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321 out of 362 people found the following comment useful :-
Lord have mercy!, 6 May 2004

Author: Shawn Watson (gator_macready@yahoo.com) from The Underverse

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!!!

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198 out of 240 people found the following comment useful :-
Beware the "House of the Dead", because..., 22 February 2005
Author: one4now4 from Ft. Worth, TX, USA

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......

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125 out of 140 people found the following comment useful :-
Gives crap a bad name..., 22 July 2005

Author: baba44713 from Croatia

There are some movies you just know they are going to be bad from frame one. Even if you were totally oblivious of Ed Wood's work, one look at that commentator from "Plan 9 from outer space" and you just KNOW you are not gonna see the next cinematic masterpiece. Just like that, when I saw the first shot of Uwe Bolls masterpiece "House of Dead", with that guy sitting at the front of the house starting his introduction while trying desperately to sound like he just arrived from Sin City, I knew I'm in for a helluva ride.

So, the movie starts like this - first the lead character says that everybody else is going to die. You know, to keep you wandering. Then he starts introducing the rest of the characters with lines like "Karma..thinks she's Foxy Brown" or "Alicia..my ex.. we broke up recently.. I had to study and she had to fence". No, I'm not kidding.

Anyway, this bunch of 20-somethings who couldn't act their way out of a wet paper-bag are going to the "Rave of the century", rave in question being a few tents, a port-a-potty and a shoddy stage located on small island in the middle of the Pacific. Our gang missed the ferry, but thankfully will find a way to get there, the way being a fisher-boat ran by Kirk (Cpt Kirk? Get it? Man, whoever wrote this script is a genius) and his sidekick who is a bastard child of Simpsons' Cpt McAllister and that hook killer who knows what you did last summer.

To make the long story short, the gang gets to the island, finds nobody there except some bloody T-shirts and then decide to run the hell away from there. No wait, they do not, they actually get all happy and like cos there's free booze.

With that scene the movie hits rock bottom and then against all odds proceeds to go further downhill. Some guys in rubber suits start running around, there is some screaming and shooting, our gang goes to some house to meet some other gang, they go out of the house, meet Cpt Kirk and some police woman (who between them have about 500 pounds of weapons) and then decide to go back to the house. Somewhere along the line they transform into a S.W.A.T. team, enter the Matrix, the rubber-suit guys start multiplying like bacteria and I start to cry because I actually paid to see this. To add insult to the injury, every few minutes there are shots from the video game this crap is based on and there is a cute game-over cut-scene for a few characters when they die.

I seriously hate this movie. It doesn't even fit in that famed "So bad it's good" category. It's just plain bad. The script is bad, the zombies are awful, there is no tension, lines are bad, actors are bad.. the list just goes on.

You will probably want to see this movie just because of its reputation of being awful. Don't. There are bad movies that deserve to be watched. This is not one of them.

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131 out of 169 people found the following comment useful :-
quite possibly the worst movie ever made, 13 February 2005

Author: MLDinTN from TN

This is one of the worst films I've seen. The only positive thing I can say is it was so bad that is seemed comical. First off, there's no plot. The actors appear to be reading off cue cards and do the dumbest things. Such as being chased by dead people but yet wanting to go out and look for their friends. Also the zombies were terrible, no where near as fun as any of Romero's work, who gets s plug in the movie. And the dumbest part of all was they kept showing flashes of the video game in the action sequences. Like we don't get the video game is about shooting zombies. Also, all the 20 somethings some how know how to use automatic weapons and hit a target without even aiming the gun. And the way the people die is so stupid. It's like they run out of ammo so stand around waiting to be jumped on. And when cornered in front of the house they run out of ammo instead of shooting the door open, So dumb.

FINAL VERDICT: If any of these actors appear in another film, then they've been blessed with a second chance. Definitely the worst film I've seen in years. A B-movie on cinemax is better.

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107 out of 135 people found the following comment useful :-
Jürgen Prochnow, what happened?, 23 January 2004
Author: palmer-4 from la

Holy smokes, was this movie bad or what? I mean, the absolute worst direction I can remember in a film. We see people running through a forest, quick shots of a zombie's face by a tree, more shots of people running, a shot of a video game, a shadow of someone running and then a shot of another zombie by a tree. What the heck is going on?

The last zombie movie I saw that was this bad was "The Dead Hate the Living" which was, surprise, written by the same guy, Dave Parker, who has absolutely no business writing films. Just a terrible, terrible writer. I mean, with great lines like "let's face it, we're dealing with zombies here," you'd think the producers would have caught on.

