"They missed the boat to the rave. If only they'd decided to stay back in Seattle..."
HOUSE OF THE DEAD (Brightlight Pictures, 2003)
Uwe Boll is a notoriously bad director...or is he? He somehow manages to land medium-sized franchises, like a video game property, that has name recognition and popularity. At the end of a predetermined amount of time he turns in a finished product, usually under budget, that draws crowds and makes the investors their money back. So why is he so universally despised? I guess we'd better go find out.
While nearly EVERY movie Uwe Boll (pronounced Oo-wee Bowel) has made will end up in the Antipreservation Archive at some point, I thought I'd give myself a treat for the holidays and view one I hadn't seen before: House of the Dead, based on the 1996 arcade game of the same name. Really? It took them seven years to put this out? The game has no discernible plot - you point a lightgun at the screen and shoot zombies. That's it. What, was the script just not capturing the essence of that? Anyway, with no story to follow, I'm curious what they'll come up with.
Oh.
One of the big things that people laugh at about this movie is when it inexplicably switches to footage of the game itself - mid 90's polygonal graphics that could never, EVER be mistaken for real actors - right in the middle of a scene. Sometimes it's used as a transition, and sometimes it's used to "enhance" the "action." Either way, it's terribly jarring, hokey, and blatant...but also kinda ballsy. Uwe Boll (pronounced Ooh-Vee Bawl) is kinda saying "I wasn't gonna finish that shot. Look at this for 1.32 seconds instead." We're first treated to the CG shenanigans 40 seconds into the film, after a 20 second voiceover uses the word "death" three times in a single sentence. A rave sequence acts as the background to the opening credits, which contain a surprising number of names I'm familiar with - Jurgen Prochnow, Clint Howard (AWESOME), Tyrone Leitso, and...Production Design by Tink? Tink? Perhaps if we clap our hands, this movie won't suck.
We open with a quick breakdown of the main characters by the voiceover, which utilizes freeze-frames and swishing sounds while explaining the quirky love triangles between them, or whatever the hell it's talking about. All of these people are going to die, I really don't care if Cynthia loves Greg, or Simon only has eyes for Alicia. Moving on.
Our horny and vapid leads are trying to get to a rave they found advertised on one of those postcards you used to find on the bulletin board at the coffee house, only instead of in an empty warehouse, this one's on an island. And it's apparently sponsored by Sega, judging from the signs everywhere. Way to kill off your customers by putting them on an island filled with the undead, Sega! No wonder you don't make consoles anymore. Our "young and sexy" fodder (they're all kinds of different ages) missed the boat to the shindig, so they need to charter one. This leads to the introduction of my two favorite characters in the whole fiasco, Captain Kirk and his First Mate Salish, played by Jurgen Prochnow and Clint Howard, respectively. These two really had fun with their roles, as they ham it up for the entire duration. Prochnow even has some passable action scenes, if you can believe it. The guy described by Mysterious Voiceover Dude as "not having much between the ears" offers the intrepid fisherman (actually smugglers) $1000 to take them to a party that probably would have cost $30 at the door...which is still a rip. Unless they're giving out free Dreamcasts?
(Watch the scene here)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TvAEADzFJQ
Immediately following is one of my favorite sequences in the movie: the first topless scene, which is a recreation of the opening scene from Jaws...as directed by Uwe Boll (pronounced Ah-vy Bael). Oh, but there's a twist! It's not the girl in the water that gets it, it's the guy on the beach! You didn't see that coming, did you? Fifteen minutes in is the first "official" splice of the video game graphics, but they're just going to keep coming, people. Our zombies finally appear briefly, which is fortunate as they sort of resemble the Skeksis from The Dark Crystal. Did I mention this movie is ranked #53 on IMDB's Bottom 100 list? Awesome.
HOUSE OF THE DEAD (Brightlight Pictures, 2003)
Uwe Boll is a notoriously bad director...or is he? He somehow manages to land medium-sized franchises, like a video game property, that has name recognition and popularity. At the end of a predetermined amount of time he turns in a finished product, usually under budget, that draws crowds and makes the investors their money back. So why is he so universally despised? I guess we'd better go find out.
