House of the Dead (2003)

This review was originally published on Wednesday, June 21, 2006.

House of the Dead

2003

Starring: Clint Howard, Jurgen Prochnow, Jonathan Cherry

Directed By: Uwe Boll

Ok, I'm going to be honest here. This movie was on the Sci Fi Channel tonight and I decided to give it a chance since I've never seen it before. I'd also like to state that I'm aware of the reputation of director Uwe Boll, but I decided to give it a chance anyway. With that said, I'll get on to the review....

I watched five minutes of this garbage and decided to change the channel and never to give Uwe Boll or any of his films a chance ever again. Where do I start? God this movie was horrible (or what I saw anyway) that I can't give it a fair shake. Why can't I? Because I can't find one damn thing that's good to say about it.

Let me see.... hmmmm.... nope. Nothing good or redeeming comes to mind. Therefore, on with the bashing of House of the Dead.

I'm a HUGE fan of zombie films. In fact, I've got a great collection of zombie movies spanning VHS, Laserdisc, and DVD. All of the zombie movies I've seen span both big budget as well as independent cinema, and I will say that out of all of them, House of the Dead is below the bottom of the heap. What does that mean, Stephen? It means that even though this film had a decent sized budget, is based on a great video game, and is "labeled" a zombie film... it's the worst piece of zombie cinema I've ever laid eyes on.

The zombies were so god awful that I could honestly tell that the makeup fx guys could give a shit less about their zombies. I've seen better makeup from the TV show Friends. How freakin' sad is that? Not only did they look like garbage, they were unoriginal in motion and actions. I've seen real corpses at funeral homes that were more intimidating. Damn, it was brutal, and not in a good way.

The acting: ok, I'm going to say this... when Clint Howard is the only redeeming quality of this shitfest you call a film... walk away. Walk away slowly. For those who don't know, Clint Howard is Ron Howard's brother who is known for obscure and nutball characters in cult films. His more promising role was in Austin Powers when a giant penis crossed his computer screen and he said: "Johnson". That's it. Other than that, I've never seen any of these people before in my life except for Jurgen Pronchnow, and I wish I'd never seen them now.

The movie's "BIG" action sequence at the end was chocked so full of Matrix rip-off shots that I'm sure Larry Wachowski almost considered not having his sex change in order to be a man about whipping Uwe Boll's ass. Ok Uwe, I saw more "bullet time" Matrix shots in three minutes than I saw in 6 hours of Matrix movies. Leave those to the Wachowski's because you absolutely suck at it.

Now for the director, Uwe Boll. What in God's name possessed this man to think that House of the Dead should be this film, and who in the Hell gave him the money to bring this crack-pipe vision to the screen? No wonder it made $18 at the box office. I've seen better direction from Kindergarten plays with the Special Ed kids. Come on dude! What in the Hell where you thinking? I know, I know... like Mr. Boll will ever read this or answer my questions... but still, it feels good to vent.

To sum this up... yes I only watched about 5 to 8 minutes of this garbage and even though it was on cable TV, I wanted to track down Uwe Boll and DEMAND that he pay my cable bill for this crap-o-rama shitfest. After turning the channel I came to the realization that any monkey with a camera can make a movie, but it takes a monkey that smokes crack to make something this awful. Never in my life have I seen such a complete waste of film. Somewhere a guy at Kodak lost his job for comissioning out the filmstock on this piece of work.

Avoid this movie like a crab infested hooker and if you watch it, please do yourself the favor and punch yourself in the face repeatedly until you see stars. Trust me when I say that it will be less painful.

I was going to rate this film, but then out of principle, I decided that it was not even worth a film reel here. The 5 minutes Mr. Boll wasted of my life, I can never get back, so therefore I urge everyone not to watch another movie he makes ever again. You'll never get that valuable time back.

Rating: None