The Screengrab : house of the dead

Unwatchable #34: “House of the Dead”

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 19 May 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. More or less. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

Eagle-eyed readers will notice I skipped over #35 on our little countdown to the worst of the worst. My rebuttal is this: What difference does it make now? I’m not going to make it to the top (that is, the bottom) of the list by the time the Screengrab signs off forever, and I had no success tracking down that #35 movie, Santa with Muscles. It doesn’t appear to have warranted a DVD release, and my attempts at tracking it down through unofficial channels have proven fruitless.

I can tell you this much about it: It’s a family-friendly comedy starring Hulk Hogan. Since I’ve already gone through the pain of reviewing such an animal for you – 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain, if you’ve already forgotten – I’m not terribly saddened that I couldn’t find Santa with Muscles. However, we can at least take a moment to enjoy the trailer together, no?

Aw, nobody told me Clint Howard was in it! What a shame. Still, there’s no time to linger over what might have been. Let’s move on up to #34, which is, by my count, the third Uwe Boll movie to appear in our festering little festival. First we thrilled to the vampire western BloodRayne 2: Deliverance, adapted from the hit videogame! Then we chilled to the “mighty tedious cacaphony of automatic gunfire and bad special effects” Alone in the Dark, adapted from the hit videogame! And now we have the zombie movie House of the Dead…adapted from the hit videogame!

The difference here is that I’ve actually whiled away an hour or three playing House of the Dead in my time, and I can attest that Mr. Boll’s versions lacks the foreboding mood, in-depth characterizations and ingenious twists of the original. It also lacks a house, which is, strangely enough, the setting of the original House of the Dead. There’s a secret rave being held on the Isle de la Muerte, which is more of an island than a house, although it is crawling with zombies. And, hey – there he is! It’s Clint Howard in a yellow rain slicker, looking like a cross between the guy on the Beach Cliff sardines can and a ferret.

To give Mr. Boll his due, I must admit House of the Dead is a groundbreaking work: it’s the first movie based on a videogame that is actually less entertaining than watching someone else play a videogame for two hours. Boll also finds a clever way to cover up the excessive gore that comes from many, many heads exploding, by utilizing frequent cut-aways from the live-action slaughter of zombies to actual videogame footage of same. Wait, did I say “clever”? I believe I meant “boneheaded.” It’s clear that Boll’s earlier Unwatchable appearances were a mere warm-up; House of the Dead is the real deal.

Previously on Unwatchable:
36. Daddy Day Camp
37. Bad Girls from Valley High
38. Chairman of the Board
39. The Invisible Maniac
40. Son of the Mask

The Screengrab's Top Ten Worst...Movies...Ever!!!! (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:30:00 GMT

Nick Schager's Top Ten Worst Movies Ever

1) THEY'RE JUST MY FRIENDS (2006)
2) HOUSE OF THE DEAD (2003)
3) PAY IT FORWARD (2000)

So sickly sweet is the premise of Pay it Forward – little altruistic boy (Haley Joel Osment) devises a domino-effect plan in which people repay favors by doing good deeds for others – it’s likely to give you diabetes. And so brazenly manipulative is Mimi Leder’s award-baiting drama, which also concerns Kevin Spacey’s badly burned social studies teacher finding love with Osment’s alcoholic mommy Helen Hunt, that it may as well feature “Award Clip” subtitles under its many mawkish scenes. Did I mention that, after Osment has compassionately started to change the world, the kid gets shot dead? Shameless doesn’t begin to describe the multitude of tear-jerking ploys employed by this sentimental weepy.

4) BABY GENIUSES (1999)
5) BATTLEFIELD EARTH (2000)
6) SUPER CAPERS (2009)

All the references in the world can’t save Super Capers from being the nadir of cinematic homages, a tongue-in-cheek riff on ‘80s superhero and sci-fi films which believes that merely alluding to classic predecessors is enough to keep fanboys entertained. Sloppy and inane, it nightmarishly epitomizes the downside to technology affording wannabe filmmakers the means to realize their big-screen dreams.

7) BATMAN & ROBIN (1997)
8) MIXED NUTS (1994)
9) THE EXORCIST II (1977)
10) TROLL 2 (1990)

The forthcoming documentary Best Worst Movie will surely win Troll 2 some new fans, if only because it’ll clue filmgoers into the mind-boggling scene in which young protagonist Joshua prevents his family from eating evil food by urinating all over the kitchen table. Yet no matter how unintentionally funny it may be, there’s no getting around the sheer dreadfulness of this pseudo-sequel, which in every respect lives up to – if not actually surpasses – its disreputable reputation.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine & Ten

Contributor: Nick Schager

DVD Digest for September 9, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Another slow week here at DVD Digest, with a handful of worthwhile classic DVDs and plenty of new editions of horror favorites to balance the small amount of quality new releases.

