House of the Dead: Worst film ever? (1 Viewer)

[Garrett Lundy]

I just rented this cinematic pain parade. Holy Jesus mother of all that is holy, how did this movie get produced? This film is bar-none the WORST film I have ever seen, and argueably it could be the WORST film ever created. Just thinking about this movie makes me angry!

*Whats the deal with videogame footage being spliced into the film?

*Springboards, Do we have to see them on-screen?

*Bullettime zoom-around the actors/actresses. Why?

*Acting: Probably worse than 'Manos: The Hands of Fate'

*Characters, especially Cap'n Kirk's 1st mate, taken from 'Manos: The Hands of Fate'. (I'll call him torgo)

*In-your face while running camera. Yes, the audience likes foggy lenses.

The list could continue...but my anger at a movie is so great I have to go do omething else right now.....I need a drink.

 

[Alex Spindler]

It was campy bad, but to compare it to Manos or its like only devalues this film too far. You need to see some of the dregs that Troma picks up and releases.

And it was a video game originally, so it helps explain the video game footage a bit.

The bullet-time was pretty funny because they used it so many times you could have been watching a recording of a Max Payne level.

 

[EricSchulz]

I have seen SO MANY negative (I mean REALLY negative) reviews of this I am tempted to pull it from my Netflix queue.

 

[Jon Sheedy]

I agree with you 100% Garrett!

This is the biggest piece of S*** ever released. I was never so pissed off watching a movie as I was during this one. Can't say I wasn't warned though, but you think "it can't be that bad"...IT CAN!

I will probably attempt to return it to FYE next week (yes, I was stupid enough to actually buy it!)...on grounds that it is unwatchable and contains videogame screenshots. This will be the first time I've ever felt justified in returning a DVD because it was so bad.

If I can't return it, I'll smash it with a hammer...dead serious.

Eric, do not, I repeat, DO NOT pay good money to see this "film". Utter, absolute garbage.

 

[Lev-S]

AHEM... Street Fighter.

 

[Scott Weinberg]

Maybe not the worst ever...but surely one of the worst theatrical releases of the past several years.

How this one didn't go DTV is waaaaay beyond me.

 

[Jordan_E]

I gave it a shot, because truth be told I sort of enjoy lame horror movies if some effort was put into it, but this . . . thing may have turned me off to even watching such crap on the Sci-Fi Channel! And they gave this guy more money to make other movies?!! Oh, let's stop and do the bullettime spin with EVERY SINGLE LIVING CHARACTER!

 

[Garrett Lundy]

Trust me, either Street Fighter was a godsend compared to HOTD. Seriously, This is worse than Than a Gigli/Adrenaline sandwich stuffed inside a rotting copy of Hellcats being played backwards.

 

[Matt Pelham]

I've seen Street Fighter, Super Mario Brothers, Double Dragon.....

I've seen Gigli, Ghost Ship, Darkness Falls, and several of the worst reviewed movies of the year (or past few years).....

None of them even hold a candle to House of the Dead. It was so relentlessly bad I couldn't believe it. I knew it was supposed to be crap, but I thought maybe I could enjoy it on the shoot-em-up fun campy level. No such luck. Stay far far away from this one.

 

[Michael Pakula]

I think You Got Served has to be the worst movie ever.


-Mike

 

[Todd Phillips]

Then I take it you've seen it?

 

[Michael Pakula]

I checked it out on the weekend.


-Mike

 

[Garrett Lundy]

You Got Served, much like Good Burger or even an amateur "adult" film at least had director that had the good sense not to stop the film in the middle of the action to show a loop of clips FROM THE SAME MOVIE!

I swear, the crap on the Sci-Fi channel like Skeeter or They Breed, or even Spider 2 are textbook works of art (with actual acting!) when held in contrast to HOTD.

Until the day I die I shall be forever vexed as to how anyone with a pulse could possibly greenlight this movie. This movie makes me wish that they could still 'blacklist' actors/directors in hollywood.

 

[Lev-S]

HOTD is worse than Street Fighter??? I have to see it! But I don't want to pay for it!!!! BAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! This is where piracy comes in...

 

[dave_brogli]

I rented it the day it came out. Came home read a couple reviews and never watched it. No review i saw said it deserved more than a d-.
i wont miss it.

 

[Ryan Wishton]

This was a very bad movie... I tend to compare it to Super Mario Bros., because both are so bad that you cant believe they made it to the theater... I cant even belive they made it past cameras... I am not an advocate on setting fires, but in this case someone should have set fire to all the cameras and every ounce of film...

I have seen some lousy horror movies lately... I was horribly bored by Cabin Fever, but even that would get an Academy Award next to this crap...

Freddy vs Jason sucked (D+)... Cabin Fever sucked (D+)... House of 1000 corpses sucked even harder (D-)... But, House of the Dead (F-) is the suckiest of them all by leaps and bounds...

Even movies like The Ring (D+/C-) which people praise are passible at best IMO... It was another watch checker and another bore... I was told how scary this movie was and just thought huh? when I saw it...

Oh well...

But, one movie to certainly avoid is HOTD... Unfortuantely, many like me want to see what all the negative fuss is about... That will make the movie money for the Film School wannabes that created this mess...

Watch for a sequel... House of the Dead 2: Clint Howard and the Attack of the Breast Monsters...

