Number 26: House of the Dead (2003)
(couldn't find trailer for the film, so here's one for one of the games instead)
Video games and movies are synonymous with being a perfect
match for each other. Every time you see a film is ‘based on the hit video
game’, you know you are getting a high quality production.
And no one has done more to advance the art than German
director Uwe Boll, the finest director of his generation, universally adored by
fans and critics alike…
…is probably what Uwe Boll dreams people say every night.
Boll is the definitive hack director of the noughties. He
takes popular video game titles and makes films that bear little resemblance to
their source material.
House of the Dead should
have been an easier one to do but he still cocks it up somehow.
I have fond memories of playing House of the Dead in the arcade. It was a basic light gun shooting
game developed by Sega, fighting off hordes of zombies and other undead
creatures. It even had an inspired spin-off game, The Typing of the Dead on the Dreamcast where instead of shooting
zombies, you had to type in words that appeared on screen to kill them. Genius.
Good times.
Now back to the not so good times.
Following conventional horror movie tradition, a group of
teenagers are out on a trip to the woods. Ok, they are going to an island but
it’s got woods on it. There’s some big rave party going on but they miss the
one boat that goes to the island, so they have to hire out a boat owned by a
smuggler. And to be fair, the smuggler captain is the only decent character in
the whole film because he’s so badass.
If I was arranging a big rave, location would be important.
I’d hold it somewhere with more than one rickety boat going out to it per day
but you know, movie.
The name of the island is Isla de Muerte or ‘Island of the Dead’, that’s a strike against the
movie. An island is not a house. Pedantic maybe but that’s what happens when you watch dreck like this, every little thing must be held against it.
The teenagers get to the island and let’s not waste time
with this here, there are zombies. Lots of zombies. Storywise, there isn’t a
lot else to say about it. There is some convoluted story about Spanish
conquistadores which is not part of the games lore. There are some nods to the
games such as one of the characters is a science student called Rudolph Curien,
the villain of the game is Dr Curien.
There is a girl called Liberty in the film who is of Asian
descent dressed in a sexy American flag catsuit. One of the other girls says
she is ‘not your traditional all red, white and blue girl’. A random thing to
bring up here but then it was a random and unnecessary piece of racism.
Being based on House
of the Dead, there is a lot of zombie shooting going on but not much
reloading. They obviously worked out all you need to do is shoot off-screen to
reload. But somehow, Uwe Boll manages to make the shooting and blowing up of
zombies boring. I don’t even know how that’s possible but they found a way. It just seems to go on forever.
The acting is competent but I didn’t feel I knew anything
more about the characters at the end then I did right at the start.
There are little clips of the video game that pop up
constantly throughout the film. Basically, Boll is using them as wipes to cut
between scenes. Which is fine, except I would rather be watching those than the
film in between.
What Uwe Boll should have done is gone to an arcade and just
filmed someone playing House of the Dead.
That would have been awesome.
Comparatively.
Number 25: Space Mutiny (1988)
So it’s mutiny. I never thought I’d see the day.
It’s a weird one this, watching it feels like you’re only
seeing half the movie. Presumably the other half would have made it all make
sense.
The film starts off ok with a space battle straight from the
original Battlestar Galactica TV
series (the 1978 one, when Starbuck was a man). No really, it is literally
footage from Battlestar Galactica.
Same ships and everything.
The characters are…strange. I don’t know what they told the
actor who plays the captain what his role in the film was, he looks like he’s
trying to play a cross between Zeus and Santa Claus. The hero is just a bland
musclehead but I think there is a director’s cut of this film where we get to
hear the other half of his conversations, as most of the time it just seems like
he’s talking to himself. He has a love interest and IMDB says actress Cisse
Cameron was 34 when this was released but she looks 20 years older.
There’s a creepy European guy and an officer with a limp,
could they be our villains? Is that even remotely possible? If they are, they’ve
done an amazing job throwing us off the scent. (They are).
There is an amazing error in continuity. Usually continuity
errors are dull little things like a man might be wearing a tie in a scene but
in the next shot he isn’t and then he is. In Space Mutiny, a bridge officer is murdered then it cuts to the next
scene and there she is sitting on the bridge. Forgetting a character had been
killed off is a new high/low for continuity errors.
Oh yeah, if anyone has a hula-hoop you are ahead of the game
as along with lots of neon (obviously) everyone will be bringing hula-hoops to
nightclubs in the future. Exciting times.
The rest of the inside of the ship looks remarkably like a
factory warehouse, complete with windows. Then there’s the absurd overuse of
slow-motion, a common complaint in bad sci-fi films.
The story is something about weapons being smuggled off the
ship but that’s all secondary. The real star here is the car crash that is this
movie.
Recycled footage, complete lack of attention detail, bad acting,
odd characters, poor sets, rubbish directing. I loved it.
It’s a great example of the so bad its good movie.
Everything is wrong, it goes round the dial of being a bad movie but the needle
keeps on spinning until it becomes good again.
I urge you all to see it.
