Zombie Fans, look! House of the Dead website! Cooool! (1 Viewer)

[Scott Weinberg]

I'm not familiar with the video game on which this movie is based, but sheesh - I liked the craptastic Resident Evil, so it's a safe bet I'll have a ball with this one too!
House of the Dead won't hit theaters until next year, but if the website is any indication...this looks like it could be one entertaining chomp-fest.
Have a look:
Link Removed
A few promising phrases located throughout the site:
Zombie Spider
Mutant Piranha
Clint Howard

 

[Robin Warren]

Piranha are cool. Mutant zombie piranha are freaktastic. They have my money already.

 

[Ross Williams]

This is my favorite game to play when I'm at the arcade. It's damn fun blasting all those zombies. Doesn't require any of the brain work that the Resident Evil series does.
Any new zombie movie gets a from me.

 

[Steve_Tk]

Ok, I saw this trailer and started laughing. So I thought, "hey, that looks terrible, I wonder what rotten tomatoes is saying." Well they are saying some pretty funny stuff. Read the reviews for it, even our own Scott Weinberg posted a review. These are a very funny read.
The plot of this movie in the freaking trailer was bad, can't imagine what the actual movie is like. I can't stop laughing at how they find some guns, start jumping 7 feet in the air, and mowing down some zombies. This should be added to worst movies ever thread.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/HouseoftheDead-1126175/

 

[Justin_S]

I saw it. It was pretty obvious that it was going to be pretty bad, but I felt like going to the theater this weekend. The film is bad, but entertainingly so IMO. The 360 shots are particularly hilarious. Also, how could you not laugh at truly awful dialogue such as: "Hey guys, look at this book. Its really old... maybe it can help us." I also give the film credit for having a good bit of gore, and unlike RESIDENT EVIL (which I do like), actually showing all of the head shots. This film is very bad (what kind of a person actually thinks video game shots are good in a film?!), but I enjoyed it on an amused level.

 

[Dan Rudolph]

Frnakly it would be wrong to make a good movie here. Entertainly bad is the way to go or you aren't being true to your source material. THe games were based on the bad zombie movies of yesteryear, so it makes sense the movie woudl be a bad zombie movie for a new generation.

 

[Scott Weinberg]

Ugh. Someone resurrected my 2002 enthusiasm for this movie.

Read the reviews for it, even our own Scott Weinberg posted a review. These are a very funny read.


Thanks, Steve!

Since a full-on Review Thread is probably unlikely (most people are WAY too smart to go see this in the movies), I'll paste my review here:

The House of the Dead :star: out of 5

Not one house in the entire movie...

There is one walled edifice to speak of, though it's more of a voodoo crypt than an actual house. I guess "Crypt of the Dead" would be a rather redundant title, plus there's the video-game source material of the same name. So the title had to stay. False advertising regarding cinematic real estate aside, this is an abysmal little turkey.

Ha. I kid because there's not much else to do when faced with a horror movie this amazingly bad. And this is coming from someone who devours Bad Horror Movies like they're made out of cookie dough and cocaine. What forced me to drop six American dollars on a film so bad that I couldn't find ONE advance review?

A three hour window before Intolerable Cruelty was to begin, a sickening curiosity that apparently knows no limits, and the small glimmer of hope that The House of the Dead could become some sort of Cheeseball Guilty Pleasure Gore Flick.

Needless to say, a nap on a bar stool at Pizzeria Uno would have been a better expenditure of one's time.

Because The House of the Dead is certifiably atrocious, a flick so derivative and amateurish and plain old retarded that moviegoers may find themselves stunned to be seeing the title atop multiplex marquees...as opposed to the bottom shelf of Blockbuster's New Release section. You know, that shelf that offers only ONE copy of the flick at hand.

In an effort to simply break things down for the Horror Freaks (the only conceivable audience for a movie like this), here's the skinny:

Plot: Five morons (three hotties and two horny dudes) charter a creepy fishing boat from guys called Clint and Jurgen in an effort to make it over to the "Island de la Muerta Rave". That The House of the Dead assumes horror fans do not know what "Muerta" means is a clear indication of the flick's paltry knowledge of the genre.

Anyway, the seven dummies (and two cops in tow, don't ask) make it to Death Island and guess what? Dead ravers everywhere. Zombies got 'em. Yep. (Prior to these arresting developments come three separate sequences in which we get to see bare female breasts.) Following the discovery of the Dead Ravers we get scene after scene of a rapidly dwindling collection of idiots as they shoot zombies in the chest.

And gunshot wounds to the chest kill these zombies. Call me nuts, but that's like saying "Oh, you can kill vampires with a stick of butter." Gunshot wounds to the chest cannot kill zombies! Bah, I digress - mainly because we're never quite sure if the undead creatures ARE zombies, per se. They're just kinda...living dead things. Easily killed ones.

The script is comprised of lines like "That looks like it's been there for a millenia!" and "I did it so I could be immortal...so I could live forever." Topless chicks get peeped upon by slimy Clint Howard...and don't even care. Unintroduced characters wander onto the screen, walk around for a few minutes and then vanish, never to be seen again. Prochnow's character is named Kirk...and he's a sea captain. Insert punchline here.

Kills/Gore: Several kills, distressingly little gore. Matter of fact, this is the sort of horror movie that begins to set up its scares, promises something goopy...and then CUTS AWAY to another scene (full of living and relatively safe characters) as audience members are left to wonder how disgusting the previous victim's death could have been...had they been able to see it.

