Boll-shit: House of the Dead

Let me just state this for the record: I have not seen many Uwe Boll films. I have seen part of Bloodrayne, even less of Bloodrayne 2 and a good portion of Hitman. Most of his really terrible films (i.e. Seed, Postal), I know mainly through conjecture and commentary about him (i.e. the great Nostalgia Critic review of Alone in the Dark). Having said all that, let me make something else clear: every film of his that I have seen has been terrible. So, in that spirit, let's look at one of his first major films...

House of the Dead

Our film begins with a man lamenting how bad the night ended. He also seems aware of events that he has no way to know about. He also stops being our narrator within the first five minutes, making this Sunset Boulevard homage- entirely pointless. We are introduced to two things that eventually connect: a weekend-long rave on a deserted island and a bunch of yuppies trying to catch a boat. They hire a vaguely-ethnic boat captain and his bearded-weirdo of an assistant(Clint Howard) to take them there, which they do when the Coast Guard comes to inspect them. Even Boll points out the illogical idea of the Coast Guard arriving on foot and not by boat. Meanwhile, a woman goes off to skinny dip in a lake, but keeps her nether regions covered- damned American standards! Her guy stays on the beach, but disappears when she looks back for him. She notices air bubbles coming up and something grabs her leg...but lets go a second later. Thank you- that went nowhere. She wanders out looking for him, stumbles upon a creepy-looking stone house and wanders in. She finds her man dead- with an arm though his torso- and the scene fades out. A similar event happens a bit later, showing us the real creativity on display here. Our group finally gets on the island- after introducing a sub-plot with our Captain- and find an empty rave. Well, start drinking anyways...

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Three of them wander off to find the other party, even after finding a bloody shirt. While they are off, one of the couples wants to have sex. They get interrupted by a zombie attack...which is not shown. O-kay, why not? The others approach the creepy house and only one of them thinks that it is a bad idea ("Haven't you seen Scooby-Doo," she asks). They stumble upon a group of survivors (including the man who is clearly our real lead), who show them handy-cam footage of the attack on the rave. You don't show it full-frame, why? This film is obsessed with not showing you zombie attacks! They get back, only to learn that the girlfriend is a zombie, who promptly kills one of the survivors- thanks for coming! She is killed by the reveal of our Coast Guard woman, who has a gun and is thus the best character. They head to the boat- which earlier featured the Captain fending off zombies with his pistol that fires 13 shots- but find it overrun with zombies. Naturally, one of the women wanders into the water to help, but only gets attacked herself. Fortunately, the Captain has swam to shore, dried off and picked up a machine gun with a scope. Logic, where did you go?

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To sum the movie up (my brain is hurting too much), the Captain relates a story of how a prisoner took over a Spanish galleon (not the one from The Ghost Galleon) and crashed it on the island. Fine, but how did we get zombies? The Captain reveals his magic bag of weapons in a scene that would make John Rambo get hard. They put on possibly the dumbest and silliest action scene of all time as the movie spins around in slow-motion and hyper-edits the shit out of the scene. It also jumps back and forth to game footage, as if you could not get the homage. If you are shooting zombies en mass, you don't need to explain it! It has to be seen to believed! They go inside and discover numerous experiments on dead people. But who is behind it? After running through a tunnel- again pointing out the obvious homage- they run into...the zombified version of the prisoner. Apparently, he has bested death and learned how to make zombies. Please explain this, movie! Our heroes suddenly escape and end up outside, where they must- seriously- sword-fight the zombie pirate. The woman is stabbed, but helps the man finish off the zombie. In the end, we learn that our hero is actually the evil scientist from the game!

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To review, the scientist learned how to make zombies from a zombie pirate. This, after zombies killed all of his friends. Fuck you, Uwe.

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This movie is bad- real bad. I'll admit that I had dramatically low hopes for this movie and it was not Red Zone Cuba. However, the film does insult your intelligence at every turn and fulfills all of the cliches. In audio commentary, the film is at least a little more bearable as you can hear Uwe's stupid observations. For example, real acting is when actors pretend that a box they are lifting in a scene is heavy. That's what Olivier was missing! He also explains that his film is unique because the people don't just run around and get killed. Instead, they pick up guns, fight the zombies and then get killed. Sorry, Uwe, but your movie is bad. It constantly references the game, but ignores the fact that it has no plot to begin with. You are two cops, you shoot zombies and you win. This movie is bad and should be laughed at- case closed.

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A special thanks to the Movie Screenshots blog that gave me my shots, since I was too lazy to Vid Cap this movie.

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Up next, a film that wants to be porn, but only cast ugly, uninteresting people. This smells like Jesus Franco. Stay tuned...