Well, here it is. Finally! HOUSE OF THE DEAD came out this past October a week before Schlocktoberfest so it was virtually impossible for me at the time to write a review truly fitting a movie this magnitude. Then after the fest I found myself way behind on a number of other things, many not even related to my online reviewing, and had to catch up on that. I wanted to do a fully detailed write-up on the movie as I've done for several deserving films in the past but HOUSE OF THE DEAD achieved such a level of badness that it… Well just notice howmuch space there is on your browser's slider over on the side. When you're trying to write a highly detailed dissection of a film in which there is something fundamentally wrong in damn near every scene it takes time. Then as January rolled around I decided to hold it off a little longer because I was going to be able to get my hands on a screener dvd to grab still caps from. Low and behold, even that gave us fits. Damn copyguard! Finally, after months of delay I am proud to present to you the definitive piece on this landmark bad movie. I'm going to warn you now that this thing is a monster. Like I said, virtually every scene has something to ridicule. I don't think I'm going to do another review in this style for awhile as this thesis nearly burned me out. Sadly my "thesis" is as close as we'll ever get to seeing a guy and two robots sitting at the bottom of the screen heckling the hell out of this movie. Lord knows it deserves it. Now all I need to do is get around to finishing the write-up on Schlocktoberfest itself and I'll finally be all caught up. Without further a do, nearly four months in the making, enjoy the quintessential synopsis/review/lambasting of…

Remember the scene in ED WOOD when Johnny Depp as Ed Wood films a scene for PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE during which the fake tombstones get knocked over prompting the producers to question his directing ability only to have him respond by telling them that nobody is going to notice the little details because the big picture is all that matters?

During HOUSE OF THE DEAD's big overblown action sequence where our heroes have to blast their way through wave after wave of the undead in order to make their way to the protective confines of the house, each character gets his or her own personal bullet time sequence where the camera zooms in and swirls about them in semi-slow motion. When it does this for the female cop we are first shown her gunning down zombies left and right with a huge machine gun. Then it briefly cuts to her bullet time sequence where she's shown firing a small handgun. Suddenly, it's back to her once again mowing down zombies with her trusty machine gun.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Edward D. Wood Jr. and Albert Pyun have mated and given birth to a German lovechild with the name Uwe Boll. Any hack can make a bad movie but it takes a special kind of hack to create something as astoundingly inept as HOUSE OF THE DEAD and Uwe Boll is such a hack. This man has about as much business directing movies as Jessica Simpson has judging spelling bees. God bless him.

For one to truly understand and appreciate how spectacularly wretched HOUSE OF THE DEAD is one actually needs to see HOUSE OF THE DEAD. Whether you see it in the theater or on video/DVD or on PPV/cable, at some point in your life you must see HOUSE OF THE DEAD if for no other reason than to be able to say you did. Whether you end up despising it like most who saw it did or find it to be an unintentionally hilarious like I did, it still must be seen to be believed. This is a movie that will live in cinematic infamy. HOUSE OF THE DEAD is a movie who's title is destined to become as infamous as such other cinematic punch lines like HOWARD THE DUCK, BATTLEFIELD EARTH, MANOS - THE HANDS OF FATE, HIGHLANDER 2: THE QUICKENING, MEGAFORCE, and YOR, THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE. Simply put, this is bad movie history.

What's even more astounding is that Uwe Boll has stated in interviews, both before and after the movie was released and got annihilated by virtually everyone that saw it, that this movie is going to be hailed a horror classic. The man honestly believes the movie will rank right alongside George Romero's zombie trilogy as one of the great zombie flicks of all time. Even before the movie came out he was bragging about how this movie was going to kick ass at the box office by talking about how it would gross more money at the box office than the recent RESIDENT EVIL movie did. Right there, warning bells should have gone off. If RESIDENT EVIL is your measuring stick by which to judge your movie than you're not exactly aiming high, are you? While you have to admire Uwe Boll's enthusiasm, someone, anyone, needs to break the bad news to him that HOUSE OF THE DEAD is not a horror masterpiece. Not even close. Hell, it didn't even come close to out-grossing RESIDENT EVIL.

But even someone of such dubious talents and delusional mindset as director Uwe Boll couldn't pull off something this atrocious by himself so let's also congratulate screenwriter Mark Altman, excuse me, Mark A. Altman, on his relentlessly brain dead screenplay. It's hard to imagine someone like Mark Altman going from constantly complaining about the state of genre films for Cinescape to drafting Uwe Boll's masterpiece and still be able to look at himself in the mirror. It's like me writing reviews like this for years - and actually getting paid for it like that'll ever happen - then turning around and penning the screenplay for VIRUS or AMERICAN CYBORG: STEEL WARRIOR.

There's another fellow credited as a writer on the film but as I've come to understand it he was just the poor bastard who was originally hired to craft the screenplay before the dynamic duo of Uwe Boll and Mark Altman brought their (cough) talents to the production. No, all the credit for this landmark motion picture goes to Boll and Altman, the greatest German-American filmmaking tandem since Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin. Once again, God bless you.

You know things are off to a bad start when Artisan didn't bother to slap their logo on the front of the movie. Hey Artisan, your logo appeared at the start of all the trailers and TV spots for the movie so it's too late to try and pretend you didn't distribute it! I can only guess someone with the company actually bothered to sit down and watch the movie and realized this wasn't something they wanted to be given credit for. Seriously, how did this movie get a theatrical release and a wide one to boot? Every aspect of this production screams "Direct-To-Video!" Still, I'm glad it did a theatrical release. While there's no doubt that HOUSE OF THE DEAD is awful, being a lover of bad movies I still found it to be an unintentional camp riot and a hell of a lot more entertaining that the majority of the bad movies I saw last year. It also made me long for the days of Cannon Films and New World Pictures and even Trimark Pictures when you could sit in a movie theater with a few other people and experience some schlocky genre filmmaking. Oh, how I long for the days of AMERICAN NINJA 2: THE CONFRONTATION, a movie that dealt with the dangers of genetic engineering long before it became front page headlines. But I digress. I can sit here and say the following and say it with pride:

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE HOUSE OF THE DEAD

And I can say I paid to see it not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES! A lot of people rail against Boll as the epitome of everything that's wrong with Hollywood but I just can't get that worked up into a hatred-filled frenzy, at least not until he enters into the territory of making mega-budget, over hyped blockbuster movies like so many other hack filmmakers. The fact that Boll himself seems totally clueless to his lousy directing skills only makes it all that much funnier. Every generation needs an Ed Wood and Uwe Boll is off to one hell of a start.

HOUSE OF THE DEAD opens with the character of Rudy telling us about the nightmare he's just survived. Damned if I can tell you why but Boll and Altman think starting the movie at the end is a good idea. The actor playing Rudy looks to have been the direct result of a scientific experiment in which the DNA of Patrick Dempsey and Nicholas Brendan were combined to create a whole other person that only received the formers personality and only a fraction of it to boot. This is followed by a soundbite from the video game with a woman begging you the player to stop Dr. Curian before something awful happens. This is guaranteed to generate a great big "Huh?" but the meaning of it will be revealed before its over.

