Compared to the Japanese movie House (Hausu), Evil Dead 2 seems about as frenzied, surreal, and blackly comic as an episode of The Brady Bunch.
Nobuhiko Obayashis 1977 feature has seven adorable Japanese girls spending their school break at a haunted house presided over by the imposing aunt of one of their number. Obayashi deploys a range of crude but lustily-executed special effects, psychedelic montage, and animation to create a funny and unsettling cinematic freak-out. As the movie progresses, walls bang and rattle and detach themselves; severed limbs flail and bounce around and dive into dresser drawers; a severed head flies through the air and bites an unsuspecting tush; skeletons gesticulate; a piano devours its player after which the severed fingers continue to plink away at the keys; a hanging lampshade pounces on the head of a hapless victim; and a sinister white kitty spews all manner of disgusting fluids from its mouth.
The Midnite Movie Mamacita presents the film at Farrelli's Cinema Supper Club.
Sat., Aug. 15, 10 p.m., 2009