Complete [J-Movie] Gakkō no Kaidan

Detail

Title: 学校の怪談

Title (romanji): Gakkō no Kaidan

Title (English): School Ghost Stories

Format: Tanpatsu

Genre: Child-centric Ghost Story

Movie 1

Episodes: 1

Broadcast period: 1995

Synopsis

The story revolves around an unused wing of an elementary school. Among the school children, rumors abound that the wing is haunted, causing the adventurous or foolhardy among them to sneak into the abandoned building and poke around. When little third grader Mika disappears after following the sound of laughter into the third bathroom stall on the left (in a reference to Toire no Hanako-san) her 5th grade brother and an odd band of his classmates must go looking for her. Once inside the school, they hear the doors shut and lock behind them. Now trapped in the haunted school building, their spooky adventure begins.

This is indeed a ghost story, and before long, our brave band is experiencing very bizarre supernatural phenomena. Director Hirayama has done a wonderful job of creating a mixture of ghosts and situations the type of which our young adventurers could easily conjure up in their own imaginations and nightmares. The result is that our ghoulies are both frightening and funny, dangerous yet somehow less than murderous. The pudgy, translucent neon demon who sticks out his tongue while giving the kids a thumbs-up, the humongous (40 foot!) person lumbering down the darkened hallways, the pickled biology specimens suddenly come to life, are all as convincing and entertaining as they are spooky.

There is one ghoul, however, which does indeed seem intent on harming these kids, the ghost janitor who steadily morphs into a large spider-like creature. After discovering that it is the spider janitor who has captured Mika, wrapping her in a large web, the children must gather all their bravery and resources to rescue her and escape the school before being caught themselves. But escaping the school proves far more treacherous than they had imagined.

Movie 2

Episodes: 1

Broadcast period: 1996

Synopsis

During the summer months, a Tokyo-area elementary group is attending a retreat at a rural Buddhist temple. The elderly monk in charge of the temple takes great pleasure in telling the visiting children the local region's many ancient ghost stories. In fact, the region is well-known for its superstitious traditions, and several of the children excitedly await some appearance of ghostly phenomena. Most memorable perhaps is the creepy tale of Kocho Sensei, principal of the local elementary school who suddenly disappeared 30 years ago, nearly to the day. Rumor has it that at precisely 4:44pm she disappeared, and thereafter strange things continue to happen when the clock strikes that very minute.

Its not long until a group of adventurous students, some armed with cameras, find their way into the school in time to see the precise minute of 4:44pm pass. What they did not foresee, however, was the school's clock would be perpetually stuck at that very point in time through the bumbling of one of their group, thereby holding the ghostly portal open indefinitely. Also stumbling into this situation in an unwitting cat burgular intent on pilfering the temple and school of its valuables during the summer break. What he finds in the school safe is an antique gold pocket watch, the very watch Kocho Sensei had with her the night she disappeared...

What follows is a nearly non-stop series of events which has our cast of characters running and screaming from one corner to the other.

Movie 3

Episodes: 1

Broadcast period: 1997

Synopsis

After a fellow student mysteriously disappears during an after hours game of hide and seek in the elementary school building, the rumor mill amongst the students begin churning out all types of fantastic theories, many of which involve the well-known local legend of Hanako-san or the sad tale of Taichi the sickly student who died without the childhood enjoyment of having any true, close friends.

When a few brave students decide to investigate things on their own, VERY late at night, they discover an ominous and foreboding mirror one of their favorite teachers had pulled out of a locked and forgotten storage room (the lock of which mysteriously fell to the floor as the teacher was following some strange phenomena!!) and placed on the classroom wall. As the children peer into the mirror, one by one they are violently sucked into it by a ghostly hand.

And then the rumors REALLY start, finally causing the teacher herself to demonstrate to her fearful students that the mirror is harmless. But of course you know her best (and adult-naive) intentions goes horribly awry...

Thus the entire lot of six students and one humorously cocky female teacher find themselves in a paralleled mirror universe where all things normally good are now maliciously evil and life-threatening.

Amidst the amazingly diverse world of rather scary entities they encounter, one proves to be more empathetic than the others, the ghostly Taichi whose deadly power swings them from hopes of rescue to eternal damnation in Hell.

Movie 4

Episodes: 1

Broadcast period: 1999

Synopsis

Gakkou no Kaidan 4 started out with five elementary kids playing hide and seek inside their school unknown to them a tragic event was about to strike the school. While the four children waited for the kid who plays ghost to find them inside their hiding place tragedy strikes, a tidal wave was about to hit their school and it was already too late for them to run to safer grounds when they found out about the tidal wave which destroyed the whole school. The boy who played ghost was able to survive the tragedy since then little children especially those who are not local to the place mysteriously started to disappear. It was believed that the ghosts of the children who were killed along with the old school is still waiting for their friend to find them from their hiding place and until then their restless souls will never rest.