Cue opening credits consisting of video game footage that's color has been tweaked in a funky way to look like a negative of the video game footage. This is accompanied by what I believe is some song by Prodigy or some band that should call itself I Can't Believe It's Not Prodigy. I guess I shouldn't be shocked that movie open with techno music since Boll is German, the financiers of the film are German, and techno music is HUGE in Germany. Sadly, there aren't any songs by David Hasselhoff included on the soundtrack. That's a damn shame too.

Warning: if you suffer from epilepsy then you probably shouldn't watch the opening credits sequence to HOUSE OF THE DEAD!

In what may very well be a record amount of time, the movie manages to jump the shark in less than three minutes as Rudy's raspy voiceover continues during a flashback to the day before where he introduces us to the movie's main characters. As Rudy tells us, all are going to die. Yeah, real brilliant, go ahead and tell us before the movie even gets going just who won't make it to the closing credits. Most modern horror movies are based around the concept of "Who's going to die next?" Boll and Altman have managed to kill any possible suspense by telling us right off the bat just who won't be making it to the end credits.

Rudy also gives a one-line description of each character, which is pretty much all the character development anyone is going to get in this movie. Say, Rudy's ex-girlfriend is into fencing but he's always thought it was a waste of time. The foreshadowing has all the subtlety of knee to the groin. Well, this group of good looking twenty-something friends wanna go to the rave but they missed the boat and need to find another way there. Fortunately, it's at this point that Rudy's annoying voiceover finally shuts the hell up and the actual movie gets going.

For the sake of time and space and because it is really pointless to continuously use the character's names other than the characters of Rudy and Alicia, the fencing chick and Rudy's ex-girlfriend. As Rudy only gave us a one-line description of his buds I'm just going to shorten it even further to sum up their characters in as few words as possible. I'm just going to refer to these particular characters as the self explanatory Moron, his girlfriend Airhead, the underwear model Pretty Boy, and Foxy Brown, since Rudy describes the token black female as thinking she were blacksploitation icon Foxy Brown. Trust me when I tell you it's easier this way and those one and two word descriptions sum up the amount of thought that went into developing their characters.

So the WB Network rejects charter a boat populated by two veteran character actors in desperate need of better material. First up is Clint Howard as Salish, the ship's first mate, and he appears to be playing Dr. Frankenstein's assistant Igor dressed as the Morton's Salt Girl. Normally I would praise overacting of this caliber but in this case I just can't because the character of Salish serves no real purpose other than to act unnecessarily creepy and warn them about the evil spirits that haunt the island they wish to go to. The island is named Isla Del Morte or the Island of the Dead. Frankly that should have been the title of the movie since HOUSE OF THE DEAD has more to do with an island than a house.

Jurgen Prochnow then shows up as the boat's captain, (Wait for it!) Kirk. Seriously, somebody thought it would be clever to name the character Captain Kirk. One of the other characters makes a Star Trek joke and Captain Kirk intimidates him with a knife to let him know how much he doesn't like Captain Kirk jokes. Someone should have done that to Mark Altman at the production meeting when he came up with the ever so clever idea of naming the sea captain Kirk. If that wasn't bad enough, the moment he appeared on screen the first thing out of Moron's mouth was "Who's the U-boat captain," a reference to Prochnow's most famous role as the U-boat captain in the submarine classic DAS BOOT. Good idea, Mr. Altman, remind us all of just how far down Prochnow's career has gone.

After being turned down several time, the idiots with way too much disposable income offer Kirk a cool grand to take them to the island and against Salish's protests he agrees. So for a $1,000 bribe, they're on their way to the "Island of the Dead" for the rave of a lifetime.

Yeah, let's talk about this great rave to end all raves. It's supposed to be a rave but it takes place out in the open in broad daylight. More specifically, it takes out place out in the open in broad daylight on a small island off the coast of Seattle. I've never heard of an outdoor rave before and if someone was going to have one I can't imagine they'd hold it that high up in the Northern Hemisphere. There are no fluorescent lights anywhere, which is very un-rave-like. In fact, nothing glows except for sunlight reflecting off of this one girl's oiled up boob job as she dances topless on stage for no particular reason. Take away the topless girl and this super rave looks more like the dance at the annual Biloxi Shrimp Festival. Someone is going to be very disappointed when they realize they spent $1,000 to get transportation to this? Thank God the living dead will soon kill them otherwise they'd be screaming for their money back.

Why set a rave on an island off the coast of Seattle, Washington anyway? Probably because the movie was filmed in Canada and it's much easier to pass off Canadian scenery for an island off the coast of Seattle, Washington than it is to pass it off as an island off the coast of Florida.

Back at the dock, preparations for the idiots five to shove off are momentarily stalled when Casper, the lady Harbor Patrol officer, and her faceless partner known only as MacGyvers, the non-lady Harbor Patrol officer, show up. I don't think they ever definitively said what law enforcement body Casper worked for or what her actual rank was so I'm guessing Harbor Patrol. So Casper and the human blur MacGyvers stand on the dock to tell Kirk to prepare to be boarded. Kirk is suspected of smuggling illegal goods requiring a police inspection every so often. The vacuous quintet don't have time to wait around for such annoying things like the law to play out so they pay Kirk a couple more thousand dollars and he agrees to blow off the fuzz leading to a boat chase of sorts. Well, more like a slow speed pursuit. For whatever reason, Mr. Boll didn't feel compelled to film any scenes of the two cops in a boat or getting on a boat or getting off a boat or pretending to be on a boat. Instead, every single time it cuts back to the cops in pursuit we get a sweeping overhead shot of a boat with a brief voiceover by Casper. As Captain Kirk puts his trawler into warp factor minus 10 (I did say it was a low speed pursuit.), he tells Pretty Boy that he'd have ditched her for free. So now these idiots have blown several thousand dollars just to get to a rave that looks about as fun as a CYO mixer, albeit a CYO mixer with alcohol and boobies.

Over on the island, two of the ravers have realized how lame the party is and decided to go skinny-dipping. The nubile young woman strips down to her thong panties giving the movie a little more gratuitous nudity while the guy, who bares a disturbing resemblance to that "Dude, you're getting a Dell" guy, opts to sit on the shore because the water is too cold. Apparently just touching the cold water can make this guy narcoleptic because from the looks of things he's suddenly on the verge of passing out on the sand. The water begins bubbling all around her successfully freaking her out while back on shore the movie's cameraman begins sneaking up on the unsuspecting guy. We keep waiting for zombies to pop out of the water but then the bubbling abruptly stops and the panicked girl, who has been facing out to sea, swims back to shore to find her male friend missing.

