Door
This week we are showing Door (1988) on Monday, 5/25, at 8pm.
Here is the link to RSVP. Doors are at 7:50 and we’re starting the movie at 8:10!
Please note the rare Monday showtime—it’s a long holiday weekend, cap it off at the From Below!
Banmei Takahashi’s Door twists the fears associated with the home invasion subgenre into delightfully modern (late ‘80s modern, specifically) contexts. The film starts from a simple premise: what if the pushy door-to-door salesman keeps coming back, again and again? Keiko Takahashi stars as housewife Yasuko Honda, who incurs the wrath of the aforementioned salesman when she slams the door of her ultracontemporary apartment on his fingers, injuring them. This initial infraction of social decorum quickly spirals into a psychological battleground that brings into question the rising isolationism and individualism of Japan’s 1980s economic boom, changing (or unchanging) gender relations, and the psychological effect of Japan’s built (or overbuilt) urban landscape.
You may have noticed a shared last name between star and director; like Gloria Mundi, programmed earlier this month, this film is the collaborative project between a husband director and wife lead actor, and like Gloria Mundi, presents a remarkable and challenging physical and emotional showcase for Keiko Takahashi. The Takahashis both came up in the film industry through pinku and roman porno films (Keiko worked in mainstream films as well) and early collaborations include such provocative titles as Wolf: Running is Sex. I would say that the similarities between Papatakis’s film and Takahashi’s Door come to an end where Takahashi leans further into the thrills of the horror-thriller genre, crafting a shocking, nasty, and even fun little movie, something akin to Funny Games if it was directed by Sam Raimi, with a little bit of that delayed gratification that Takahashi surely honed in his softcore days.
I’m excited to rewatch Door as paired with last week’s selection of Kazuo Hara’s The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On, a contemporaneous film from the same country that explores similar questions of individualism, obstinance, and battles of wills in a time of rapid change for Japan. That being said, it’s hard to think of a further tonal range in two movies that are both loosely about a guy showing up unannounced at another person’s front door to Be A Problem. To tie one more From Below interest into this web, I will say that Door is an excellent entry into the architectural horror sub-subgenre that we showcased in our shorts program Spaces of Death late last year, as the Takahashis wring a surprising amount of tension out of the beautiful, sleek coziness of the Honda’s apartment.
(Un)locked and Loaded,
Charlie, Stefan, Stark