Hyôryu kyôshitsu

Hi. I'm on a tear with Obayashi-- this director is great, and I am checking them off.

Hard to beat Hausu, but this review intends to tell people, if that's the only one you've seen, you'll like this one.

Apparently as time got on, Obayashi became less drastic in tone, more "romantic," (although I can see there is a deep emotional thread in his films, especially about young love), and the surrealism turned more into black and white melodrama.

Hausu - School in the Crosshairs - now Drifting Classroom. This is the spectrum from midnight movie weirdness, to weirdness with young love, to young love with sci-fi, quantum mechanics, and a whole hell of a lot of sand.

No crazy visual overlays. But weird sets, bizarre editing, and a muppet that is unsettling to look at. Get in there and vibe!

My name is Arthur Johnson, and I was in the movie. I played the role of Kenny. It was a great film from beginning to the end. Even though special effects wasn't that great back then. But all the slob, mud, sand, and fire, we had to endure. I think was well worth it. Especially the huge cock roaches we had to battle in the classrooms. I'm glad I had that experience of doing that movie, because I am currently living in California, trying to revamp my acting career. Even though I am in a 14 yr drout. lol I don't think anybody who was in the movie is going to read this. Since it was in 1987, and filmed in Japan. A lot of people in the states never even heard about it. In american, the movie was called Drifting Classroom. I don't know why everybody post the Japanese translation. It was also an honor to work with Troy Donahue, and all my other high school classmates.

I guess the movie lives up to the title as the story, plot and characters drift around. You have no idea exactly what is going on. I have been informed it is based on a popular Manga ...where the director toned down a lot of the dark creepy stuff.. remember, this movie does have soem dark creepy stuff happening! The manga is volumes long. They tried to condense the massive story into 2 hours. That usually doesn't work out as in this case.

Would I watch it again, sure. Would I recommend it to anyone.. .maybe. But only because the name Ôbayashi does tell me some effort into making it good is usually there.

Hello,

I was in the movie too but only as an extra. I was part of the group of kids from NAS Kamiseiya & Atsugi. It was a great learning experience and lots of fun. Everyone from the Director on down was polite and energetic. I'm hoping to get lucky and get the movie again because I gave a copy to my friend to record before I left Japan but never got it back. I remember the person who played Kenny and was glad to see someone had at least left comment on the movie :D When we saw it on opening night I remember seeing several people get emotional towards the end of the movie. Was really good to see that everyone's effort had impressed the

I voted 10 for excellent, but let me be clear; this movie is bad in the best possible ways. Almost Manos, Hands of Fate bad. You will laugh your self hoarse. The movie really is confused about itself; it doesn't know whether it is a horror movie or a light-hearted kids movie. And what ever happened to the adults? We only really see one or two die. they just disappear. The plot holes only add to the hilarity. The ending of the movie is the funniest part, though to its poor Japanese writer, it was probably very touching before he translated it to English.

Man, I would love to interview Arthur Johnson or some of the other stars from this movie to see what the bilingual process of movie making is like. That would be A-grade movie blog material.