Wow, wasn't that brilliant? It's just like the beginning of JAWS only the girl survived and the guy on the shore bought it. Am I alone in getting annoyed by filmmakers constantly "paying homage" to better movies by copying scenes in a manner that comes across less like an homage and more like a sign that they're all out of original ideas of their own? So what was with the bubbling water then? Did a group of underwater zombies let out a collective, sustained fart knowing it would distract the girl long enough for some on-land zombies to nab the guy? How did the underwater zombies, assuming the bubbling wasn't generated by some natural phenomenon, know what the land zombies were thinking? Did they coordinate this attack plan in advance or did they pull it off on the fly using psychic powers? Was the bubbling water just an utterly pointless red herring? Why not get them both at the same time? Why am I bothering to ask such rhetorical questions?

Back on Kirk's boat, Moron gets seasick and projectile vomits onto Airhead because as we all know vomiting on someone is inherently funny and if the person getting vomited on looks like one of the Hilton sisters then its all the more funny, right? Airhead goes to clean herself off and Salish walks in on her while she's topless. Instead of screaming rape or slapping the hell out of him she just turns around and sarcastically asks him, "Get a good look?" Salish is either unimpressed with her bosoms or perhaps maybe he prefers mermen to mermaids as he just offers her a crucifix to protect them from evil that awaits them on the cursed island. I don't blame Salish for being unimpressed with her breasts as this girl either has a really unconvincing boob job or some very oddly shaped boobs. Just for the record, that crucifix never comes into play so this whole pointless scene was just an excuse to get Airhead topless so we could all gawk at her odd looking breasts.

Back on the island, the skinny dipping girl has put her clothes back on and gone wandering through the woods calling out the name of her missing guy friend only to come across the house…OF THE DEAD! She foolishly goes inside all the while calling out the guy's name because calling out the name of the person you're looking for is legally required in horror movie. Moments later she finds him being used as a hand puppet by one of the undead and before you know it she too is meeting her maker as the walking dead swarms all around her in a moment that looks straight out of mid-80's death metal video.

Let's talk about the actual house of the dead for a moment. Having played the arcade game a couple of times, and boy do I suck at those light gun games, I know for a fact that the house in that game is a humongous two-story mansion. Suffice it to say this is not a humongous two-story mansion. It's barely a house. More like a cabin or a big shack with a small, cheesy looking graveyard set in front of it. It really does look like an elaborate haunted house set-up you'd find at some amusement park like Knotts Berry Farms around Halloween. For those of you unaware, every Halloween Knots Berry Farm amusement park is home to one of the most famous haunted houses in the country. Most of the zombies in this movie look to be of Knotts Berry Farm level too but I'll get to that soon enough. Also, this house must double as a Dr. Who Tardis because it is much bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

The death of the girl in the house also leads us to the first use of video game footage within the movie itself. As dorky as this is it wouldn't be too bad if he only used the footage as a segway between scenes. Unfortunately, Uwe Boll is a delusional madman so… We'll get to that soon enough too.

Oh, one of the people in attendance at this rave is PJ Harvey, in a non-speaking cameo. Just the fact that she will soon die at the hands of the undead makes me root for the zombies even more. As a matter of fact, that's exactly what happens as the zombies being their assault on the rave but either Boll felt we wouldn't be interested in it or couldn't afford it so all we get is a hint that the undead are making their big move.

Kirk, Salish, and our five potential fatalities make their way on shore via a dinghy that really doesn't look like it would seat seven. The stretch of beach they "Land Ho!" on looks suspiciously like the same stretch of beach the previous kill occurred on. As the quintet make their way into the woods to reach the rave, Kirk tells Salish about a nice spot he eyed a little further down that would be a good place for them to hide their illegal loot. They'll come back for it later when Casper is off their tails.

Right about this time we get one last sweeping overhead shot of a boat on the water accompanied by the voice of Casper. This time she's telling her partner MacGyvers that she knows where Kirk is going to dock and to go around to the other side of the island so she can walk all the way across the island and confront him without incident. Yeah, that's just brilliant. I'm just going to move on because lord knows I could spend quite some time detailing the idiocy of that strategy. Okay, just one. What if you go around to the other side and trek back all the way across the island and he takes off again via boat. You're on land and your boat is around the other side of the island. Yeah, brilliant plan.

The fatal five treks through the forest along some path that they assume will take them to the rave. I don't know about you but if I'm hiking in the woods on an unfamiliar island not in the South Pacific and there's a pond that is boiling away with steam rising, I listen to my Spidey Sense and look for the way home. This boiling pool of water doesn't faze them and they casually walk across the decrepit wooden bridge over it. Unless you know for a fact that you're in a part of the world that has hot springs then boiling pools of water, this is not a good sign. I'm fairly certain you don't find too many of these off the coast of Seattle.

They finally arrive at the rave and discover nobody's there, some of the huts look a bit ransacked, and then even find pieces of shredded clothing on the ground. Most people would take this as a sign that something bad has happened. Not these people. Nope, they think it's a bit odd but who cares because the bar is still intact and fully stocked. Only Alicia finds any of this odd.

There's now a pounding rain storm but it is only hovering above Kirk's boat. There is absolutely no way in hell you can believe that this island is so huge there can be a raging thunderstorm on one part and not where the rave is. Congratulations, Mr. Boll, for insisting on an Ed Wood level of continuity for this film.

Alicia, Pretty Boy, and Foxy Brown go looking for the other ravers while Moron and Airhead get drunk and threaten the future of human civilization by engaging in activities that could eventually lead to the possibility of procreation.

Meanwhile, Salish is hiding a crate of something or other in the darkened woods just off shore when something or other sneaks up on him and kills him by stabbing him through the head with something or other.

Back at the rave site, Moron and Airhead go into one of the tent/huts for a quickie when he suddenly feels the urge to drain the lizard. He leaves the tent and moments later, in a scene sort of reminiscent of the scene from GREMLINS where the creatures silhouettes are seen through the backlit movie screen clawing there way through, shadowy silhouettes of moaning undead are seen pushing in on the huts sides. Airhead screams.

Back on the boat, Kirk can't find Salish so he calls out his name several times to no response and does what anyone would do when worried about the well being a missing friend - he lights a cigar and stands out in the rain with a loaded gun. The rain coming from the thunderstorm that is only affecting the area he is at as everywhere on the island we've seen is dry as a bone.

Alicia, Pretty Boy, and Foxy Brown discover the house…OF THE DEAD! A figure that appears to be Emperor Palpatine with a slashed and stitched up face watches them from behind a tree and sneers. This guy will make a couple of appearance throughtout the movie where he just watches from the woods and sneers. That's pretty much all he ever does. Alicia suggests they check out the house…OF THE DEAD! Inside they come across Rudy, Liberty, and some dorky looking guy with a digital video camera.

Ah, Liberty. What the hell is the deal with this chick? She was shown at the rave dancing on stage, the Asian chick that didn't pop her top. She's dressed in this red, white, blue spandex dominatrix suit with her hair in pigtails and plenty of that annoying glitter make-up that is only loved by raver chicks, drag queens, and 12-year old girls dressing up as a pop singer for Halloween. As we will come to find out later, Liberty is also a kung fu chick. Frankly, she does not belong in this particular video game movie. This is HOUSE OF THE DEAD; a zombie action horror movie based on a first-person shooter where zombies are gunned down. Liberty looks more appropriate to a or STREET FIGHTERTEKKEN video game movie. I can only imagine Boll and Altman thinking the fanboys were going to instantly drool over this hot, high-kicking, fetish-wear, Asian babe. They would probably be right if not for the fact that she sticks out like a sore thumb. Instead of drooling over her I found myself sitting there wondering "WTF?"