While nearly EVERY movie Uwe Boll (pronounced Oo-wee Bowel) has made will end up in the Antipreservation Archive at some point, I thought I'd give myself a treat for the holidays and view one I hadn't seen before: House of the Dead, based on the 1996 arcade game of the same name. Really? It took them seven years to put this out? The game has no discernible plot - you point a lightgun at the screen and shoot zombies. That's it. What, was the script just not capturing the essence of that? Anyway, with no story to follow, I'm curious what they'll come up with.
Oh.
One of the big things that people laugh at about this movie is when it inexplicably switches to footage of the game itself - mid 90's polygonal graphics that could never, EVER be mistaken for real actors - right in the middle of a scene. Sometimes it's used as a transition, and sometimes it's used to "enhance" the "action." Either way, it's terribly jarring, hokey, and blatant...but also kinda ballsy. Uwe Boll (pronounced Ooh-Vee Bawl) is kinda saying "I wasn't gonna finish that shot. Look at this for 1.32 seconds instead." We're first treated to the CG shenanigans 40 seconds into the film, after a 20 second voiceover uses the word "death" three times in a single sentence. A rave sequence acts as the background to the opening credits, which contain a surprising number of names I'm familiar with - Jurgen Prochnow, Clint Howard (AWESOME), Tyrone Leitso, and...Production Design by Tink? Tink? Perhaps if we clap our hands, this movie won't suck.
We open with a quick breakdown of the main characters by the voiceover, which utilizes freeze-frames and swishing sounds while explaining the quirky love triangles between them, or whatever the hell it's talking about. All of these people are going to die, I really don't care if Cynthia loves Greg, or Simon only has eyes for Alicia. Moving on.
Our horny and vapid leads are trying to get to a rave they found advertised on one of those postcards you used to find on the bulletin board at the coffee house, only instead of in an empty warehouse, this one's on an island. And it's apparently sponsored by Sega, judging from the signs everywhere. Way to kill off your customers by putting them on an island filled with the undead, Sega! No wonder you don't make consoles anymore. Our "young and sexy" fodder (they're all kinds of different ages) missed the boat to the shindig, so they need to charter one. This leads to the introduction of my two favorite characters in the whole fiasco, Captain Kirk and his First Mate Salish, played by Jurgen Prochnow and Clint Howard, respectively. These two really had fun with their roles, as they ham it up for the entire duration. Prochnow even has some passable action scenes, if you can believe it. The guy described by Mysterious Voiceover Dude as "not having much between the ears" offers the intrepid fisherman (actually smugglers) $1000 to take them to a party that probably would have cost $30 at the door...which is still a rip. Unless they're giving out free Dreamcasts?
(Watch the scene here)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TvAEADzFJQ
Immediately following is one of my favorite sequences in the movie: the first topless scene, which is a recreation of the opening scene from Jaws...as directed by Uwe Boll (pronounced Ah-vy Bael). Oh, but there's a twist! It's not the girl in the water that gets it, it's the guy on the beach! You didn't see that coming, did you? Fifteen minutes in is the first "official" splice of the video game graphics, but they're just going to keep coming, people. Our zombies finally appear briefly, which is fortunate as they sort of resemble the Skeksis from The Dark Crystal. Did I mention this movie is ranked #53 on IMDB's Bottom 100 list? Awesome.
The teens/20somethings/whatevers make the island while a lady cop pursues the Captain, but they manage to hide all their plundered booty before the fuzz arrives. Get it? They're pirates! And Ron Howard's brother is wearing a slicker like the killer from I Know What You Did Last Summer (Oh, we'll get to you)! The group wanders through the "Bog of Eternal Stench" from Labyrinth, finally making it to the "Sonic the Hedgehog" themed rave, which is comprised of a bunch of trashed circus tents. Because that's what a rave is like. So, we have a bunch of kids piecing together a mystery, some pirates, a cop, an isolated island, monsters, people in rain slickers, boats, woods, a cemetery...Oh my God, Uwe Boll has made a long, bad episode of Scooby Doo!
