by: Dr. Boogie

...CONTINUED

Instead, the girls take part in some light housework. Fantasy and Prof do the dishes, Sweet cleans the floors, Kung Fu chops some firewood, and Gorgeous takes a bath. Okay, that's not entirely accurate. Prof washes, but doesn't notice the water turning into watermelon juice...

Sweet is bewitched by a talking doll that chants her name...

Kung Fu is... attacked by flying firewood.

And Gorgeous needs to take an Epilady to her unruly back hair...

And again, no one thinks anything about any of this. Even Kung Fu, who has a midair battle with flying pieces of wood, doesn't even begin to think that there might be something strange going on! The counselors in Friday the 13th were more on-the-ball than these girls!

Auntie is aware of this and decides to throw subtlety out the window: she does a little dance in the kitchen while taunting Fantasy with more eating-related threats, then sashays her way into the fridge.

Thus begins a long sequence of Auntie showboating for the camera. First, dancing.

Then a light dinner.

And even Blanche gets in on it.

Hell, they even get Blanche to sing along with the score.

But there's no rest for the wicked. The scene ends with Auntie laying some sheet music on the piano for a later kill, and then pausing for a moment to stair wistfully into space as she contemplates all the other killing she needs to do. She's easily my favorite character, and not just because she has the straightest teeth of the bunch.

Elsewhere, the girls split up and do their best to place themselves in harm's way. Melody plays a little tune on the piano to accompany Gorgeous sneaking into her aunt's room so she can rifle through her extensive collection of hairpins and combs. She's in the midst of trying on her aunt's lipstick when she spots something unusual in the mirror.

To quote Ian Astbury, "Fire woman, you're to blame! Fire woman you're to blame!"

A-j-j-j-j-j-yow!

Meanwhile, Sweet breaks out of her trance just long enough for Blanche to work some evil cat magic on her. Prepare yourself for a scene of pure mayhem and sadism.

A half-dozen mattresses start to, let's say "attack," Sweet. Who has deserved to die more than a girl who is brought down by mattresses lightly falling on her? And not even box-spring mattresses, either. Just some old futons.

Sweet's rescue is spoiled when Melody starts wailing. The girls rush to her aid, only to find she has a small cut on her finger; one that caused her to wail like a sad puppy for a full minute. Melody explains that, "it felt like the piano bit me." That's why I always used to stare at my fingers when I played the piano. Never bitten once.

When they finally check on Sweet, there's nothing left of her but her clothes. Melody takes a big whiff of Sweet's panties to really undercut what little tension we had going. Fantasy is beginning to freak out on account of how many friends she's missing. Also, the severed head of her missing friend bit her on the ass a short time ago. Her friends calm her down by pointing out that, eventually, Mr. Togo will show up and give them a hand.

That calms her right down. Good thing, too; we're just over halfway through this movie, and we were coming dangerously close to the remaining characters being scared of their impending deaths. But I digress.

They are at least able to find Gorgeous. She maybe possessed by the ghost of her dead aunt, but at least she's not missing. She says that she'll call the police on her aunt's ancient rotary phone, but all we hear over the handset is a bunch of screaming. She explains that with the phone busted, she'll have to go into town to get the police. The girls are worried about being left behind in the mansion. Lucky for them, Gorgeous remembers to lock up

At long last, they finally begin to panic. All the doors and windows shut of their own accord, and what's worse: a brief cutaway shows Mr. Togo stuck in traffic somewhere! With no man around to protect them, what will they do if they're attacked by a flying mattress, or worse, a wet paper towel with a taste for blood?

To their credit, the girls try to stay proactive: Kung Fu tries to break down the wooden shutters, while Prof reasons that Auntie must have some device controlling the doors and windows. Melody agrees. After all, she explains, Auntie "graduated from a music school in Toyko. She's educated." Ah, good point. I had forgotten that Auntie majored in Music Composition, with a minor in Mechanical Engineering.

Tensions mount upon the discovery of a severed hand in a jar holding Mac's ribbon. The group decides once again to split up, because that has been working so well. Prof and Kung Fu go looking for Gorgeous, convinced that she has somehow reentered the sealed house. Fantasy stays behind to keep Melody company while she bangs out some piano tunes to keep their spirits up.

Upstairs, Kung Fu and Prof find Gorgeous, standing alone in the dark and wearing her mother's wedding dress. To hell with ghosts; I'd be scared if I saw someone dressed like that in a fully-lit room. At a wedding!

Meanwhile, Fantasy has noticed that Melody can't stop playing the piano. Also, keys are lighting up. When their screaming fails to provoke any sort of reaction from their friends upstairs, it falls on Blanche to put a fine point on the matter. A little eye flashing is all it takes to jumpstart the ghost piano.

At first, Melody isn't overly concerned about her missing digits, but then she drops one of her mangled hands back onto the piano and loses that, too. Now the piano has a taste for blood!

If someone asked me to direct a scene where a piano eats someone, I probably would have just filmed the lid coming down on them a couple times while they fall into the piano itself. Not Obayashi, no. In his vision, the same key cover that bit off Melody's fingers stretches itself out and chomps down on the hapless musician. Then there's some weird lighting, and a dancing skeleton, and god only knows what the rest of that is. The carnage finally ends with Melody's disembodied head floating onto the scene to comment on the upskirt shot of her flailing legs: "Oh, my! That's naughty."

Interesting side note: the Japanese word for piano is "piano".

There's still plenty more Hausu madness to see!
Click here to continue onward to page 4!