Rudy asks what the hell the other three are doing there and Alicia asks what the hell happened to everyone else. The dorky guy with the video camera shows them some footage of the zombies attacking the rave and from what little bit of this we see it looks more like a zombie panty raid than an all-out massacre. Probably a good thing we didn't get to see the rave getting attacked scene in full. The guy then starts babbling about zombies and invokes the name of George Romero and his "holy trilogy" of zombie movies. He even goes so far as to speculate about Mr. Romero one day finally making TWILIGHT OF THE DEAD, a movie Romero has supposedly been trying to get made for a long time without success.

Note to Boll and Altman: Invoking the names of zombie movies better than your own in your crappy movie and reminding the audience that the man who pretty much created the entire genre you're working in can't get funding to make another while you can is not a good idea.

Alicia, Pretty Boy, and Foxy Brown still don't buy the zombie story but do realize something is seriously wrong and so they all decide to get off the island via Kirk's boat but first they have to go back to the rave site and get Moron and Airhead. The dorky camera guy doesn't like the thought of going back but reluctantly agrees to go with them and so its back to hiking through the woods.

I should mention that whenever they've been hiking through the woods there have been constant shots of things moving in the shadows inserted to help build the non-existent suspense. These repeated shots of shadowy feet running past the camera look very much like something straight out of quite a few 80's music videos. I'm guessing Uwe Boll watched quite a bit of MTV's Headbanger's Ball back in the day.

They arrive back at the rave site and there's no sign of Moron or Airhead but there's a knocked over port-a-potty moving. They flip it over so the door can open and Moron bursts out stained with feces all over him. Hooray! Vomit and poop jokes! Now if only they could work in some semen and urine then we'd have a scatological grand slam. Moron tries wiping himself off with some leaves and talks about going to use the bathroom when something knocked it over. It suddenly dawns on everyone that Airhead is still nowhere to be seen so they spread out to look for her.

Three seconds later, looking like a small child coming out of hiding to try and sneak up on someone to scare them, a slightly bloody, zombified Airhead pops up from behind a knocked over hut, grabs the dorky camera guy from behind, and snaps his neck. Everyone is horrified as she turns towards them and snarls. As she lunges towards them gunfire rings out. Casper guns down the zombie Airhead with what looks like an AK-47 and then puts that down to whip out her sidearm and puts another bullet through her brain finishing her off once and for all. Casper then turns around and asks the others "What was that thing?," the kind of question one probably should have tried asking before blowing her to kingdom come.

Foxy Brown is mortified while Moron doesn't seem all that phased having just seen his girlfriend kill a guy and then get gunned down by Casper, the trigger-happy cop. The discussion of getting off the island comes up again and when Casper attempts to radio her partner unsuccessfully the discussion briefly turns to cellular phones and such being unable to get through because of some "weird interference." I can only guess that the zombies use some sort of magic mojo that distorts radio frequencies although I think the real interference is that of the screenwriter's using the plot convenience switch.

The group agrees it would be best to head for Kirk's boat. Alicia begins crying about Airhead's death and reanimation and death again while Moron has completely gotten over the tragic loss of his girlfriend in what has to be record time. The dorky camera guy goes unmourned.

Meanwhile, its still raining on Kirk's boat and the zombies are swimming towards. They begin climbing on board leading Kirk to whip out his trusty pistol and begin gunning them in such a casual manner its hilarious. There is no sense of urgency on his part. He just turns and fires at one and then turns to the next one, whether it is on his boat or in the water. The look on his face conveys neither panic nor any sense that the living dead storming his ship is at all unusual. In fact, the most emotion his face ever registers during this is a slight look of annoyance and perhaps a bit of boredom. This man should be totally freaked out and yet he's not. And yes, he continues to chomp on cigar the whole time.

This would be a good time to discuss another fundamental misfire on the part of the Boll and Altman. They never establish the rules for the killing the zombies. From what you see in this movie there are five ways of killing a zombie. Shoot them anywhere above the waist. Shoot them in the head, the chest, the shoulder, anywhere and they fall dead. In the video game you can kill a zombie instantly with a headshot and with several gunshots elsewhere but still. One shot anywhere pretty much finishes off these zombies. Decapitate them. Burn them. Blow them up. Chop them up or slash them with some sort of blade. Just cut them with a knife like you would any normal person and they're dead again. It's ridiculous. It's especially ridiculous as we get to my personal method of zombie slaying in this movie - kung fu. As will be displayed soon enough, zombies can be finished off with Tae Bo.

Now let's talk zombies appearance. Some look like traditional Romero style zombie whereas others look like Deadites from ARMY OF DARKNESS or the unmasked Jason from FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VII: THE NEW BLOOD. Most however just look like someone they've plucked off the street and slapped enough pancake on their face to make them look pale. There's even some that don't even appear to have any make-up on but were just put on the set in slightly ragged clothes and ordered to walk like a zombie. Then there are a few other zombies that pop up from time to time that don't even appear to have started out as a human.

Another zombie related matter never really touched on is how one becomes a zombie. We're used to seeing movies where getting bitten by a zombie turns you into a zombie but in this movie we never actually see anyone get bit and transform into a zombie. A bit later in the movie the origin of the zombies on this island is going to be explained and it all simply isn't going to make a whole lot of sense.

Okay, enough zombie ranting. Back to the movie.

Unless I'm loosing my mind, Boll also recycled some of the same shots of certain zombies in the water being shot for that last scene and the one upcoming because I would have sworn I saw the same two zombies get killed more than once. Only difference was the camera angle was slightly altered to try and conceal this fact. It fails. A couple of zombie deaths are easily recognizable when they're repeated not only because of the zombie's appearance but the exaggerated manner in which if flailed its arms upon dying. There's a lot of over the top zombie arm flailing death in this movie. Hell, I haven't seen this much overly theatrical arm flailing death since Golan-Globus stopped making war movies.

Back in the woods, the group crosses over the pool of boiling water again but this time a couple of the undead pop out of the pool. I told you those boiling pools are never a good sign. Emperor Palpatine is spying on them again. One zombie busts up through the planks of the little bridge causing Rudy to fall and completely impale his hand on a long nail. He screams in agony but don't worry because he's going to be okay. In fact, after this scene ends his injured hand will never be mentioned again. Either Rudy has Wolverine-like healing abilities or Boll and Altman have successfully committed yet another crime against continuity. Casper guns down the zombies and then the group decides it would probably be better to haul ass to Kirk's boat.

Now keep in mind they are running to Kirk's boat and in a moment they will get there but how is a mystery since they shouldn't know where it is because he let them off on a completely different part of the island from where it is currently docked. They should be running towards the beach to find nothing there but somehow they magically arrive at this dock. Oh wait, I forgot about Casper's powers of precognitive geography.

