In the mid 1970s, Japanese director Nobuhiko Obayashi was offered the chance to a make a movie influenced by Steven Spielberg’s world-conquering Jaws. It was to be his debut feature, but Obayashi struggled to come up with an idea for the film. Then he found inspiration in a conversation with his 12-year-old daughter, who revealed a childhood fear of her own reflection coming to life and a piano that eats the fingers of anyone who attempts to play it. The result was his 1977 cult classic House.

Named after the English word to accentuate the ties to Spielberg’s Western horror, rather than the Japanese ‘hausu’, House is the story of a man-eating building. Actually, to be more accurate, over the course of the film’s 87 minutes the carnivorous property in question exists on a diet of teenage girls. Angel and her schoolfriends are staying at her aunt’s remote mansion during the summer break, but the holiday turns into a nightmare as the ravenous old house seeks to devour them one by one. Fortunately, they each have skills to help them (kung-fu, super-intelligence), but will that be enough?

How many film techniques can you think of? There’s freeze frame, dolly zoom, pan shot, lens flare, jump cut, split screen and various kind of wipe. Then there’s dissolve, cutaway, stop-motion animation, matte, montage, frame burn and tracking shot, plus all the angles from bird’s eye to extreme close-up. There are countless others and I’d be willing to bet that most – if not all – of them are employed in House. The editing is manic, with scenes ending just a few seconds after they’ve begun. It’s like inhabiting the dream of someone with Attention Deficit Disorder, as Obayashi’s restless camera constantly seeks out new angles and perspectives. The film’s colour palette is equally chaotic as the screen is filled with images of skies that resemble the opening shot of The Simpsons on mescaline, a car driven by bananas and a kaleidoscope of disjointed body parts. Obayashi previously directed adverts for Japanese television and the medium’s sensory-overload influence is obvious in his throw-it-at-the-screen-and-see-if-it-sticks approach.

As you might expect, the hyperactivity becomes wearing after a while. I found myself yearning for some moments of calm amidst all the mayhem. But that’s not to decry House’s ceaseless inventiveness. There’s also an internal logic to the film and, even though what’s happening onscreen often borders on deranged (if you’ve ever wondered what a Lynchian take on Scooby-Doo might look like, wonder no more), Obayashi never loses sight of his story. I’ve been infinitely more confused watching a Michael Bay Transformers movie, where random pieces of metal bash into each other with all the grace and logic of a Meccano set in a cement mixer. The enormous success of House in Japan played an important part in letting other new filmmakers into the closed, studio-system world of the country’s movie industry. That’s a fitting legacy for this pure and joyous celebration of cinema.

Also worth your attention is a wonderful seven-disc boxset containing the complete series of Lone Wolf And Cub films. Based on an epic manga that’s nearly 9,000 pages long, the screen adaptations follow the violent adventures of widowed samurai warrior Ogami Itto and his young son Daigoro. The influential series is a mainstay of Japanese exploitation cinema and has been echoed in the work of artists as diverse as the Wu-Tang Clan, Cormac McCarthy, Quentin Tarantino and Sam Mendes. This freshly remastered collection should ensure it inspires a whole new generation.

House (Eureka!) is released on DVD on 25 January. The Complete Lone Wolf And Cub Boxset (also Eureka!) is out now on DVD.

Colin Houlson