‘Underworld’ was ‘Citizen Kane’ compared to ‘House Of The Dead’.
I just finished watching HoTD, and my God. I’m also a fan of cheesy zombie flicks, but sweet lord, this sucked. Sucked, sucked, sucked. And not it that “it was so bad it was good” way. It had literally ZERO entertainment value. Perhaps negative.
The video game shots. To get an idea of how bad this flick was, at first you think “Damn, this is stupid and cheesy, showing scenes from a video game in the middle of the action.” But then after a while you start to look forward to the next video game sequence, because it’s relief from the regular movie. The video game sequences have better acting and dialogue. Actually, they have zero dialogue, which is far better than the dialogue of the real-life actors.
The shittiest dialogue I’ve heard since the last porn movie I saw. A quarter of the way into the movie, I’m thinking “People got paid to write this?” But then the question changed to “Why didn’t I read about the people who wrote this movie being messily killed by some Hollywood script vigilante?” Awful beyond words.
I was pretty skeptical that any horror movie in 2003 could come close to being worse than DARKNESS FALLS. But, my God, it managed to do so with ease.
Incidentally, HOTD won RUE MORGUE magazine’s coveted Worst Cinematic Atrocity to Burn Your Retinas in 2003 award in the current issue.
The truly mind-numbing thing about this picture is that this movie is the director’s eighth film, and he already has two more in pre-production. How is this possible?
The movie is bad, no doubt. But to plumb the true depths of this movie’s ginormous suckititude, check out the bonus features, which include the ladies of HoTD PLAYING THE GAME to get ready for the movie. Gah. The scene select is also charmingly stupid and difficult.
I wrote a post about this when I saw it in theaters months ago, so it’s your own damn fault for not heading the warnings then. Hell, it’s your fault for watching the commercials and still watching it. Shit, even the box doesn’t look interesting…what were you THINKING???
I remember reading that the director had decided against putting in screen shots, and thought to myself “Why would he even think of doing that? That’s such a fucking stupid idea!” But I have to say, it’s a good thing he did, because the ONLY time I jumped during that movie was during one of the scenes where suddenly a video screen zombie jumped up and attacked. Without that shot, there wouldn’t have been a single jump worthy moment.
And you have to admit, there were a few fun moments. I mean, the behavior of the underwear model after he got acid on his face? And I loved the “Walk towards the House” sequence. I mean, you watch the line, and see Jane with the shotgun, but when it cuts to her personal Matrix shot, she’s got a hand gun…Then Jimmy’s got two guns in the group shot, and a riffle in his personal shot…I mean, this guy couldn’t get consistancy for his big money shot sequence right. That’s great! It’s good fun for torturing your friends, but this is truly the worst bastardization of an awesome video game.
Resident Evil wasn’t too bad…I liked all the zombie stuff, and the opening sequence was awesome! Unfortunately, the lazer room, computer, and licker portion of the movie sucked super hard. I’m hoping RE2 will be better, but I won’t hold my breadth.
Underworld was pretty bad. But nowhere near as horrific as House of the Dead. Definitely the worst American zombie movie ever made (honestly, I’d rather watch it again than any of Fulci’s movies).