They arrive at the dock and see Kirk's boat, which is adrift just a bit off shore. When they call his name and get no response except for attracting the attention of some zombies that are seen loitering on deck. They realize this is not a good sign but that doesn't deter Pretty Boy from having a Moron moment and jumping into the water to swim to the boat all the while everyone is yelling at him to not do exactly that. Suddenly he realizes the undead are leaping off the boat and jumping in the water after him so he turns around and begins swimming towards shore. Fortunately Casper is a crack shot and guns down the aquatic zombies (We even get some underwater footage of zombies getting shot as if Boll suddenly thought he was doing some horror version of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.) with relative ease, her only problem being the sheer number of them. For reasons unknown to the intelligent human mind, Liberty pulls out this knife she's been carrying and wades into the water to save Pretty Boy only to have a zombie pop out of the water and begin trying to drown her. Right about this moment back-up arrives in the form of Captain Kirk, who somehow made it onto dry land by means we will never be told, perhaps he had Scotty beam him up, brandishing his own machine gun.

Both Liberty and Pretty Boy make it back on land unscathed just in time for a zombie or two to come from behind and attack. One bites Kirk's arm so he puts it in a headlock and shoots it in the head with his pistol. Then Rudy nails the other in the guts with a small axe and while it's hunched over Foxy Brown delivers an axe kick to its back for the coup-de-grace. Sadly, Foxy Brown did not stare at her hand and perform the Spinaroonie after performing the axe kick.

FIVE TIMES!!!
FIVE TIMES!!!
FIVE TIMES!!!
FIVE TIMES!!!
FIVE TIMES!!!

But I digress.

A pissed off Pretty Boy stomps over to the dead zombie (That sounds rather redundant doesn't it?) Rudy and Foxy Brown just finished off and starts kicking the crap out of it. Then he turns it over and is surprised when the undead zombie turns out to be undead (Okay, that does sound really redundant!) spits acid in his face. Casper puts a bullet through its brain thus rendering the undead dead (I gotta stop doing that!) while Pretty Boy clutches the side of his face where the acid hit. He ain't pretty no more! Rudy being a medical student tends to Pretty Boy's scarred face and Kirk's zombie bite. Casper declares that they need to go all the way back across the island to her boat where her silent partner MacGyvers is waiting. She selects Moron to go with her for no particular reason other than that he's an annoying dumb fuck who has more than worn out his welcome in this world.

Alicia now believes that zombies do exist (Well, duh!) and that they need to find some way off the island (Double duh!). She turns to Kirk and begins asking him about the island's legend that Salish had been babbling about. Kirk begins to recite the tale when all of a sudden the screen color turns beige as it cuts to a shot of a Spanish galleon on the high seas. From completely out of nowhere the movie suddenly drops everything to give us a short flashback sequence recreating the legend while Kirk narrates it.

Basically it goes like this. Several hundred years ago, there was this evil, bald, muscular, Spanish alchemist who looked like he should be under contract to Vince McMahon. Condemned for performing Godless experiments (and possibly for trafficking illegal steroids), he is being transported in shackles to his impending punishment onboard a Spanish galleon, wherever the hell that is. I've rewatched the scene several times and I still don't completely understand where they are taking him. I think they are taking him to the "New World" to be executed because he's just too evil for Spain. It doesn't matter anyway because the alchemist gets free and strangles Captain Crunch. From there he supposedly hijacked the ship, crashed it on this island, and started creating his legion of zombies. At least that's what I think they were trying to explain. It really is amazing how a story this simplistic can be made so thoroughly confusing in the wrong hands. I would also like to know what a Spanish galleon was doing off the coast of Seattle, as I don't recall ever hearing about any of the Spanish fleet being up around that part of the world at that time and I got A's in history class. I could be wrong but I might as well bring it up while I'm procrastinating on plot contrivances and story inconsistencies.

I don't recall him ever receiving a name either. I'll just stick with calling him Emperor Palpatine for now, or at least until he ditches that cloak.

Casper and Moron don't seem to get very far before realizing they aren't alone in the woods and are going to have to make a run for it again. So of course they immediately end up doing the smartest thing anyone can do in this situation in a horror movie. You guessed it - they split up. I'm telling you Casper's secret master plan was getting Moron to accompany her so that when they're forced to split up the zombies will instinctively go after him instead since he isn't armed. Less brains to eat but more meat on the bones. And it worked too because very few zombies chase after Casper. Moron on the other hand is getting chased by a pack of zombified Olympic Gold Medal cross country sprinters led by a zombie that looks an awful lot like Motorhead front man, Lemmy. Moron does manage to give them the split but then steps on a branch causing a loud cracking sound that sends them all running back in his direction where they dog pile him. They had one arm stretched out as they swarmed him so maybe they weren't zombies after all but fundamentalist Christians attempting to lay on hands. If that's the case, then Moron just got gang saved and Lord knows he needs something in his life.

Nope, they were just ordinary zombies. Moron is dead and the world is just a little better off because of it.

Now instead of seeing him get ripped to shreds as would happen in virtually every other zombie movie ever made, Boll opts to again take an element from the video game. The dead character is shown standing motionless while the camera encircles him bullet-time wise as the picture gradually turns blood red. If you've ever played the video game then you know this is what happens when you get killed. I personally would have no problem with Boll using this gimmick in the movie as a nod to the video game accept he completely abandons it after only two deaths. He uses it one more time a little later and after that it gets completely abandoned. Every other character that dies from then on out just dies. Continuity and consistency, these two things are to Uwe Boll what subtlety and restraint are to Michael Bay.

Meanwhile, the others remain around that area near the docks. A winded Casper comes running back towards them. Despite having been chased by zombies there's none to be seen anywhere. They must have gone on a smoke break or something. She tells the group that her police boat was destroyed and her partner MacGyvers was missing too. Either she's lying out her ass or there's a key scene on the cutting room floor somewhere because we were never given any indication that she and Moron got that far before the zombies emerged. When one of them asks where Moron is she casually tells them their friend was killed. It's only fitting that they react to his death in much the same manner that he reacted to his girlfriend's. Growling zombies are heard out in the woods and so the group formulates a plan. What is this plan, you ask? Why they're going to go back to the house…OF THE DEAD! and lock themselves in until help arrives which Casper swears will be real soon because headquarters will go looking for her when she doesn't radio in. If you ask me, I think she's greatly overestimating her importance to the world.