And chopping the gore out of a low-budget zombie flick is like sucking all the jelly out of a dozen donuts; a pointless and somewhat disgusting act. (An eventual "Unrated DVD Version" is undoubtedly the wish of one bizarrely optimistic studio suit.)

Acting: atrocious across the board. Heck, when you can spot the fact that Clint Howard is giving a bad performance...something's just not right. Jurgen Prochnow earns the enviable title of "most recognizable actor on display" although the well-admired German thespian looks alternately embarassed and sleepy as he wanders through his role of "rascally and soon-to-be-devoured" ship captain.

Of the males in the cast...nothing. Blank generic faces spouting inane dialogue and screaming. The gals are no better, though they're each very pretty. Until they get chewed up by the sweaty semi-dead, that is. Loved the Asian gal dressed in the slinky Stars & Stripes leotard. Between that and the leading lady's fishnet blouse, I estimate a costume budget of about 32 bucks.

The gimmick: those who consider Paul Anderson's Resident Evil some sort of affront to the sensibilities of hardcore videogamers the world over, The House of the Dead will supplant their venom. In other words, this is easily the worst "video-game-based" movie yet. And that includes that nightmarishly awful Super Mario Bros abortion.

In an effort to have gamers clapping their hands in supposed glee, director Uwe Boll takes to splicing sections of the video game into the movie's action scenes! As our survivors continue to shotgun-blast their way through the shuffling "zombies", flickers of video game material scatter across the screen...as if to remind the viewer that, yes, there is something worse than watching someone else play a video game: it's paying to watch someone else play a video game.

Lastly (because let's face it: this review is already twice as long as House of the Dead's screenplay), the flick is considerably more of an action flick than it is horror. This distinction actually manages to make the film worse, as Mr. Boll has this one inane gimmick that he uses about 14 times throughout the movie. This trick involves Bullet Time Photography (cutting edge about 4 years ago) and a rapidly spinning camera pan. So what you get (about 14 times) is one character who shoots their gun in slow motion as the camera repeatedly circles the shooter while everyone in the theater battles vertigo-induced-vomiting. Used just once, this spin-o-rama slo-mo-bullet schpiel would look ridiculous. Imagine 14.

(Oh, here's something positive: Ona Grauer, who plays Hero Girl, is almost criminally sexy. Thank you, Ms. Grauer, for giving me something sweet to stare at for 90-some otherwise interminable minutes. OK, two things.)

Next up for Mr. Boll and his crew is another video-game flick entitled "Alone in the Dark". Here's hoping that he can use "The House of the Dead" as a learning tool. All he'd have to do is study this flick real hard...and then do everything the opposite way. Then he'd make a good movie. Maybe.

 

[Dan Rudolph]

And gunshot wounds to the chest kill these zombies. Call me nuts, but that's like saying "Oh, you can kill vampires with a stick of butter." Gunshot wounds to the chest cannot kill zombies!

That sucks. In the game, zombies can be killed by shots to the chest, but only by pumping enough rounds in them to blow them in half. The head is the way to go for kills.

 

[Alex Spindler]

Strictly straight to video stuff here.
On the pro side:

• When there is gore, it isn't bad
• The zombie makeup isn't terrible
• The extended action scene to make it to the house was better than a similar scene in John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars
• The lead females are indeed attractive

On the con side:

• Clint Howard somehow manages to embarrass himself (and he was in freakin' The Ice Cream Man!)
• Lots of off camera deaths of main characters (in fact very few humans are actually shown dying, and many just have some bizarre rotating red mugshot to let you know they didn't make it)
• The bullet time effect was comically overused
• The script is video game dialog bad and the plot isn't really there at all
• Lots, lots, lots of dropped ideas, plot holes, and continuity errors
• The acting is pretty bad all around (my favorite actor performance - A guy's girlfriend gets killed while he is stuck in a tipped over Port-a-potty and his reaction is bored indifference)
• For every one nice looking location shot, they have three local haunted house quality set pieces

If I understand the whole games series, they've made this some kind of prequel. But I'm not holding my breath that someone is rushing out to greenlight another one.

 

[Andres Munoz]

Jesus Christ this movie was bad!! I can't believe I spent money on this. And this is coming for a very hard core horror fan.
Scott, you said it man. Great review. You took the words right out of my mouth.
Really guys, you have to see it to believe it. The dialog and the acting have got to be the worst I've seen in a long time. I ended up rooting for the zombies.
Who directed this crap?? Is he a beginner? Inserting actual zombie kills from the video game into the movie? LOL. Red spinning mugshots for the characters that get killed? Bullet time sequences of each "good guy" shooting the zombies and making "tough guy" faces while doing it? double LOL!!
God, I really don't know what to say. This was actually embarrasing to watch.
I can only think of two scenes I liked. When Jurgen Prochnow first appears onscreen, one of the dumb male actors goes "holy crap, he looks like a U-boat captain!". That was actually funny.
Second scene, towards the end of the movie, when Ona Grauer runs out of the house which is about to be blown away...that's it...the actual running...that's what I liked...you guys know what I'm talking about don't you? "bounce, baby, bounce".
Probably about the scariest part of the movie is the fact that they might have set up the ending for a sequel.
PS: OK, OK...I do have to give them credit for the zombies. They looked OK.