And like Parker's last effort, we get references to other zombie films, which when made by awful filmmakers, only makes the film more stupid. One idiot in the movie makes a reference to the Romero zombie trilogy, which has nothing to do with anything, except that apparently the zombies in this movie have seen the Romero films because the only way to kill them is just like the Romero zombies, a shot to the head. Kind of takes away the mystic of the film when you're making references to movies that your movie follows the rules from.

Of course, if George Romero ever saw this film, he'd laugh his butt off at how awful it is. And this stupid quick cuts to video games shots. Hey, I don't play video games so I don't know anything about the game this movie is based on, but you want your movie to play to a wide audience, not the select few who are familiar with the video game. It did nothing but remind the viewer they're watching an awful movie.

And sadly, Jurgen Prochnow, what happened to your career? This is the guy who is in one of the greatest war films of all time, Das Boot, now playing dumb roles in dumb movies not even worthy of straight-to-video fare. How sad (although the U-boat line did make me laugh).

Now will people stop giving Dave Parker work? The only movies this guy should be involved with are the ones at the video store he's the manager of.

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88 out of 107 people found the following comment useful :-
Gilligan's Island meets Shaun Of The Dead, 23 August 2005

Author: dunmore_ego from Los Angeles, California

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)

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71 out of 87 people found the following comment useful :-
Wow...and not in a good way., 27 March 2004

Author: Colby Park (colby_park@hotmail.com)

Ok, first of all, I am a huge zombie movie fan. I loved all of Romero's flicks and thoroughly enjoyed the re-make of Dawn of the Dead. So when I had heard every single critic railing this movie I was still optimistic. I mean, critics hated Resident Evil, and while it may not be a particularly great film, I enjoyed it if not for the fact that it was just a fun zombie shoot-em up with a half decent plot. This however, is pure crap. Terrible dialogue, half-assed plot, and video game scenes inserted into the film. Who in their right mind thought that was a good idea. The only thing about this movie (I use the term loosely) that I enjoyed was Jurgen Prochnow as Captain Kirk (Ugh). While his name throws originality out the window, you can see in his performance that he knows he's in a god awful film and he might as well make the best of it. Everyone else acts as if they're doing Shakespeare. And very badly I might add. Basically the only reason anyone should see this monstrosity is if you a.) Are a huge zombie buff and must see every zombie flick made or b.) Like to play MST3K, the home game. See it with friends and be prepared for tons of unintentional laughs.

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71 out of 102 people found the following comment useful :-
Wow., 11 February 2004

Author: Michael DeZubiria (miked32@hotmail.com) from Luoyang, China

Okay, so I'm not a big video game buff, but was the game House of the Dead really famous enough to make a movie from? Sure, they went as far as to actually put in quick video game clips throughout the movie, as though justifying any particular scene of violence, but there are dozens and dozens of games that look exactly the same, with the hand in the bottom on the screen, supposedly your own, holding whatever weapon and goo-ing all kinds of aliens or walking dead or snipers or whatever the case may be.

It's an interesting premise in House of the Dead, with a lot of college kids (LOADED college kids, as it were, kids who are able to pay some fisherman something like $1,500 just for a ride after they miss their boat) trying to get out to this island for what is supposed to be the rave of the year. The first thing that comes to mind about House of the Dead after watching it is that it has become increasingly clear that modern horror movies have become nothing more than an exercise in coming up with creative ways to get a lot of scantily clad teenagers into exactly the same situations. At least in this case, the fact that they were on their way to a rave excuses the way the girls are dressed. They look badly out of place running around the woods in cute little halter-tops, but at least they THOUGHT they were dressed for the occasion.

Clint Howard, tellingly the most interesting character in the film by far, delivers an absolutely awful performance, the greatness of which overshadows every other actor in the movie. I can't stand it when well-known actors change their accents in movies, it is so rarely effective, and Howard here shows that it is equally flat to have an well-known actor pretend that he's this hardened fisherman with a raspy voice from years of breathing salty air. He didn't even rasp well. It sounded like he was eating a cinnamon roll before shooting and accidentally inhaled some powdered sugar or something. Real tough there, Clint! I expected more from him, but then again, he did agree to a part in this mess.

Once we get to the island, the movie temporarily turns into any one of the Friday the 13th movies that took place at Camp Crystal Lake. Lots of teenagers played by actors who were way too old for their parts getting naked and then killed. The nudity was impressive, I guess, but let's consider something for a minute. These kids pay almost two grand to get out to this island to go to the Rave Of The Year, find NO ONE, and say, well, who wants a beer! Even the guy who pulled that stack of hundreds out of his wallet to get them all over there didn't think anything of it that they found a full bar and not a single solitary person in sight. Here you have the input from director Uwe Boll - There's alcohol! They won't notice that the party they came for consists of no one but themselves!