But before they make their way back through the woods to the house…OF THE DEAD! they need to arm themselves. Thank God it turns out that Kirk is a gun smuggler. He retrieves one of those crates Salish gave his life hiding on the island and inside its full of guns, guns, and more guns. He's got pistols, rifles, a shotgun that fires incendiary shells, a mini-cannon, grenades, lots and lots of ammo, and one really big knife that Liberty takes a shining too. What's with this chick and knives? Next thing you know we get something I haven't seen since Cannon Films went out of business - a montage of characters arming and preparing themselves for battle. As a dramatic score plays everyone is shown locking and loading plus Rudy bandages Pretty Boy's no longer pretty face and Alicia pulls her hair back into a pony tail. Once finished, it's off to the house…OF THE DEAD! and the journey doesn't take long as there's a very obvious and very awkward jump cut straight to them walking out of the woods at the foot of the graveyard in front of the house… Okay, I won't do that anymore, I swear. It's obvious there were scenes shot of them dealing with some zombies in the woods on the way there especially since Rudy actually turns around and begins shooting at a few zombies behind them, not that it matters anyway. What does matter is that to get to the house they are going to have to fight their way through a virtual sea of the undead.

It is now time for the movie's apex, which Uwe Boll is so damn proud of, a sequence I have dubbed "Columbine at Knotts Berry Farm." In this extended battle sequence it looks as if every extra they could put in a zombie costume or slap some white powder on their face gets gunned down, blown up, or karate kicked to hell. Trying to describe the next 10 minutes is virtually impossible. It is an orgy on incoherent action that would even leave Michael Bay bewildered. Our heroes come out in a chorus line guns blazing. Zombies seem to come from every direction. Despite it looking as if there's a small army of the living dead, most of the zombies seem to be just wandering through the shot at random. Despite outnumbering the heroes about 10-1, the zombies are virtually impotent in their assault. The whole thing is completely disjointed and appears to have been edited at random. And to add to the atmosphere all of this is set to a raging techno/metal/rap song where the movie's title is prominent.

I'd love to see how this section of the film was described in the movie's screenplay. Probably looked something like this.

EXT. GRAVEYARD OUTSIDE OF THE HOUSE - NIGHT

The heavily armed gang of survivors have to fight their way to the house. Countless zombies come at them from every possible direction. Massive clusterfuck ensues. Include numerous shots of the actors firing their guns directly at the camera and numerous shots of zombies either wandering around or getting blown to kingdom come. Insert bullet-time and video game footage at random.

Earlier I talked about how video game footage was used as a buffer between scenes. Now random video game footage is being inserted into the action scenes itself in a manner that defies any possible attempt at logic. Are the characters supposed to be shooting the zombies in the game too? That wouldn't make any sense. Did Boll do it because he was trying to show us a correlation between the video game and the movie? That would be beyond redundant. Personally, I suspect he did it because in his diluted mind he thought it would look cool.

That's probably the same reason he used bullet-time in the manner he does during this battle. Twice during this gun battle we get a distanced side view of Kirk and later of Rudy holding their respective weapons and firing as the camera slides around behind him so we can see the direction in which they are firing. Why? Damned if I know! Again, Boll probably thought it looked cool. I suppose it is kind of neat unless you notice that they're aiming their guns a bit too high. Are they shooting at zombies on the roof of the house or did some seven-foot zombified NBA players suddenly show up?

More bullet-time zaniness is provided in the form of each character's personal bullet-time moment. They'll be running around gunning down zombies and then it will cut to a bullet-time shot of him or her frozen as the camera swirls around them before finally cutting back to some randomly selected scene of them running around and gunning down zombies. With this Uwe Boll truly solidifies his place in bad movie history as on three separate occasions the persons gun changes when they go to bullet-time and back again. Take a look at the stills below. First, Casper's firing the machine gun, then we get her bullet-time moment where her machine gun has magically transformed into a small firearm, and then we go back to the action where she's holding the machine gun yet again. Ed Wood would be proud.

Uwe Boll uses bullet-time and video game footage in HOUSE OF THE DEAD in much the same way a person that suffers from Tourrette's Syndrome uses obscenities and racial slurs - completely at random with absolutely no particular rhyme or reason.

After several minutes of getting gunned down the zombies smarten up and exit stage left in a single file line. Three seconds later they come roaring back with various clubs and axes. Exactly where they went to get these weapons and how they retrieved them so quickly is something Boll and Altman don't feel compelled to inform us of. Wouldn't want to let that get in the way of the movie's signature moment, the one that topped off all of the movie's advertising. One zombie, running in slow motion, comes charging out with an axe, leaps into the air, and throws it, also in slow motion. Alicia, no doubt using her Spidey Sense to anticipate this, instantly leaps into the air, also in slow motion, and fires her shotgun. Despite having been told earlier that the shotgun fires explosive shells, the bullet fragments like buckshot. The axe and the buckshot pass side by side, also in slow motion. Then, as both the zombie and Alicia remain in mid-air, the axe misses and goes whizzing past her in slow motion an instant before the buckshot blasts a hole through the zombie, not in slow motion. This scene is so over the top ridiculous I'm amazed it wasn't stolen straight out of a Hong Kong movie of the early 90's. Wong Jing would be proud.

More absurdity abounds as grenades and sticks of dynamite begin getting tossed about but instead of exploding zombies we keep getting an explosive ball of fire that just catapults a particular zombie into the air like an explosion occurred on an episode of The A-Team. Only thing missing is the flying zombies letting out a high-pitched yelp as it goes airborne. By now this entire sequence is beginning to look more and more like someone spliced Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video with one of Golan-Globus' numerous war movies from the 80's. Craig R. Baxley would be proud.

It's also around this time that Liberty begins taking out zombies with kung fu. This silliness is magnified when Boll starts bullet timing most of her kicks and ducks for no particular reason other than he probably thought it looked cool. A zombie swings a large hammer at her and he bullet-times it in such a manner that it's virtually incomprehensible. Another zombie gets a round kick to the face and Boll bullet-times it as well. Congratulations, Uwe Boll, with a 10-minute sequence in a single movie you've officially killed off the bullet-time technique's cool factor.

Now can somebody explain to me why it is that movie monsters are immediately pacified when somebody waves a flare at them? It happens again in this movie as both Alicia and Foxy Brown have moments where they successfully fend off zombies by waving a lit flare at them keeping them at bay. I know zombies hate fire but even they can't possibly be so flammable that a measly little road flare could scare them off. Maybe this is why you never see zombie movies set on New Year's Eve or the Fourth of July? Set off a Roman candle and/or wave some sparklers in their face and you'd be home free.

Another character finally bites the dust as Liberty's Tae Bo zombie fighting method ultimately fails causing her to get swarmed by the undead in much the same fashion as Moron did earlier. She calls out for Rudy to help her as he's only standing about 10 or 15 yards away but he just looks down, unable to watch her die. I'm not exactly sure if Rudy does this because he's supposed to be a big pussy or if to convey the futility of it all and for some reason I don't think Boll or Altman know either. However, it does give Boll another excuse to have fun in the editing room. As the camera pans in on Rudy's down turned face, it fades into a rapid fire montage of everything that has transpired thus far grows increasingly fast to the point of practically becoming a montage of subliminal images. It then fades back to Rudy who looks up and then awkwardly cuts to Liberty's death scene like the one Moron had. As I said earlier, this is the last time that bullet-time, fading to red death scene stuff is used.

Boll is absolutely correct when he refers to this whole battle sequence as historical. It will go down in cinematic history all right but not for the reasons he thinks.