 

[Lev-S]

Here is a little IMDB.com hilarity... To sum it up, this philosophy professor gave House of the Dead 10/10. For the rebuttle, keep going...

marogers - It's not just you--there are plenty of people with a similar opinion, but it's an opinion I don't share. I think we're in the midst of another golden age of horror. I have loved most of the recent films. And no, it's not because I'm a teen. I'm middle-aged, and I think the first golden age of horror arrived in the early 1930s with the Universal films.

As for scares, no films scare me, and I think it's a major misconception to conflate a genre with an (necessarily subjective) emotion. There are a couple of big problems with this: One, different people react differently to different movies. This might seem to obvious to state, but think about it--if we define horror by an emotion, that means that different films count as horror to different people, and it might not only be films like Dracula, Psycho and Evil Dead. Some people find films like Gettysburg, or even Pocahontas scary. Are they then horror films?

The second problem is specifically with defining horror by the "scary" emotion. Grown ups tend to be far less scared by things than children, especially things like films. That's why people who started watching horror at a relatively young age felt that a decent amount of the horror they started watching (whatever era's horror it happened to be--it depends on how old you are) was scary, but that the "new horror" (which ends up being whatever horror films are being made once you're in your late teens and above) just isn't as scary.

It's not just your generation. People who grew up on the Universal films felt those were scary, but the monster and sci-fi horror films of the 50s weren't. People who grew up on the Monster and sci-fi horror films of the 50s felt that those were scary, but that stuff like Texas Chainsaw Massacre wasn't--just look at the attitude war that occurred when magazines like Fangoria first appeared. The _Famous Monsters of Filmland_ fans were complaining about the new emphasis on gore, and even after 20-something years, that hasn't completely died down yet. This phenomena will continue. In 10 years you'll get people complaining that Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, etc. were scary, and whatever is coming out in 10 years isn't.

Sure, every once and awhile something might give you that nostalgic tinge of scariness that you experienced when you started watching the genre, but that is different for each person, based on a number of factors about their tastes, background experiences, etc. At any rate--it isn't about anything in the films themselves, but in normal psychological reactions to them as a person ages. A similar phenomenon is the typical reactions to the music that was popular when you were between, say 8 and 18 and the music that is popular now.

The more academic idea of the genre is that horror is about content and common themes--these are objective properties of the films, not subjective ones.

Again, I loved House of the Dead, and all of the recent horror films, but the films aren't about a particular subjective emotion to me, and I try to remain mentally youthful in my approach to them (as I also am with music and other arts). The important thing for achieving that might be the realization stated above--that what is changing is you, more than the films.

REBUTTLE...

Unfortunately the opinions that most people have on this movie are OBJECTIVE. It is a POORLY MADE PIECE OF CINEMA...

1. Bad acting (save for Prochnow, who was semi-entertaining)
2. Bad story
3. Bad editing (video game shots between cuts? yeah, that is GENIUS. definitely reminiscent of a "golden age".)
4. Repetitive shots (what the Hell is with the revolving camera popping in at any inane time? character poses?)
5. Bad script

All those are unarguable FACTS. Just because you enjoyed the movie (which is fine), doesn't mean it's a good movie. There is nothing wrong with voicing your opinion, but try not to stick your foot in your mouth with your "youthful approach" on art. By your logic, if I were to take a dump, film it, then release it to the market, I would have prominently negative feedback. That said, there would also be a small amount of positive feedback. Unfortunately, that small amount of positive feedback doesn't make up for the fact that the movie was 30 seconds, didn't even have titles AND WAS OF ME TAKING A SH*T!!!

Then again, maybe you're the kind of person who watches Citizen Kane and Gigli back-to-back and complains how Citizen Kane didn't have as many funny parts.

RE-REBUTTLE

Yeah, the only problem with that is that opinions can't be objective. That's a contradiction. Value judgments are necessarily subjective. Keep in mind that "objective" doesn't mean "agreement".

"Bad" is a value judgment term, and of course, subjective. Value judgments are not facts. It has to do with the is/ought distinction.

RE-RE-REBUTTLE

Right, but I or we came to that opinion by analyzing the movie objectively and realizing that the quality of the piece as a film was lacking. Nobody is denying that there are people who enjoy zombie movies (even ones that are based off aged video games), but as a movie, it was not done well (by well as in direct comparison with similar products which proved more effective to an audience). Period. Again, we can argue that EVERYTHING is opinionated and that bad acting, directing, story, etc. etc. is great to some people, but since everything must have some sort of a conclusion in this world to function, we must draw some lines. That said, House of the Dead was a terrible movie and you can take a seat, thanks for coming out

 

[BarryS]

I didn't make it past the first half hour of House of the Dead. It's truly horrid.


Now, I loved (yes, loved) House of 1000 Corpses. I own it and I've seen it 3 or 4 times. It's not a great film, no but I find it highly enjoyable. But indeed it looks like a masterpiece compared to House of the Dead. It's an excruciating display of pure cinematic incompetence. Rob Zombie at least brought his macabre sense of humor and style to House of 1000 Corpses.

 

[JonZ]

Doctor Butcher

Worst.....Film.........Ever!

 

[Jay W.]

House of the Dead worst film ever? Hardly. Try sitting through Night of the Bloody Transplant, Hellroller, Disembodied, Demoness, Dark Carnival or Tentacles. At least you could laugh at House in a MST3K way. The other movies i listed were totally worthless and PAINFUL to sit through.