House of the Dead

Laid up and drugged out, as a kidney stone wended its merry way through my scarred urinary tract, with absolutely nothing better to do than let the painkillers swoon me into semi-oblivion, I happened to catch this movie on cable. I wouldn't want anyone to think that I paid to view it in a cinema, or rented it, or – heaven forfend! – that I watched it STRAIGHT.

Having played this sensationally gruesome video game and avidly trod the doomed rooms and dread passageways of The House, battling Chariot (Type 27), The Hanged Man (Type 041), and other impossible sentinels, my curiosity was piqued as to how the game would transfer to the movie screen.

It doesn't.

The banal plot revolves around a group of "crazy kids" – a la Scooby Doo – attending a remote island for a world-shaking "rave" – whatever that is. (You kids today with your hula-hoops and your mini-skirts and your Pat Boone…) After bribing a boat captain thousands in cash to ferry them there (a stupidity which begs its own network of rhetoric), they find the "rave" deserted.

Passing mention is made of a "house" – presumably the titular House Of The Dead – but most of the action takes place on fake outdoor sets and other locales divorced from any semblance of haunted residence.

A fallen video camera acts as flashback filler, showing the island in the throes of a – party?! Is that it? Oh, so this "rave" thingy is just a "party"? In the grand tradition of re-euphemizing "used cars" as "pre-owned", or "shell shock" as "post-traumatic stress disorder", the word "party" is now too square for you drug-addled, silicone-implanted, metrosexual jagoffs?

It is learned that the party was broken up by rampaging zombies. Intelligent thought stops here…

I don't think the pinheads who call themselves screenwriters and directors understand the mythos behind zombie re-animation. Zombies can't die – they're already UN-DEAD. They do not bleed, they know no pain. Unless their bodies are completely annihilated, they will continue being animated. At least, that's what my Jamaican witch priestess tells me.

Which means that a .45 shot into their "hearts" is not going to stop them, nor will a machete to the torso. And a shotgun blast to the chest will certainly NOT bring forth gouts of blood. At least in the video game's logic, the shooter pumps so many rounds into each monster that it is completely decimated, leaving a fetid mush that cannot re-animate itself.

Yet each actor-slash-model gets their Matrix-circular-camera moment, slaying zombies on all fronts with single bullets and karate chops to the sternum. Seriously, these zombies are more ineffective than the Stormtroopers from "Return Of The Jedi", who get knocked out when Ewoks trip them.

I suppose the film's writer, Mark Altman, having penned the not-too-shabby "Free Enterprise", felt compelled to insert a Captain Kirk reference, in the character of Jurgen Prochnow, who must have needed milk money desperately to have succumbed to appearing in this aromatic dung-swill. There is also a reference to Prochnow's primo role in the magnificent "Das Boot", when one of the untrained B-actors mentions that he "looks like a U-Boat Captain". ". I wonder how many of this movie's target audience of square-eyed swine picked up on ANY of the snide references to other films, as when Prochnow declares, "Say hello to my little friend", presaging his machine gun moment.

Aimed at a demographic who have not the wherewithal to comprehend the Sisyphean futility of the video-game concept (i.e. the game ends when you die – you cannot win), this is merely a slasher film for the mindless and mindless at heart. Accordingly, everyone dies in due course, except for a heterosexual pair of Attractive White People.

A better use for this film's scant yet misused budget might have been to send the cast through Acting School, although Ona Grauer's left breast did a good job, as did her right breast – and those slomo running scenes: priceless! I especially liked the final scene with Ona trying to act like she's been stabbed, but looking like she's just eaten ice cream too fast.

Attempting to do something more constructive with my time, I pulled out my Digitally-Restored, 35th Anniversary, Special Edition, Widescreen Anamorphic DVD of "Manos: The Hands Of Fate." Ah, yes! – the drugs were suitably brain-numbing - now HERE was some quality film-making…

(Movie Maniacs, visit: www.poffysmoviemania.com)

Saw this cinematic train wreck when I was 18. The "rave of the century" looked like a WalMart parking lot on a Saturday night. Zombies were smarter than the rave kids. I about lost it when the Asian girl broke out in Karate but I hung in there till the head honcho delivered his line about eternal life. Manager at AMC refused a refund.

Actually reasonably enjoyable, but in a comic book, silly kinda way. This is by no stretch of the imagination a good movie in any sense, but you cant help but laugh yourself silly through most of it.

Plot line is this: A group of ravers travel to an island near Seattle, an island known as Isla del Morte (Island of the dead, and my Spanish spelling is likely incorrect). Once they arrive, they find the biggest rave of the year deserted. Why? they find out once they stumble upon survivors and are shown video footage of what happened.

This is really an elementary movie, poorly written by Mark Altman (who did one of my favorite films, "Free Enterprise") and equally poorly acted by the mainly unknown cast. Along with Jurgen Prochnow, Ellie Cornell ("Halloween" 4 & 5) and Clint Howard (Ron's brother) are the only names I recognized. I really don't expect much from Clint (and he certainly delivered in that area) but Ellie and Jurgen usually do a little better than they showed here.

Johnathan Cherry is really dull as Rudy, Tyron Leitso's Simon is an irritating little weasel, Ona Grauer's Alicia is really nice to look at, but not much else...so on and so forth.

Lots and lots of pop culture references, including a mention of George A. Romero and the possibility of a 4th "Dead" film. See this one if you're a Romero fan...please...its a zombie movie and if the industry thinks thats what we want, then we'll get George's final vision that much sooner.