While next week is slated to bring a trio of wonderful new classics on DVD, this week your best bet is Warner’s new “Deluxe Edition” of Cool Hand Luke (also Blu-Ray). In addition, this week sees the release of the three pressing to date of The Big Lebowski (Universal), although the new “10th Anniversary Edition” has a number of interesting-looking new features that weren’t present in the previous “Achievers’ Edition”, notably featurettes that address the cult-classic status of the film and the Lebowski Fest phenomenon that has sprung up around it. And in advance of Halloween, the studios have begun re-releasing their horror classics, from the collection Fox Horror Classics Vol. 2 (which includes Chandu the Magician, Dr. Renault’s Secret, and Dragonwyck) to more recent titles like Child’s Play 20th Anniversary Edition and Pumpkinhead Collector’s Edition (both MGM).

If you’re in the market for something newer still, this week’s recent releases on DVD include: Sarah Palin Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in Baby Mama (Universal, also Blu-Ray); the long-awaited onscreen duel between Jackie Chan and Jet Li The Forbidden Kingdom (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray); Tarsem’s The Fall (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Helen Hunt’s directorial debut, Then She Found Me (Image); and The Seed, the latest from schlock auteur Uwe Boll.

Continuing the crush of television DVDs that invariably coincides with the new TV season, this week brings: David Caruso removing his sunglasses dramatically in CSI: Miami Season 6 (Paramount); more sexy medical drama in Gray’s Anatomy Season 4 (Disney, also Blu-Ray); Patricia Arquette in Medium Season 4 (Paramount); the Teen of Steel in Smallville Season 7 (Warner, also Blu-Ray); and America Ferrara frumping up in Ugly Betty Season 2 (Disney).

This week’s Blu-Ray only releases include: the football-centric double feature of Rudy and Jerry Maguire (both Sony); Timur Bekmambetov’s Night Watch and Day Watch (both Fox); and Fox’s The Omen Collection, which includes the first three theatrical features, with the original film also available separately.

Finally, I can’t let this week’s DVD Digest pass without mentioning the release of House of the Dead Director’s Cut: “Funny Version” (Lionsgate). Now, I’ve gone on record as a defender of the aforementioned Dr. Boll, and if nothing else this new, allegedly more comedic cut of Boll’s reviled 2003 film shows that at least the good doctor has a sense of humor about his work. But at the same time, this feels to me like an empty gesture. After all, with a movie as unintentionally funny as House of the Dead, is there really a need to add more comedy? Or is Boll just reaching out to his detractors by acknowledging that the film is laughable, and trying to add even more laughs for their benefit? If so, Boll could prove to be a much cannier master of spin than we’d originally thought.

One Million Uwe Boll Haters Can’t Be Wrong

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Via Cinematical comes news that schlockmeister Uwe Boll either has a sense of humor about himself or at least would like us to believe he does. Boll, who specializes in brainless action and horror movies often based on videogames (House of the Dead, BloodRayne), is perhaps best known to those who avoid his movies like they’re radioactive for challenging his critics to fight him in the boxing ring. But is Boll finally tired of fighting?

After a screening of his latest exercise in videogame-based bad taste Postal (which opens with a scene of the 9/11 hijackers realizing there won’t be enough virgins for them in the afterlife as they hurtle towards the World Trade Center, and presumably only gets more hilarious from there), Boll chatted with FEARnet and proved he’s full of surprises. For one thing, he seems to take criticism more seriously than you’d guess. “I think the New York Times guy liked it,” he says, in reference to the Postal screening. “In all of the game-based movies, we got better and better. We took the critics and the Internet into account, and we got better with the script, and we got better with the characters and the stories. If you see Alone in the Dark, and later Bloodrayne and In the Name of the King, I think there is a quality difference in everything.”

We’ll just take his word for that. Boll goes on to call himself “a little Nazi pervert” and reveal that he is a PETA supporter (“one-hundred percent of my Seed horror movie goes to PETA”). But the most encouraging news is his response to the news that there’s an online petition with 18,000 signatures, demanding that Boll stop making movies. “Yeah, I know that. 18,000 is not enough to convince me…One million. Now we have a new goal.”

Here’s the petition. Do what you feel is right.