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It's very very very good.
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
This is a strange and hypnotic movie by the Director Takashi Miike, which you will either love or hate… Personally I loved it! The Happiness of the Katakuris is a surreal horror-comedy with an emphasis on the farcical tradition of film making, and includes some strange (but relevant) claymation sequences - Denis Potter style musical and dance numbers, which verge (in parts) on karaoke-style sing-along scenes. The tagline for the UK release was: “The hills are alive with the sound of screaming” which reflects how the movie was preserved by the UK as a kind of cross between The Sound of Music and Psycho (although the Psycho parts are completely unintentionally carried out by the leading cast). An initiate man convinces his family to take advantage of news of a road soon to be built through a vacant area of the country that can be bought for next to nothing – So he uses his redundancy pay to purchase a large old home situated on a former garbage dump near Mount Fuji, and talks his family in to working for him in his new venture. He is accompanied by his loyal wife Terue (played by Keiko Matsuzaka), his wise aging father Jinpei (played by Tetsuro Tamba), his skeptical son (with a criminal past) Masayuki (played by Shinji Takeda) and his divorced daughter Shizue (played by Naomi Nishida), who has a young child Yurie (played by Tamaki Miyazaki, who narrates the film. The Katakuris family turns the bed-and-breakfast in to the sort of place that anyone would love to stay in, but sadly the place is too far from the beaten track to get noticed… However, eventually they get their first customer, who promptly commits suicide! Not wanting to get a bad reputation, the family hides the body, but they have even worse luck when their second and third customers arrive – and eventually the body count goes up with each new arrival! Now this may sound very bleak – but actually it is very comical. One of the funniest deaths occurs when a famous Japanese sumo wrestler dies while having sex with his underage girlfriend! As if this wasn’t bad enough – trying to move the body of a 500lbs giant of a man is a classic bit of comic genius. When they authorities do eventually star building the new road, it is moved to a new location, which just happens to be the place that the family has used to bury the bodies, so they all have to be moved and reburied! Full of quirky characters and bizarre situations, this is one of those films that you watch (a little like The Rocky Horror Picture Show), and when you come across a friend who hasn’t seen it, you cannot resist re-watching it with them. It’s original, funny and thoroughly entertaining from beginning to end.Read full review
a fantastically bizarre japanese flick, not quite a comedy, not really a horror and with plenty of songs but not really describable as a musical either, this film manages to encompass all these genres into one. describing it as being 'wacky' would be something of an understatement. a dysfunctional family tries to get it together by opening up a hotel, but as the guests dribble in one by one, they all seem to have rather a special fate in store for them. oh, and it's got a volcano eruption for a climax, and lots of plastcine animation special effects as well... highly recommended!
I loved the strangeness about this film, it does what it says on the tin, its very over dramatic with singing and horror, not really gory but im sure it was made with dark comedy in mind, even though i cant speak the language i found myself singing along.lol i was dissapointed as this dvd from tartan dont include the full ending that was in its original import release, i guess you will have to buy it to find out. its a very enjoyable film, a must in any jap / s korean / asia film collection. ones to checkout visitor Q sky high vengence Trilogy versus three extremes 1 & 2 the List is endless Enjoy
Bizarre Japanese comedy - a cross between The Sound of Music and Psycho - about a family who open a rural guest house where the guests keep dying. Claymation sequences add to the chaos. One for the curious.
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