This is just not a good movie, but if you're like me and enjoy giving the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" treatment to bad films, you should see this one.

1/2 out of 5

IT SUCKS! I don't mean that it's so bad it's good, I mean it IS the ultimate low. This is as bad as "Ax 'Em"! My friend unwittingly bought this piece of garbage (not a compliment this time) and we stumbled into watching one of the most excruciating wastes of celluloid EVER! When hearing that Dave "Dead Hate the Living!" Parker was to write this, I figured he would provide the fulfillment to go with the ever-so-slight promise I believed I saw in him earlier on. Maybe it was or wasn't his screw-up, but this is just unbelievable. How horrid can a movie get? A dumbass with a video camera (sign of the artist!) makes self-referential quips about Romero films to let you know it's supposed to be a real, bona fide throwback. When various characters die, it's made to look as if they've lost a video game. See actual video game footage spliced into action scenes that make Ed Wood, Jr. look superior! And, no, it's not funny because IT IS THAT DAMN BAD. Everything about it, everything! What a shambles! And don't make the mistake of thinking getting high will help you enjoy it... we WASTED our high on this piece of slimy maggot excrement! PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF WHATEVER ICON YOU PUT IN FRONT OF YOU OR THE LACK THEREOF, DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE! It WILL be a waste of your time and money. That is, unless you're even more into stubbing out hot ashes on your soul than I am! PLEASE! NO! BEWARE! AVOID AT ALL COSTS! IT'S JUST THAT BAD! IT'S TOO LATE FOR ME AND MY FRIEND, BUT NOT FOR YOU! NOOOOOOO......

There are people out there who will greenlight anything! That is the only explanation I can offer as to why the House of the Dead movie exists. And that's only scary part to the whole movie. It's so bad you'll go off movies forever. I seriously wanted to switch this off and turn the TV over to the Paint Drying channel but I was bound by my word to suffer the whole thing. I don't know why I do these bad things to myself.

As if it matters, here's the basic jist of the 'story'. A group of twenty-somethings are so desperate to go out to some island in the Pacific Northwest (Canada actually, because it's cheap) for the 'Rave of the Century' (which consists of about 8 people and un-raving music) that they pay some craggy old fisherman $1000 to take them there after they miss the main ferry. That's gotta be some rave to be worth all that dough! The fisherman warns them that the island is also known as the Island of the Dead (hang on-I thought this was HOUSE of the Dead?) and that they are all doomed yadda yadda yadda.

First faults here. Why would a tiny little rave (of the Century my foot!) be held on some remote island? Why would anyone willingly pay loads of money to get it? Why pay even more to the craggy old fisherman to take them back when they could just come back with the others?

Once they arrive they discover that the rave (which consists of about 2 tents, a small stage and a port-a-john) has been smashed, there's blood everywhere and no one is around. What would any rationally thinking person do? Run for their lives of course. But no, these clueless, obviously blind people decide to go look for them. Soon enough they discover an old ramshackle house that's 50 times as big on the inside as it is on the outside. Another half hour of stumbling around in the forest follows, as an excuse to kill of some of the lesser characters, and after much tedium they arrive back at the house again. The characters, like the movie, go nowhere.

Jammed into this ghastly disaster is a superabundance of gibberish dialogue, heinous acting, mumbo-jumbo exposition and zillions of clips from the once-popular arcade game of the same name. Why this was universally accepted as a good idea with the filmmakers I'll never know. The clips have no reference to any of the scenes and only degrade this trash even further, if that is at all possible.

It has nothing to do with the game save for some cheap, throwaway line at the end. It makes Resident Evil look like cinematic glory. Hell, even the Double Dragon movie seems multi-Oscar worthy in comparison to this junk. The only one who comes out of this with his dignity still intact is Jurgen Prochnow. He could have just taken his money and ran but he tries his best with the awful script and brings a tiny bit of pathos to his character. The rest of the cast suck I'm afraid. The characters are idiots and deserve to die.

Plus, if you cut out the swearing and pointless nudity, I see no reason why this film cannot be shown on Saturday morning TV. It's not frightening in the slightest. Pirates of the Caribbean is more scary than the skeletal bad guys in this film. And where did all those bad guys come from anyway? There were only a few people on the island to begin with. I guess this justifies the reason they chose to reuse footage over and over. I kid you not, you'll see the same zombie die a dozen times.

Who's ultimately to blame for that scandalous waste of celluloid? None other than director Uwe Boll. His control over the movie is non-existent. You can clearly the see actors have no idea what they should be doing and that the zombies aren't really taking it all seriously. The actors seem like they're reading off cue cards as they constantly pause in the middle of long sentences and carry on talking as soon as they see the next card. It all feels very unnatural.

Plus the film is shot like a two-part mini-series. I have indeed seen better TV productions. And don't get me started on the editing. The film is an incoherent babble with thousands upon thousands of pointless shots and dozens of meaningless camera pans. No real skill or talent was put into making this at all. It truly baffles and boggles the mind how movies this unfathomably bad can get made and George A. Romero can't even get anyone to take his calls. House of the Dead makes some idiotic reference to Romero in a lazy attempt to be 'post-modern' but it only irritates that they think THIS is in the same league as a REAL zombie movie.

For what it's worth, the 1.85:1 anamorphic picture looks great and the Dolby 5.1 soundtrack is clean but very unimpressive and only serves to pronounce the heavily over-used ADR even more. The DVD comes with extras but why torture yourself. Isn't this review warning enough? Stay away! You are all doomed I tell you! Doomed! Doomed!!!