A couple of morons on the island get knocked off while Captain Kirk kicks some swimming zombie ass on his boat...wait, while I was typing that she said it! She actually said Scooby Doo, holy crap! It just must be on purpose, because nothing else explains this. Though really, as the main group finds an abandoned mansion, this movie becomes more like Resident Evil than that Milla Jovovich movie did - it's ridiculous, badly scripted and acted, and filled with zombies. The difference is, the first Resident Evil game did it on purpose. There are Romero references made, almost like the movie is saying "Give me credit, I'm hip!" Terrible. One of the new characters (some survivors from the rave) is a girl named Liberty - and, I shit you not, she is wearing a leotard patterned after the American flag. She knows martial arts and shit, because she's Asian. Another newbie is a guy found in an overturned Port-A-Potty. Shit jokes ensue. The Lady Cop finally shows up to save the day by shooting first and asking questions later, and the action, um, proceeds. One of the monsters spits acid on a dude's face, like Giger's Alien. That's a new one. The Zed Word (aka Zombie) is finally uttered, before we're treated to a flashback shot in monochrome about some pirates that explains that...wait, what? All these zombies on the island are PIRATE ZOMBIES. This is freaking great, I can't wait for the ninjas to show up!
Uwe Boll (pronounced Ew-Wee Boah) rips off all kinds of movies for his action sequences, but they all turn out looking like the production team from Xena: Princess Warrior trying to ape The Matrix. Something utilized WAY too often is that weird 360 degree "turntable" camera effect that spins around the actors frozen in an "action pose." Apparently, this was the last movie to use the device that made that effect possible without digitization, as the machinery involved was deemed a hazard to the actors. Good thing he only used it, like, 53 times! The now-legendary cemetery battle, clocking in at 10 + minutes, has some fine moments in cinematic history, mostly because of the generic rap/techno song, gratuitous violence, video-game footage inserts, Liberty's best Charlie's Angels impression, and the way they OH MY GOD THERE'S THE NINJA! It's like this movie can read my mind; one of the zombies is a martial-artist. He does flips and throws a hatchet and stuff. Most agile dead person ever.
Lady cop (with a name like Casper, she's bound to become a ghost, right?) gets her legs chopped off surprisingly fast (and almost surgically precise) in the effort to get into the old house, and some other people buy it, too. I don't even care anymore. The guy that was revealed as Mysterious Voiceover Dude, and therefore is our hero, lets a BUNCH of women die through his inaction - and usually badly. He's really not so great. Unfortunately, we know he's going to live, because he and the other white chick were given an extra 20 seconds of quipping together, in a cozy little two-shot. They're gonna live, because they're 20 seconds funnier than everyone else.
More bad dialog takes place, some awkward kisses ensue...wait, is this a topless movie, or a romantic comedy, or a horror flick? Make up your mind, movie! Eh, whatever it is, it has my favorite zombie since Bub (of Day of the Dead) in it - Clint Howard returns as Salish: The Whistling Zombie! I'm not kidding! Jurgen Prochnow puts him down swiftly, just before sacrificing himself with some dynamite and one of his signature "sea captain" cigars. Oh, but wait, they aren't all zombie pirates, because there's a lab that has some blood in it or something, according to a self-appointed "scientist" character, as well as a stock of gunpowder, which comes into play later when another character sacrifices himself by shooting it and blowing up the entryway...even though it's in a wooden barrel, and a nine-millimeter round wouldn't...nevermind.
We're pared down to the typical last three, but you know damn well the black chick is gonna die. And she does, as she's groped to death in a tunnel by moss covered tree people from a Middle-Earth convention. But fear not, because our surviving white people are rescued by a guy in a cape with a sword, who looks like he just got back from a long weekend LARPing with his guild buddies. But he turns out to be a piecemeal freak wearing a dead persons face (who would kinda serve as the final boss in a videogame, if this were one). He has a bunch of bad dialog about being immortal, there are more bad flashbacks (where it turns out that he was involved the whole time), and some more stuff happens. The last woman bites it in a sword fight that looks like a Matrix Meets The Three Musketeers mess, bringing our hero Rudy's death count to three women, and at least two men. But she comes back to save his bacon in one last heroic act, of course. So, the slime lives. Oh, then she does too, somehow. Nevermind, Rudy, you're off the hook.
A chopper lands (of course) and the characters from the first game emerge. It's all over...or is it? I guess not, as there were at least two sequels to this garbage, and the games somehow managed to survive the bad name of Uwe Boll (pronounced Ew-we, ew-we baby, ew-we, ew-we baby, ew-we, ew-we baby, won'tyouletmetakeyouonaseacruise), with a House of the Dead game coming out on the Wii this very year.
I bet Sega is proud of this one.
We'll be looking at Mr. Boll again in the future, but is he the worst director ever born? No, but he comes close, simply by strapping steadicams on running zombies. That's just...weird.
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