaction is some orgasm and growling sounds. She’s either the worst actress of all time or she’s supposed to have a larger pain threshold than Rambo. I’d guess my first assumption.

They also toss some fresh animal intestines on her while they laugh and giggle like a bunch of schoolyard bullies. Watching blurry still images of this scene would make every gorehound cream in their pants and assume she’d been brutally butchered up, but don’t get fooled.

The scene with the eye at the end was well done though, I give it that. But besides from that the whole package is so bad, sloppy, tame as a newborn duckling and downright laughably inept that it actually makes Hostel look like a legit snuff film straight from the deepest dark web. Woof.

Director: Satoru Ogura
Original title: Ginî piggu – Akuma no jikken
Country & year: Japan, 1985
Actors: A group of uncredited amateurs
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0161634/

Sequels:
– Guinea Pig 5: Mermaid in a Manhole (1988)
– Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood (1985)

Tetsuo (1989)

Posted on February 18, 2021July 6, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

How to even start with this movie…Uhm, well…

It starts with a random, disturbed guy called “The Metal Fetishist” (played by the director himself) who’s wandering in some decayed urban area, barefoot. He enters a shack hoarded full of metal junk where he stabs himself in the foot, and injects himself with an iron pipe and goes through some kind of a metamorphosis. A glimpse of an everyday life of an extreme metal fetishist where it just went a little too far, I guess. He then screams and runs like a lunatic and gets hit by a car driven by a typical Japanese salaryman who then gets infected by a biomechanical virus. As the title screen rolls, he gives us the “Tetsuo Dance” before he wakes up in his apartment and gets ready for work. As he shaves, he notices a small metal point on his cheek, which pops out and starts shooting blood over his face as he touches it. Sounds weird, you say? You’ve seen nothing yet. I won’t spoil much more than this, other than our salaryman slowly transforms into a grotesque hybrid monster of flesh and metal with the desire to destroy the whole planet. And yeah, his penis also transforms into a big metal drill that no one would want to mess around with.

Tetsuo, aka The Iron man, is an explosive result of an inner frustration that the young director Shinya Tsukamoto had built up after an unstable relationship to his dad, growing up in heavily industrial surroundings, and the extreme pressure of the Japanese working culture. The environment is what makes a human, as they say, and Tetsuo is a prime example of that, and could be seen as a pretty alternative artistic view of the breaking point of the human mind, if you will – even though the film is open for countless interpretations. This is Tsukamoto’s fifth film, at the age of 29, after making some shorts and other projects he would never be satisfied with, and at the top of this his father kicked him out of the house right before the filming. Fortunately, due to the success and the cult-following of Tetsuo, he quickly became a prominent filmmaker in Japan with titles such as Bullet Ballet, A Snake in June, Nightmare Detective and also made two sequels to Tetsuo, called Tetsuo: Body Hammer and Tetsuo: Bullet Man, the last one with a soundtrack by Trent Reznor . He’s also known for his acting roles in Takashi Miike’s Ichi the Killer, Takashi Shimizu’s Marebito, and Martin Scorcese’s Silence. His dad should be proud by now.

Tetsuo is shot on 16 mm, in black and white, with a budget of his day job at that time. Mostly filmed in one of his co-workers cramped apartment over 18 months with hard and difficult conditions (which is not hard to imagine at all), where the cast and crew also lived during the production. The conditions came to a point where the actor who plays the salaryman got the urges to escape the set several times because of shooting days that never seemed to end, while crew-members just came and left. The whole production was such a nightmare, according to Tsukamoto, that he considered to burn all the negatives. And we should just be glad he didn’t, because Tetsuo is a truly insane, hyperactive, nightmarish cyber-punk/art-house/body-horror masterpiece that easily could be described as Eraserhead on crack cocaine. Very aggressive, graphic, experimental and completely bizarre and truly one of a kind. It’s one of those “what the hell did I just watch-films“, and it’s clearly not for anyone, especially for those who’s epileptic. The technical aspects is from another planet (Planet Japan that is) with some really impressive stop-motion effects, camera work and costume designs. It has a great and sharp sound design and a really heavy, industrial soundtrack by Chu Ishikawa that fits the intense imagery perfectly.

So, what else is there to really say about this movie, other than: just watch it! Watch it on a big screen in a dark room with loud sound.

Director: Shinya Tsukamoto
Country & year: Japan, 1989
Actors:Tomorô Taguchi, Kei Fujiwara, Nobu Kanaoka, Shinya Tsukamoto, Naomasa Musaka, Renji Ishibashi
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0096251/