Amazon.com: The usual slasher-movie teens charter a boat to attend a rave in Washington's San Juan islands, find zombies there, and splatter their guts all over the place. House of the Dead shows early promise when the boat captain is the dude from Das Boot (Jürgen Prochnow) and the mate is the inimitably weird Clint Howard. Alas, things devolve from there. The movie includes frequent flashes from its video game inspiration, not that we need much reminding of the obvious source. Amongst the rotten dialogue, bad acting, and gratuitous topless scenes, there's one looooong shootout sequence in the middle of the picture that should be the main attraction for fans of this kind of thing. Otherwise, it's at the level of every other slasher movie, video game or no video game, in which stupid people do stupid things to keep themselves in harm's way. --Robert Horton
House of the Bored I got to admit, I like Uwe Boll's style. He's nuts and his visions are greater than the technology available. He is a crappy filmmaker but at least he seems to be doing something he enjoys so I got to respect that. I must admit I agonized over how many stars to give this movie. While it wasn't horrible, it certainly was one of the worst zombie movies ever made. But, it's not quite a zombie movie as it's based on a videogame based on zombie movies. So it's a subgenre of a genre. But I digress. This move most definitely has its moments; Clint Howard playing yet another creepy guy, the gentleman from Das Boat, cheese-tastic lines just begging for audience responses, and of course zombie gore. But for the good, there is also the bad; most of the cinematography looks to be that of a TV movie but it is only noticeable at times. The so-called rave happens during the day and the schizophrenic soundtrack gets annoying at times. This movie is defintely a sick-day movie, so while you can't watch it a lot, if you're home and sick and barely lucid, this one's for you.
This movie was created for Mystery Science Theatre 3000!!!! House of the Dead is a story of friends with intentions of going to the "Rave of the Year", but end up starring in one of the worst movies of all time. If this movie wasn't specifically made for Mystery Science Theatre 3000 ridicule, then it was created with intentions of breaking the cinema scale of unintentional comedy.
Narrated by dim-witted protagonist Rudy, the friends fill out the cornucopia of stereotypical horror movie: Greg, the hormonally hyper best friend; Simon, the superficially idiotic third wheel; Cynthia, the blonde who serves as cannon fodder; Alicia, Rudy's ex-girlfriend who provides the unnecessary pointless love side-story; the Asian chick wearing a red, white, and blue spandex outfit (conveniently named Liberty); and a token black chick with a ROBOTIC.ACTING.DELIVERY.
The group is attempting to get to a remote island rave on Isla del Muerte, which translates loosely in Spanish to "Site of the Lamest Rave ever". They hire a gun-smuggling German ship-captain named Captain Kirk - yeah, Cpt. Kirk - to take them to the isolated rave for $1000 on an island that will henceforth be named "Thousand Island". Captain Kirk, and his first-mate (Clint Howard), take the group to the island, where previous scenes displayed a Sega-sponsored rave, where, naturally, there is at least one big-breasted Asian chick hired for some topless dancing.
In no time at all, a guy named Matt dies a deserved death for the travesty of wearing white penny loafers, and full-frontal, gratuitous nudity fills the time before the inevitable zombie attack wave. It's also clear early on that horny kid = dead kid, and skinny dipper = dead kid. Meanwhile, there are completely random and pointless insertions of video game footage - as if a viewer needed to be reminded about the inspiration for such insipid nonsense.
When the attack finally happens, the viewer quickly learns about the unique abilities of this island's zombies. After Simon utters, "Simon says" - a phrase no person named Simon should ever say - he learns that some zombies can spit face-disfiguring acid roughly five feet. Simon says, get that man some aloe vera! Along with acid-spitters, there is a swarm of completely coordinate zombies that can climb, swim, and use weapons. When the pop-out of the water during surprise attacks, the group engages in two compelling games of Whack-a-Mole, blasting each swim-team zombie as they surface.
The rest of the movie explores the hunting and killing abilities of the zombie axe-throwing gymnastic team (you have to see it to believe it), zombie track team, and Gallagher Zombie - a man who has fallen on hard times since the price of watermelon has skyrocketed - chase down the group, Cpt. Kirk, and a female shore patrol officer named Casper who has a magic pistol with unlimited ammo refills.
This is easily one of the best bad movies I've ever seen, and there isn't a single second that goes by without the potential for unintentional comedy and MST3K fun. Highly recommended!!
