Japanese horror is a diverse landscape that includes everything from giant monsters to creepy ghost girls, and many of the country’s horror films have rightly become classics praised by fans the world over. Somewhere in the deepest, darkest corners between the mainstream favorites, however, lurks a plethora of scuzzy, psychotronic oddities that are ripe for rediscovery and re-evaluation. Here are nine of the weirdest Japanese horror movies ever made that will shock, disgust, and confound even the most accomplished of horror-hounds.
9 Evil Dead Trap (1988)
Toshiharu Ikeda’s 1988 film Evil Dead Trap has a slightly misleading title – it’s nothing like Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead, though it does deal with deadly traps and tricks. It’s a slasher film about a TV reporter who investigates the origins of a snuff film she receives in the mail. Although mostly a minor cult gem, Evil Dead Trap is an important film in the canon of J-horror. It’s an oddball mix of Italian giallo-like visuals, American slasher flick-inspired carnage, and disturbing, torture-porn-approaching gore. According to Genre Grinder, Ikeda’s film mixes up all of these varied inspirations in such a “gloomy and dingy manner that anticipates the definitive J-horror ‘look,’ as characterized by Hideo Nakata and Takashi Shimizu a decade later.” The film is shocking and grim, but it’s so gorgeously rendered through painterly cinematography that you can’t look away.
8 Guzoo: The Thing Forsaken by God — Part 1 (1986)
You’ll have to forgive the low-quality image above, as that’s about as good as this dingy little shot-on-video horror gem is ever going to look. Don’t let the lo-fi look of the movie deter you, however, because this creative and ultra-entertaining bit of video violence is brimming with must-see slimy, tentacle-y weirdness that only Japanese horror can bring. The 40-minute movie follows a group of schoolgirls who encounter a terrifying creature in the basement of a summer vacation home. As HorrorNews.net puts it, Guzoo: The Thing Forsaken by God — Part 1 is “clearly a work of love from the cinematography down to the endearingly cheesy special effects.” Unfortunately, despite the inclusion of “Part 1” in the title, no sequel has ever come to fruition. We’re still holding out hope, though.
7 Nuns that Bite (1977)
Nuns that Bite is a 1977 nunsploitation-horror hybrid about cannibal nuns living in a remote monastery in the forest. It’s a psychedelic and highly stylized sleaze-fest full of sacrilege, murder, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre-inspired insanity that must be seen to be believed. Not only is it one of the best nunsploitation movies of the 1970s; it’s also an early example of the kind of “splatter movies” that would become more prevalent in the mid to late 1980s.
6 Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)
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Known as one of the best body horror movies of all time, 1989’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man is an experimental film about a metal fetishist who becomes one with the industrial hellscape of his surroundings. Shot in grimey 16mm and edited in a hyper-stylized manner, the film moves at a lightning-fast pace and presents a disgusting body horror extravaganza that is unlike anything that ever came before it. As Film School Rejects puts it best, “it’s impossible to put its effect into words.” The film made director Shinya Tsukamoto an international legend, and he’s since made many of the most disturbing horror films of this century.
5 A Haunted Turkish Bathhouse (1975)
A Haunted Turkish Bathhouse is a 1975 erotic horror film from Kazuhiko Yamaguchi, director of the incredible horror-tinged action spectacle Wolfguy: Enraged Lycanthrope. A Haunted Turkish Bathhouse depicts a small-time gangster’s failed plot against his wife, who works at a brothel masquerading as a bathhouse. What starts out as a scuzzy adult film gradually turns into the strangest adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat you’re likely to ever see, loaded with geysers of blood, undead sex workers, and an unforgettable attack by a vengeful cat-demon-spirit. It’s nuts, and absolutely worth 82 minutes of your time.
4 Splatter: Naked Blood (1996)
Hisayasu Satō’s 1996 horror film Splatter: Naked Blood is not the sleazy trashterpiece that the title makes it sound like. Sure, it is very sleazy, but there’s a lot more going on in this existential slice of ‘90s J-horror than just nudity and gore. It’s about a scientist who creates a drug that turns pain into pleasure. What unfolds next is a nauseating succession of body horror scenarios, including auto-cannibalism and a profusion of self-harm. Framing the sensational scenes of gore is a tragic narrative about a lonely young man whose only solace in the desolate, near-dystopian nightmarescape he inhabits is the cathartic destruction of the self. It’s heavy stuff, and positively vile, but it’s bolstered to greatness by a thought-provoking undercurrent of poetic sadness.
3 The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001)
The Happiness of the Katakuris is a 2001 horror-musical about a bizarre series of deaths that take place in a family’s newly opened guest house in the mountains. Takashi Miike, whose contributions to wacked-out cult cinema earned him a lifetime achievement award in 2019, directs the weird horror film with an experimental flair, blending elements of nightmare logic, musical numbers, claymation, and outright farce. It’s one of the strangest films in the director’s oeuvre, which is really saying something considering this is the man who gave us Audition and Gozu.
2 Exte: Hair Extensions (2007)
Sion Sono, director of many of the best East Asian movies of the last couple of decades, clearly has a soft spot for silly, high-concept horror. He lets it all hang out in his weird 2007 horror flick Exte: Hair Extensions, which is about – you guessed it – killer hair extensions. It follows a young hairdresser who is stalked by a creepy, hair-obsessed man who sells extensions made out of the hair of a woman's cursed corpse. It’s just as bizarre as it sounds, and way better than it has any right to be.
1 House (1977)
If you have even a passing interest in weird cult movies, odds are you’ve heard of the 1977 classic House. It’s an aggressively strange experimental comedy-horror film about seven schoolgirls who stay at an aunt’s house in the country. One-by-one the girls are targeted by the apparently carnivorous house; their chances of escape narrowing with each bizarre, nightmare-like twist that unfolds. There are flying heads, killer pianos, death-by-mattress, creepy cats, creepier aunts, and much, much more in this odyssey into the colorful horrors of director Nobuhiko Obayashi’s mind. Initially released to negative reviews in its native country, House was finally discovered worldwide in the 2000s, and quickly became one of the most iconic foreign horror movies of all time. It’s one of the few cult movies that is actually every bit as crazy as people tell you it is, and it should not be missed by any self-respecting J-horror fan.