So not only do they start drinking, not minding the fact that the whole party seems to have vacated the island, but when one of the girls goes off into the dark woods to find out where everyone is (dragging one other girl and one of the guys reluctantly along), the guy and the girl who stay behind to get smashed decide that it would be a great idea to strip down for a quickie now that they're alone. It's like they expected to find the island empty, and now that they rest of the people that they came over with were gone for a little while, they would have some privacy since there's no one else around. Brilliant!

Now for the things that everyone hated, judging by the reviews that I've read about the movie. Yes, intersplicing shots from the video game into the movie, mostly in order to show that, yes, the movie was being faithful to/directly copying the video game. Sure, it was a stupid idea. I can't imagine who thought up that little nugget, but worse than that is the Matrix-style bullet time scenes that were thrown in over and over and over and over. After the first time (at which point I found it pretentious and cheesy for a movie like this to have a shot like that as though it was something original) it is noticeable more for the technique of the shot itself rather than any dramatic meaning or creation of any kind of tension for the film.

One of the things that makes a zombie film scary and gets you on the edge of your seat is to have them slowly but relentlessly coming after the living humans, who are much faster but getting tired, running out of places to run, and with a terrifying shortage of things with which to fight the zombies off with. The first two are done right in the movie, the kids are terrified and don't have a lot of places to run since they're on an island, but since they caught a ride over with a smuggler, they find themselves heavily armed. And I mean that very strongly. I mean, these people have everything from machine guns to hand grenades, which removes most of the tension of the impending walking dead.

Then you have what I call the techno-slasher scene. Since the rave never happened, and I guess since Uwe Boll thought people were going to be disappointed at not hearing any techno music in the movie, there's one scene right in the middle where all the humans are fighting off the living dead, and amazingly enough it turns into something of a music video. There's techno music blasting as the shots are edited together faster and faster until it's nothing but a blur of gory shot, mostly only about 5 frames long (which is about 1/6 of a second) flashing across the screen in time with the speed techno music. Clever, I guess, but it has no place in a horror movie because it completely removes any sense of scariness or tension of even the gross-out effect because you can't see any one thing for long enough to react to it. You're just watching these shots fly across the screen and wondering what the hell the director was thinking when he decided that it would be a good idea to put something like this in the movie.

I've seen a lot of people compare this movie to Resident Evil, mostly claiming that it copies the premise of it, and they're exactly right. I appreciate that at least here, as was not the case in Resident Evil, it wasn't some man-made virus that turned people into walking dead that were able to infect other people, changing them the way vampires turn others into vampires. 28 Days Later was also clearly an inspiration for this movie, it's just too bad that House of the Dead didn't do a single original thing, except for the somewhat moronic idea of putting in quick shots of the video game on which it is based, just in case you forget. I really think that this should have been a much better movie. While obviously I can't say that I know much about the game it's based on, just the title and the movie poster deserve a much better movie, but unfortunately I think that's more often the case than not with horror movies. It's really kind of sad when a movie comes out that is so obviously advertised as a no-holds-barred horror film, and the scariest thing in the entire movie is the closing shot, which suggests the possibility of a sequel.

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60 out of 87 people found the following comment useful :-
Action-filled crap-fest, 13 February 2005

Author: BroadswordCallinDannyBoy from Boston, MA

I found this movie in the 'horror' section of my video store. That seems to make sense as most zombie movies have their place there. From Romero's 'Dead' trilogy to '28 days later.' However upon watching it, you can quickly see what this movie really is.

It is actually a music video that goes progressively faster and gets more and more and more gory. There is no horror here folks. Just some half-way decently staged action scenes which soon grow tiresome because they last... and last... and last... and soon you get the feeling maybe you're DVD player accidentally skipped back 3 minutes, but no, this is how they actually made the movie. It's a pity. I think anyone could find a better use for $7 million dollars in the movie industry than make this lump o' crud. Though some of the 360 effects were cool, but once again, they were over used and grew tedious since it was the same stunt over and over again each time, just with a different character.

Also what is ROYALLY annoying is the splicing on of footage from the arcade game. I've played the game. It sucks. So why did they put it in here? Oh that's right, this isn't a movie but a music video, and it's a poor one at that. 3/10

Rated R: a lot of violence/gore, and profanity

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45 out of 67 people found the following comment useful :-
So bad its......, 12 October 2003
Author: Ace-38 from Tulsa, OK

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

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