Happy Halloween! This is the time of year when people celebrate the supernatural and ghoulish aspects of popular culture and national myths. I do my part by highlighting horror movies on Halloween night.
So far I have reviewed Nightmare Detective, Strange Circus, Shokuzai, POV: A Cursed Film Charisma, Don’t Look Up, Snow Woman (2017) Snow Woman (1968) Fate/Stay Night Heaven’s Feel, Gemini, John Carpenter’s The Thing, and Rampo Noir. This year’s Halloween Review is for a recently remastered slasher/stalker/splatter/psycho-sexual story straight from the 80s. This is a title that deserves to be rediscovered and since it is re-released on Blu-ray, now is the time!
DOOR 
ドア 「DOA」
Original Release Date: May 14th, 1988
UK Release Date: October 30th, 2023 (via Third Window Films)
Duration: 115 mins.
Director: Banmei Takahashi
Writer: Ataru Oikawa, Banmei Takahashi (Screenplay),
Starring: Keiko Takahashi, Daijiro Tsutsumi, Shiro Shimomoto, Takuto Yonezu, Hiroshi Noguchi,
Door is a 1988 suspense thriller from pink film director Banmei Takahashi. It stars his real-life wife Keiko Takahashi in the central role of a housewife who handles a stalker/home invasion scenario in a swanky condominium setting.
Far from being a throwaway film about a vulnerable female’s fight for survival, viewers get a fierce vision of matriarch defending her turf and class aspirations that gains extra depth by coming with the background of bubble economy Japan providing the setting, themes, and props that help turbo-charge a pulse-pounding astounding climax that is an exciting slice of cinema with sneaky social commentary.
Keiko Takahashi plays Yasuko Honda, a housewife with a husband who works a white collar job that often keeps him away from the home and an increasingly independently-minded son enrolled in kindergarten. They live on the seventh floor of a high-rise apartment complex overlooking a more working-class area. It comes complete with a concierge, rooftop park, playground, and underground parking. The interior of their home is furnished with all mod cons and the sort of European art that suggests aspirations of internationalism and sophistication.
Keeping everything safe is a solid metal door with a lock and chain. This is a distinct visual motif that the film repeatedly comes back to – the well-to-do family’s barrier against the outside world. However, that barrier is breached even before the film’s antagonist stalker emerges as cold callers and salesman barrage the home with messages and junk mail. Their relentless pestering seems, based on a line of dialogue from Yasuko’s husband, to be tied to the emergence of the ID number system in Japan in the 80s – making the film topical for viewers at the time.
In any case, it all cleverly foreshadows the stalker, a door-to-door salesman (played by boyishly handsome former idol Daijiro Tsutsumi) who physically tries to enter the family home only for Yasuko to accidentally violently repel him via the titular door after a pressing period of being pestered by cold callers.
This sets off a battle of wills.
The bad guy’s initial motivation for intrusion is a capitalist striving need to fulfil customer quotas until Yasuko’s accidental assault activates a seemingly class-driven jealousy. Then his obsession evolves to become romantic, a conceit that works because Banmei Takahashi convincingly turns up the creep factor of the stalker and by drawing upon both horror genre’s visual tropes. Tension ratchets up with lewd phone calls, stalking, and unwanted disturbing gifts. Over-emphasizing the sound of footsteps from people behind the door to creates dread and fake outs aplenty occurs as neighbours become suspects and the harsh ring of the phone offers shrill jump scares. All the while, that location reinforces a sense of isolation for Yasuko as she finds herself home alone and not listened to by the authorities who don’t take her seriously.
In describing the exterior and interiors of the film’s most-often used locations, Banmei’s film grammar is a pitch-perfect case of the slasher genre with steadicam shots giving us a prowling POV around the balconies and stairways and corridors of the condominium. Yasuko is often framed behind imposing bars, solid metal doors, and under constant surveillance of neighbours, their hovering presence inducing a feeling of frustration and social censure that plays into class anxiety. These are accompanied by unsettling sequences – a POV shot from Yasuko’s vulnerable son of the door handle slowly turning, gently, quietly as the salesman tests the home’s defences. That same handle but shot looking on to the hallway where we see Yasuko cowers, the handle in the immediate foreground. These moments bubble up subtly and artfully and will almost invariably have viewers leaning forward in their seats screaming as the narrative increases in terror.
The film crescendos with a string of astonishing long single-take smack down drag-out brawls for survival soaking the home in blood as the genre switches to splatter. It becomes laughter inducing at the extremes it goes to as everyday objects Yasuko spent her time re-arranging are turned into weapons of self defence. If the class details and slow-boil tension earlier feel too slow for some, rest assured that the film soars at this point, especially as it is all caught in a series of remarkable overhead shots on a sound stage which becomes nonsensical almost disorientating space with a lot of physicality and fighting as the actors give their all. This is bravura filmmaking and it is remarkable that this film isn’t better known solely for those moments, never mind the coherent class dissection.
Making us care is an impressive performance from Keiko Takahashi. Far better than many a final girl in other movies, she imbues her role with so much depth that a deeper reading can be found. Banmei Takahashi taps into her acting skill by focussing on her face in long-held close-ups and we see that her emotional register is wide as we watch her negotiate the increasingly fraught situations, phone calls, and confrontations with different fluctuations of fear, defiance, and vengeance.
Far from being an archetype, there is more to read in her, and thus the film. It would be tempting to see the Hondas as part of the nouveau riche of bubble economy Japan but Keiko Takahashi brings a certain poise to her character of Yasuko that suggests she comes from long-established money – or, at the very least, a dignified family and she runs her own clan with elan and efficiency. This sense of dignity becomes increasingly felt and viewers understand where she gets her grit to fight and it explains why she doesn’t immediately decamp from the home at various points.
This film should be better known amongst the wider J-film/horror community for its social commentary, so easily slipped into the stylishly executed slasher/stalker narrative, and the way said narrative is executed with visual aplomb, especially that final set of killer sequences which are really exciting to watch.
EXTRAS
This is a REGION FREE release and it comes with a lot of extras:
• New digital remasters on both films, from their original negatives
• DOOR 1 audio commentary by Jasper Sharp
• Interview with director Banmei Takahashi
• Door 2: Tokyo Diary
• Trailers for both features
• Slipcase with artwork from Gokaiju – reversible sleeve featuring both DOOR 1 and 2 artworks
• ‘Directors Company’ edition featuring insert by Jasper Sharp – limited to 2000 copies
Thanks to Third Window Films, this film was released on Blu-ray October 30th.
This remaster is based on the original super 16mm negative and supervised by cinematographer Yasushi Sasakibara (Gonin, Violent Cop) and it looks absolutely fantastic, with pin-sharp visuals and distinctive colours.
In terms of extras, Banmei Takahashi’s interview reveals background on the film that will provide more admiration for how he and his team put everything together since this was his first time directing a thriller and the complexity of the final sequence.
The audio commentary by Jasper Sharp focusses less on the film and explores the careers of the people involved with DOOR. He speaks with the ease of a long career writing books like Behind the Pink Curtain and he provides interesting background on the development and commercial trends of the Japanese film industry, including stylistic differences between horror and J-horror, and the cultural shifts that signalled the emergence of political films like United Red Army etc. It is informative and helps build a more complete picture of Japanese cinema following on from Tom Mes’ commentary in The Guard From Underground.
The most impressive extra, however, is the generous inclusion of Banmei Takahashi’s film DOOR II – totally unrelated to this film and deserving a review of its own!
This is the second release from Third Window Films’ newly established range of titles known as Director’s Company Collection. The next is Typhoon Club.