So our heroes finally make it to the house's porch and dog gone it the door is now locked. They're also running out of ammo so things are looking especially bleak. Someone suggests Kirk should blow it open with a stick of dynamite but he wisely disagrees stating that then there wouldn't be a door on the house to keep the zombies out. Remember that. Rudy and Casper go around the back of the house looking for another way in so they can unlock the door. Along the way, a zombie wearing a police uniform strolls up to Casper. She identifies him as her partner MacGyvers. Yeah, we finally get a brief look at this mystery partner of hers. Without hesitation, Casper whips out her sidearm and puts a bullet through his head with about as much passion as we feel watching this utterly extraneous character meet his demise.

After a little more zombie killing, Casper and Rudy find an open window. Rudy climbs in while Casper covers him. Unfortunately, she runs out of ammo and as she climbs through the opening some zombies begin going to town on her lower half with axes. Rudy pulls Casper's legless stump of a body in and props a large wood panel over the window preventing the zombies from getting in. It works too so apparently the zombies don't realize that axes can chop wood as well as human flesh. Casper is dead, having apparently bled to death in a matter of seconds despite there being virtually no blood anywhere except for what appears to be a poorly animated pool of blood by her bloody stumps. You really will do a double take when you see this small pool of blood that looks like it was animated in during post-production. A tearful Rudy thanks Casper for saving his and everyone else's pansy ass and for making the ultimate sacrifice in the process, and by ultimate sacrifice I mean helping to get Moron killed. God, Moron was annoying.

Much to my disappointment, Casper will not be returning later on as a friendly ghost. Stop groaning! You knew I was going to do a Casper, the Friendly Ghost joke eventually.

Rudy opens the front door and just in time too as the others had run out of ammo and the only thing fending off the living dead was Captain Kirk and his trust machete. They make it and shut the door but Kirk suffers some leg injuries in the process. Boy, those zombies just hate human legs for some reasons. Shutting and locking the big wooden door to the house keeps the living dead out. Again, house is made of wood. Zombies have axes. This should not be a problem.

They drag Kirk onto a table and Rudy tends to his leg wounds. Pretty Boy finds a mirror on the wall and pulls back his bandage to see for the first time just how bad his facial wound really is. Sadly it isn't as noticeable on the TV screen as it was when it was on the big screen because I remember seeing the deep red wound with the dark veins running almost symmetrical and thinking the guy appeared to have a layer of Spider-Man costume just below his epidermis. Foxy Brown consoles Pretty Boy about not being so pretty anymore and pretty soon they're making out. Rudy and Alicia spy some zombies tending to their wounded (Suddenly its GODS & GENERALS.) and dragging them into this cellar door across the way. Moments later they too begin making out. Rudy and Alicia that is, not the zombies and their wounded, although that probably would have been much more entertaining.

Eventually they stop lip locking and come across a book in the house that Alicia identifies as a ship's log and boldly states "Check out this book. It looks old. Maybe it can help us?" Actual dialogue, folks, actual dialogue. Just to make these guys look like even bigger dumb asses they read all of one paragraph, if that much, in the journal where it mentions a Spanish galleon and instantly declare the old legend to be true. You'd think that after encountering the walking dead they wouldn't need a book to confirm this. No time for that though as Kirk tells them there's no telling what could be coming through that door at any moment so they need to look around the house and find another way out. Remember that. As they start exploring, Kirk opts to remain on the table where he lights up yet another cigar. Sheesh, that's his answer for everything.

Oh, Alicia has taken off her coat so that she can spend the rest of the movie running around in a skimpy low cut top. I think we all know why.

The final four discover another small room containing several kegs of gunpowder (Woohoo!) and another door leading to a laboratory. Several non-reanimated corpses lie about and the place is rife with specimens and body parts on display. On an operating table is what appears to be the internationally famous archeological hoax known as the Piltdown Man and on a shelf sits what appears to be the disembodied head of Michael Clark Duncan. Alicia finds a really old microscope and calls Rudy over to have a look. Remember now, Rudy is a med student. Rudy looks at the blood sample under the microscope and begins muttering something about the altered blood and how its genius. Don't ever expect an explanation. Science is not the strong suit of German genre directors. Just look at virtually every Roland Emmerich movie.

Back in the living room, or maybe it's the dining room, who really cares, Kirk hears a song being whistled outside and recognizes it as something Salish used to hum. He crawls off the table and makes his way out onto the porch where he sees the reanimated corpse of his sea-faring partner, as well as a couple other zombies slowly approaching, and puts him out of his misery once and for all. He then looks at the bite wound on his arm and mutters something about not wanting to become one of them even though it hasn't even been established that you can become a zombie that way. The Bloodhound Gang hears the gunshot and Rudy rushes to the door just in time to see Kirk standing just off the porch with a stick of dynamite in his hand. Kirk tells Rudy that he's already dead and wishes them good luck before lighting the stick of dynamite with his cigar. Zombies close in on him and Rudy slams the door just as the dynamite explodes. The explosion blows the front door off its hinges inwards therefore allowing the zombies a way in. After all that talk about the door being the only thing keeping the zombies out… Thanks, Kirk!

I'd just like to send a personal plea to everyone reading this. If I'm ever trapped in a house with you surrounded by zombies and you decide to end your life by going outside and blowing yourself up with a stick of dynamite could you at least stand about 100 yards from the door when doing so? It's just common courtesy.

Zombies rush in and so the others scurry into that room, the one with the barrels of gunpowder and door to the lab, and lock themselves in. The dead are pounding on the door and so now they're desperate to find a way out or at least something to fight off the zombies with. They again go into the lab and this time Alicia spots this big fish tank filled with blood. Something's moving inside it and that something reveals itself to be a big tadpole with the face very similar to the demonic creature from EVIL DEAD 2. Foxy Brown behaves in a manner very unbecoming a blacksploitation fan and freaks out upon seeing it, so much so that she blasts the tank with her shotgun. The glass shatters and the blood pours out. After barely getting splashed by the blood, this skeletal corpse on the floor suddenly comes to life like a startled drunk being roused from an alcohol-induced nap and rushes them. Rudy screams about the blood being the key to bringing the dead back to life. I'm willing to buy into magic blood reanimating the dead but I'm not willing to believe that this stuff is so potent that just getting a few ounces on its shoulder is all a corpse needs to come back to life.

So again they rush into that room with the gunpowder kegs and barricade the lab door. Now they're trapped from two directions with nowhere to go. Just as all seems lost they notice there's a door in the floor leading to some tunnels below the house. How convenient? Alicia and Foxy Brown make their way down but just as Rudy is going down one of the zombies smashes its arms through the door behind Pretty Boy and puts him in a chinlock so wimpy even Christopher Reeve could escape it. Pretty Boy is more feeble than a quadroplegic Christopher Reeve as he in unable to break the hold and so he motions for Rudy to go on. Pretty Boy sacrifices himself by shooting the one of the powder kegs and the house goes boom. More importantly, the front door, the one we saw get blown off its hinges into the house, has magically reattached itself to the hinges just so it can get blown off yet again, this time outward towards the camera. The door was so nice they blew it off twice.

