House of the Dead (2003)

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

Fmovies: 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

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, j

House of the Dead fmovies. This is by far THE WORST movie i have ever watched. I've seen some pretty awful movies in my time but this ones takes the cake, no, wait, i mean the the whole damn bakery. It is so bad that i believe a word to describe the way you will feel after watching this atrocity has yet to be created. Please just do yourself a favor, if you ever get the urge to watch this and watch thirty minutes of that annoying purple dinosaur Barney, then multiply that thirty times fold and you would still only get a small fraction of the horror you would be in store for. In summation, i guess you really can call it a horror movie, but only if you're willing to be scared senseless by the worst acting in the business and utterly pointless story.

Real Rating, -10 Disgusting

F*ck Me! I've seen some incredibly horrific movies in my time but this takes the p*ss!

Honestly I can't express in words how bad this film actually is. Besides the plot that isn't really there, the comically crap acting, the hilariously dreadful excuses for zombies; You know what, I could go on all day. Every little thing in this film is either stupid, pointless, crap or embarrassing. I express to anyone who wants to watch this movie... don't!

I'm ashamed to say, I have this on my rack. It's hidden away right at the god damn bottom of the huge pile. I couldn't even give this horse-sh*t excuse for a film away. That's how bad it is.

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 hereÂ…

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