House (ハウス) is a 1977 Japanese cult horror comedy film. A group of girls travel into the countryside, to a house that is possessed with supernatural powers. The house attempts to devour the girls in increasingly bizarre and surreal ways. Beyond that it's hard to describe the magnificent madness that is House. There are moments that hark back to the era of silent movie slapstick comedies, the special effects are just weird, the acting is terrible, and the whole thing is utter nonsense. But those are all the things that make House such a great film. As it merrily skips along as a camp Japanese teen comedy, and suddenly switches to disturbing horror, and back again.

The film straddles the line between horror comedy and experimental arthouse film. With the screen filled with stunning visuals, it plays out like a bad LSD trip. With a floating disembodied head that has a bum biting fetish, a carnivorous piano, vicious killer bedding, and the blood gushing cartoon cat. The whole thing leaves you wondering what the hell you have just watched.

Critically panned (which often makes for great cult film), director Nobuhiko Obayashi went on to direct the live-action version of The Girl Who Leapt Through time in 1983, and the dark erotic cult film Sada (1998), based on the story of Sada Abe who  erotically asphyxiating her lover, Kichizo Ishida in 1936. Sada  then went on to cut off his penis and testicles and carrying them around with her in her handbag. Obayashi's film of the story is another must see of Japanese cult cinema.

Pastor Pete Peters was an evangelical Bible-thumping right-wing racist, who described himself as a "has-been cowboy wannabe preacher".  He became the pastor of LaPorte Church of Christ in LaPorte, Colorado and established the Scriptures for America, which was an outreach ministry that operated through short-wave radio, and mail order. Pastor Pete wrote a number of books and pamphlets. Through which he promoted his wacko white supremacist Christian Identity theology.

One of the most well known pieces of perverted propaganda that Pastor Pete produced was the short 12 page pamphlet, entitled The Bible: Handbook For Survivalists, Racists (used in his twisted mind as a positive term), Tax Protestors, Militants And Right-Wing Extremists. He claims in the pamphlet that of those aforementioned people, who he saw as being much maligned by the establishment, were actually supported and condoned by his reading of The Bible.

He writes in the pamphlet, "This writing is to present the truth of God's word and to expose a false and evil humanistic, Judeo-Christian, dangerous theology which attempts to malign and destroy Godly Survivalists, Racists, Tax Protestors, Militants And Right-Wing Extremists." Yup, old Pastor Pete was as crazy a Christian as they come. He proclaimed that Europeans comprise the twelve lost tribes of Israel and that contemporary Jews are satanic impostors. And he'd often tell listeners on his radio shows that, "the Bible says it's okay to kill homosexuals." Luckily Pastor Pete died and went to Hell in 2011.

In 1995 the avant-garde multimedia and music giant eyeball wearing art collective, The Residents brought out a computer game. Bad Day On The Midway is a surreal, dark carnival of a game and multimedia experience. The game was published by inScape, who also published the darkly surreal Edgar Allan Poe game The Dark Eye, also in 1995.

The puzzle based serial killer murder mystery looks like it was spewed from the mind of David Lynch. Lynch was actually on-board at one point to develop the game into a TV series, after Ron Howard bought the rights. You start the game as Timmy, who has skipped violin lessons to go to the Midway. But you soon are able to switch characters, seeing through their eyes, becoming them.

You start the game as Timmy, and young lad who has skipped his violin lesson to go to the Midway. As you play the game, you can switch characters, literally able to see through their eyes, become them. The dated CGI is still creepy, and the characters more so. As embedded in the CGI are real live-action eyes and mouths, just to up the nightmarish quality of the gaming experience. Things twist, turn and randomly happen, and death is almost inevitable, all played out to The Residents soundtrack. 

This one is a real "what-the-hell?!" toy from Marx toy company. The company that brought you Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots. Released in 1970 Skinny Bones was a creepy construction kit, that allowed children to build a little freaky friend that same size as them. This cute-faced stick thin creature from the bowels of toy hell was part of a whole family of Bones abominations. There was Ginny Bones, the anorexic female counterpart of Skinny. They also had skinny pets. Skinny Bones had a badly neglected nag called Trom Bones (see what they did there?) And Ginny had an emaciated dog called Ham Bones. I assume that the parts of the Bones Family were all interchangeable, so that children could mix and match parts to create even more hideous monsters, to haunt their nightmares. And bring chills to any parent coming in the bedroom, to give their little cherub a kiss goodnight.

What you would do with either Skinny or Ginny bones after you had built them is a mystery. And as far as the tenuous educational value of, "the foot bones is connected to the ankle bone... etc..." Well I can see very little play value in the Bones Family, but years of counselling for owning this life-size plastic skeletal creep-fest was surely on the cards.  

Clip from America TV show Thrift Hunters, featuring Skinny Bones.

A quack doctor medical device that appeared in the late 1800s, these painful looking instruments made all kinds of claims for their curative properties. Apparently sticking a large rubber dildo up your rear-end could cure anything from constipation, piles, and prostate prostate trouble, to nervousness, improve acne and aid restful sleep. Seriously! You'd think the last thing you'd have is a restful sleep after someone had shoved one of those bad boys up your bum. 

These things were marketed right into the late 1930s. Then in 1938, a new Federal Law in the United States covered such quack devices, and they became outlawed. 

Vintage ads for rectal dilators. At least the "Recto Rotor" a particularly painful looking instrument of torture, has lube vents.

In 1975 Ideal Games decided to make a board game based on the sinking of the Titanic. You'd have thought after 63 years, time would have passed sufficiently for the game to pass relatively unnoticed. But no, the game courted controversy, and was pulled form the shelves for a while. In the UK the company had to change the name, but not the obvious image of the Titanic on the box cover it would seem, to Abandon Ship Game. 

The game was played in two phases. In the first part players had to help passengers escape the ship. For every roll of a one or a six the ship (which rotated) would be turned, so it looked like it was going down. In part two, once in the life-boats, players must find food and water, by visiting islands!!! What islands? Not only did they make a game that some people found distasteful, they went and changed history too.

In the British version of the game, they simply changed the in-game story-line. The "ship" was now in the Pacific, and had struck a coral reef. Because that makes it all okay. The ending of the game was just harsh. After the Titanic had sank, a rescue ship would appear. The first player to land on one of the rescue ship squares won the game. All the other players and their passengers were left to drown at sea. A game for all the family right there.