Under the house, the last three find themselves in a dark tunnel and can only speculate that it leads out towards the shore because of something written in that journal that they read for 5 seconds. Boll is nice enough to toss in a few more shots from the video game to remind us that the game itself contains subterranean caverns filled with zombies. Sure enough, the dead come rushing out of the darkness and get gunned down. Several of the zombies down here are covered in the moss that lines the walls. When seeing this movie in the theater with my friend Alex he finally lost it completely during this scene and yelled out, "Dammit, they just killed Swamp Thing!" Personally, I thought they looked more like Moss-Man from Masters of the Universe.

Foxy Brown finally runs out of ammo, picks up a zombie's sword, and starts hacking and slashing. Then she inexplicably tells them to go on ahead before sacrificing herself to a plethora of oncoming zombies officially winning the award for the most pointless self-sacrifice ever in a crappy zombie movie. Alicia reacts unfavorably to this stupid move on Foxy Brown's part. At least she got more of a reaction from another character upon dying than Pretty Boy did, who got about as much mourning as the dorky camera guy from earlier.

All of a sudden, a shadowy figure in a hooded cloak kills the zombie in their path and motions for them to follow him. It appears to be Moron dressed like a Jedi but upon leading them into another underground lab it turns out to be Emperor Palpatine, who pulled a Hannibal Lektor on them by wearing Moron's skinned face. Zombies grab Rudy and hold him down on a table while Zombie Mr. Clean™, formerly Emperor Palpatine, pays special attention to Alicia.

Somewhere in here we get another flashback where we see Zombie Mr. Clean, get hung for his crimes. Instead of dying he poses like a pro wrestler while swinging from the rope and taunts his executioners by telling them he's immortal. I'm not exactly sure how he got away afterwards and back to the island. I don't think they ever actually told us his name either. I'm not really sure of anything about this movie other than it is so astonishingly bad its hilarious, but I've stated that before.

The evil Spanish alchemist turned Zombie Mr. Clean is deathly pale and is missing a couple of large slices of skin from his face. Apparently its flesh he's really after, in particular Alicia's. He tells her he's been waiting for her for a long time. No clue what that means or why a male zombie wants female skin unless he's looking to change sexes. We'll never know because Zombie Mr. Clean turns out to be a real wuss as Alicia floors him with a sword to the gut giving Rudy a chance to fend off the few zombies that were holding him down. As they flee up a flight of stairs, Rudy tosses his last grenade and as they come out through that door the zombies had earlier been seen dragging their wounded into we get another big ball of fire. They're running towards the camera but the explosion is blasting to the left behind them so they really weren't in any immediate danger. Boll is nice enough to film this in slow motion for what really seems to have just been an excuse to show Alicia's breasts jiggling in slow motion for a few seconds.

They stop to catch their breath when Zombie Mr. Clean, I think I'm going to start calling him The Sneering Dead™ instead as constant sneering has been his only defining attribute, comes running out brandishing a sword. He must be blast proof and inflammable. Hey, that's why he's the main bad guy right? Fortunately Alicia never dropped the sword she had grabbed and remember everyone that she's an expert swordsman. And Rudy thought that whole fencing thing was a waste of time. Stupid, stupid Rudy!

She and The Sneering Dead duel in a sword battle that can only be described as HIGHLANDERRIFFIC! And once again this gives Boll another opportunity to play with camera techniques as most of the sword fight is shot using this whirling camera technique that only succeeds in making things all the more incoherent. Its like the background is spinning around while the combatants are standing the same place. I'm not really sure what it is or how best to describe it but it really is unnecessary not to mention dizzyingly incoherent. Rudy attempts to aid Alicia and gets knocked silly for his trouble. The sword battle concludes as The Sneering Dead surprisingly wins by stabbing Alicia right between the boobies. As his girlfriend slumps to the ground mortally wounded, Rudy finally develops a set of balls and bravely sneaks up behind The Sneering Dead and decapitates him with an axe. You're a real man's man, Rudy!

But don't start rolling the credits yet. Nope, The Sneering Dead isn't dead yet. Guided by his decapitated (and still sneering) head watching from the ground, his headless corpse rises and begins strangling Rudy. Any man worth his weight in gold should be rooting for the headless corpse here. Now despite having been stabbed through the heart and falling dead, Alicia gets up and stomps The Sneering Dead's head squishing it once and for all. He ain't sneering no more. Then she falls dead for the second time. It's official. This Rudy guy is most pathetic, worthless, wimpiest excuse for a horror movie protagonist ever and this is coming from someone who has seen THE GATE 2.

It would appear that a little time has passed when a helicopter is shown landing on the island. Out steps two federal agents that work for some division that deals with the supernatural. If the movie had actually bothered to follow the video game these are what the main characters would have been instead of those stupid ravers. They approach Rudy, who emerges from the bombed out lab carrying a barely conscious Alicia. They ask if she's all right and he avoids the question. When asked his name he tells them its Rudolph Curian.

Okay folks, here's the film's end. Brace yourself for this. We get another sweeping aerial shot heading inland towards a nameless city while Rudy provides another annoying raspy voiceover telling us about the nightmare he just went through and how he used the blood to resurrect Alicia but he isn't sure if she's even human anymore. His final comments are "Is this the end…or just the beginning?" The movie fades to black and several people in the audience I saw the film with the first time began booing. Not sure if they were booing the movie as a whole or that terrible ending in particular. That ending makes no sense unless you've done your homework. In the game, Rudolph Curian is the mad scientist responsible for all the zombies and monsters running amok at the giant mansion. The movie HOUSE OF THE DEAD was meant to be a prequel to the video game which means if a sequel ever gets made then wimpy, whiny, weasel boy Rudy is going to be the villain. Oh hell no! Not in a million years! Carrot Top cast as the next Terminator would be more menacing.

There you have it folks. The ultimate synopsis/review/lambasting of Uwe Boll's self-described "horror classic" HOUSE OF THE DEAD. More video game inspired madness is yet to come from Boll as he's currently wrapping up filming of the movie version of the video game ALONE IN THE DARK starring Christian Slater and Tara Reid. Yeah, that sounds like a winner. Plus, his video game company also owns the rights to make movies out of the games BLOODRAYNE, DUNGEON SEIGE, FEAR EFFECT, and HUNTER: THE RECKONING. And yes there are plans for a HOUSE OF THE DEAD 2. I for one hope he picks up the rights to the classic video game DIG DUG because I'm dying to see bullet-time shots of a guy blowing up a dragon with a bicycle pump.

As for HOUSE OF THE DEAD, it truly is a movie you're either going to despise or be thoroughly entertained by its awfulness. Personally, I loved it. Most comedies are as intentionally funny as this movie unintentionally is. I recall Stephen King once referring to his directorial debut MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE as his "moron movie." HOUSE OF THE DEAD is the MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE of zombie movies. Whether or not Uwe Boll ever realizes this remains to be seen.

IN MEMORY OF MACGYVERS

19??-2003

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE SHATTERED