Stay Away...Far Away. Uwe Boll is in the House. Five college students take an ill-fated trip to a remote island, endearingly called "Isla del Muerte". That's "Island of the Dead" for you non-Spanish speakers. They're expecting to take in a rave, but they get oh so much more than that. There be zombies on that thar island! That's about all the setup that you need, sadly it's not any more elaborate than that. And sadly, such a simple concept is convoluted by the fact that it's told as one big flashback with a bunch of flashbacks scattered throughout.
I was completely disappointed by the garbage script that was churned out. Completely abysmal. I wouldn't have been as disgruntled if I hadn't seen the writers' other work. I thought that Dave Parker's THE DEAD HATE THE LIVING was a much more inspired effort, and Mark Altman's screenplay of FREE ENTERPRISE was complete genius compared to this tripe. Some of the lines are complete head-shakers. Much like the boat captain's name, Captain "Kirk" (Jürgen Prochnow), the movie seems like it wants to be tongue-in-cheek, but Boll directs it completely straight. That's where it all unravels.
The action sequences would have been a positive for the film, but alas, Uwe Boll drops the ball again. If I see another bullet-time action sequence, it'll be too soon. The way it's callously thrown around, you'd think that Boll was the creator of the effect and this is the first time it's ever been seen or something. The main battle between humans and zombies is ruined by the insertion of distracting video game shots (which appear throughout the whole film) and the far too generous dose of slow-motion bullet-time. Every single character is granted a useless 360 degree slow-mo shot of them shooting off their weapon. It makes the transition from "ridiculous" to "completely ridiculous" when Rudy (Jonathan Cherry) takes a moment, in the middle of the carnage, to reflect on the events so far. The flashback is simply a super-fast collage of clips from the movie up to that point. I don't know about you, but the last thing that I'd do in the middle of a battle for my life would be to take time out to think about things. Utterly pointless and insulting. It's like we needed a refresher because we hadn't remembered what we've seen in the last 30 minutes.
This film should have never made it into the theaters, plain and simple. There's nothing redeemable, nothing original, nothing even fun. I can imagine Uwe Boll thinks he's very clever and his use of all the flashbacks was creative...it wasn't. He probably thinks his action scenes were mind-blowing with all the slow-mo and his camera tricks...they weren't. He, for some odd reason, thinks he can actually direct. He can't.
yeah... As plainly as I can put it:
This is the WORST movie I have ever seen in my life. Keep in mind, I've seen Zombie 4: After Death!!!!
Silly beyond belief with the lame inserts of the video game footage, the wretching acting (i wanted them all to be killed) and the stupid, crazy over the top main bad guy
this movie...i cant even believe anyone paid money to have this PRODUCED
Stay away, or you will smash your face into a wall in hopes that the blinding pain will force you to forget what you just watched.
Downright laughable. Downright laughable. I have never laughed so much at a zombie movie. From zombies that seem out of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with their tree jumping abilities, to swimming zombies, to the director's use of video game like approach to shooting the movie, to the really really really bad accents.
The movie is about a group of friends that go to a rave in an island by the name of 'Isla de la Muerte' (Island of Death). There, they encounter zombies, tons of zombies and start dropping one by one.
As I mentioned the director used a video game like approach, with images from the arcade game House of The Dead and whenever someone dies the screen revolves around the character and becomes red. The director also uses this revolving camera motion for the action and shooting scenes. The soundtrack is pretty good (befitting of a rave), at least much better than the movie itself. The director uses a lot of slow motion techniques to show the bullets firing and some action sequences.
There are a lot of clichés in the movie: from "there must be a scientific explanation", a member of the group wearing the requisite goofy outfit with 'Matrix-like' moves, stupidity, and of course the zombies. The people got tough fast, as soon as they were given weapons and instantly learned how to use them. "Movie Rapid Learning Technique": All for the sake of some action! I mean, these people are fighting like pros. And swords, let's not forget the swords or the machetes!
The movie also has 'Matrix-like scenes' downright to ripping off the moves. Throw in some old Spanish legend, some old newly found forgotten books and you have yourself what should be a sci-fi movie of the week. If you must watch it, watch it for the funny action sequence about an hour into the movie. It's like House of The Dead game, The Matrix and Soul Calibur (or any similar fighting video game) all rolled into one. I really like the arcade game and played it growing up. Some things are meant to stay video games.
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