Gakkô no kaidan (1995)

Director:

Hideyuki Hirayama

Genre:

Family

Plot:

A young girl wanders into a wing of her elementary school that has been abandoned for years and is rumored to be haunted...

Awards:

2 nominations

Cast

Kasumi Toyama
Shiori Yonezawa
Hajime Atsuta
Junichiro Tsukada
Shohei Machida
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Masahiro Satô	...	Kumahige-san

Also Known As:

Haunted School (International: English title)
School for Ghosts (USA)

Runtime:

104 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Color

Movie Connections:

Followed by Gakkô no kaidan 3 (1997)

"Die you bastard!"

Highly amusing adolescent "Ghostbusters" with wonderfully corny digital effects (even for the mid-90's, the stuff here looks outdated). Inspired by the Japanese urban legend of "Hanako", a girl that supposedly committed suicide in a school lavatory stall, this film deals with a band of kids that venture inside of the haunted wing of their school that has been closed for ages. If you have an open mind, and are willing to not take this film very seriously, you'll be immensely satisfied. I've only seen a second or third generation VHS that I got from a local video store. If there's a clean DVD out there, I'd love to know about it.