This movie is absolutely bonkers. It's billed as a horror movie and yeah, it's got horror elements, but time has not been kind and by today's standards, this barely counts as PG-13.Pissed off at her dad, Gorgeous (Kimiki Ikagami) invites herself and her six best friends to spend summer vacation at the country home of her reclusive, invalid Aunt (Yoko Minamida). Once there, the girls --who are all named for their one defining attribute e.g., Kung Fu, Melody, Sweet)-- start disappearing one by one and only Fantasy (Kumiko Ohba) believes something supernatural is happening. Can the remaining girls figure out what evil is lurking in the house before it's too late?
**SPOILERS** No, they fucking can't. This is one of the few films I've seen where the evil entity totally wins without really much of a fight. It's kind of amazing. **END SPOILERS**
I have to hand it to Yoko Minamida. Her evil Auntie looks like she's having the best fucking time munching down on severed teenage hands and freaking people out with eyeballs. According to Wikipedia, the special effects were intentionally made to be ridiculous since the entire idea was based on the director's daughter's childhood fears but also says that the director admitted he had no idea how some of the effects would look in post-production and they didn't all turn out the way he wanted. So the fact that some of the blue-screen work looks like it was drawn with crayons and the "blood" looks more like red Kool-Aid makes more sense now.
Also, it is intentionally a horror comedy. The psychedelic vignettes, whiplash editing, montages, and loopy soundtrack can all be chalked up to the late 70s.
This is considered a cult classic and while it's not to my particular taste, I can see why.
Pumpkin rating: 2.5/5
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