Nighty Night (1986)

Original title: 真夜中の悪夢

An intro of a girl reading a version of Little Red Riding Hood to some toys (or is she?) is followed by four unconnected tales of horror. A teenage birthday party turns into a massacre of the certainly no longer repressed. A floating girl that looks like an idol leads young men to their deaths and the realization they can’t actually walk on air; or perhaps it’s the other way round. A geeky girl has to fight off an astonishingly freakish looking monster while she’s trapped in the rules of a video game. Yet another girl adores the preppiest boy in school. When he reciprocates, her body image problems turn into body horror.

All of this takes place in the confines of modern as of 1986 Japanese homes and quotidian urban spaces that breathe a lovely air of an authentic time and place for the bizarre and the supernatural to break into. Apparently hardly anyone saw this when it hit the Japanese video market for about five minutes, but Internet archaeologists have not just uncovered a very watchable looking copy but also produced a documentary about the film’s production, with full cooperation of its director Hirohisa Kokusho. Some days, the Internet does provide what it promises.

For reasons only known to the filmmaker, Nighty Night starts off on its weakest foot. While it sets up the shorts’ thematic through line of turning teenage malaise into horror (an old but dependable tradition), it does have a certain film school stiffness bound to turn potential viewers off, even though it does go all out on the nihilism.

The floating idol killer tale is a lovely little trifle, putting one idea into moving pictures and then getting out while the getting is good.

Then follows my personal favourite of the tales, which doesn’t just feature that pretty damn incredible monster I don’t have words to describe but also makes a more than decent grab at Zuni Doll style one woman versus monster suspense with added blue lighting. Even the horror movie bullshit ending is delightful.

The final story returns to taking teenage horrors very seriously indeed again, but the metaphor is more interesting and better realized than the one in the first tale, and there’s at least a bit of a spring in the step of the editing and camera work here, ending Nighty Night on a face Screaming Mad George would probably have enjoyed creating, and a troubled dead teenager.

What’s not to like about that?