As a potential future moviemaker (failed moviemaker I should say) and an OG (i.e. "Original Gamer"), the possibilities of game-to-movie translations pop up in my skull all the time. Movies based on Castlevania, The Legend of Zelda and Berzerk are permanent "What if?" fixtures on the colorfully decorated walls of my brain dome. Pong used to sit up with that crowd too, but the daily embolisms of who I'd cast as the left paddle were driving my health insurance premiums through the roof of the Tomb.. and trust me, this tomb's got high ceilings.

Anyway, when confronted with a console-to-screen project you've got one big thing to consider: is the material in the game movie appropriate? I don't mean so much the subject of the game mind you (shit, if stuff like Leprechaun 4: In Space can be made, anything can), but the girth of the material in question. Super Mario Bros. has all kinds of crazy crap going on with leaping plumbers, man-eating mushrooms, a dinosaur with a saddle on his back, and a family of Gamera's smaller, angrier relatives. Classic platforming fun as Mario and Luigi stomp bad guys and save the Princess from the clutches of Bowser Koopa (the Hitler of the Mushroom Kingdom) and his minions. Is this the kind of game you can make into a movie? Not without CGI, hence why the entire formula was flushed down the crapper by the Hollywood brain trust, completely retooled and showered on the public with little more than it's title to relate it with it's pixilated origin.

On the other end of the spectrum Mortal Kombat, a game where people just beat up other people with a minimum amount of story to push it, became the ultimate game-to-movie experience when the story and characterization were brought to the forefront and the fighting action was trimmed but still an integral part of the story, not just eye candy. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider also crafted it's product smoothly around it's source, meanwhile a similarly minimal game, Double Dragon, was the basis of the most godz awful celluloid bastard creations since, well, Super Mario Bros.. It's an art doing this thing right and it's a crime (punishable by death!) doing this thing wrong.

Now, with today's thinning pool of creativity in the movie industry, writers, producers and directors are seeking new markets to plunder in search of movie concepts that will appeal to the all important dollar of the exponentially exploding market of teen spenders. This means they're diving head first into genres they'd been creeping cautiously around since the mid-90s. Comicbooks and video games are probably the most popular targets of these parasites, meaning even the less mainstream game and comic titles like Road to Perdition, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and hey, looky here, even House of the Dead can get commercial notice.

Okay, that explains why a semi-obscure arcade shooter game would be dug up (har har) for the Hollywood treatment, but this brings up the prior paragraph's problem with whether of not House of the Dead has what it takes to make a good movie, or whether Hollywood thinks it's in need of a major make over. The base of the game is this: you play one of two guys in a suit looking to take down an evil corporate mad scientist guy and his legion of mutant ghoul super soldiers. Your weapon? A gun of course, as anything will die if you blow enough pieces off of it! So, how will the makers of House of the Dead turn this one dimensional arcade killer into 90+ minutes of zombie killing movie fun with a "story"? Not to scare off any potential viewers, but think Super Mario Bros.... kinda.

Okay, enough with the lengthy introduction, after all, I've gotta subject myself to the movie sooner or later anyway right? Right. Well, for starters, we the audience aren't trusted by Artisan "Entertainment" with putting things together on our own. So, to hold our hands in this endeavor we get bland, uninteresting, badly written, snore inducing narrative as provided by our supposed hero Rudy, who sounds like a goth surfer dude and informs us that the story we're in for involves a lot of people dying: "so many dead people... so many victims...". Hey, when the movie centers around a deserted island full of idiot rave kids, death is about the only item on the menu I think I can stomach.

So, following an opening credits sequence of "artistic" renditions of scenes taken from the video game (made "Hollywood" by the use of an embossing feature on the director's PC special effects program) mixed with what sounds like generic techno from a Prodigy cover band, we're introduced to our main protagonists, all of which are friends of Rudy. They're described by our humble narrator with "he's the good looking dumbass, his girlfriend's the same, sassy black chick who's in love with with the cute and chivalrous guy, who's really in love with the chick who majors in fencing, who happens to be my ex-girlfriend" labels. By the way, movie rule #33L-16K: anyone with an "out of the ordinary" talent or skill that's mentioned near the opening of the movie, will be using it at some point before the movie ends, usually to save the day. I know there are names in there somewhere (Simon or Sherman or Samson come to mind), but much like my former review of Shreiker, all clods involved with this tale will be given numbers and letter based on their roles as they're not really deserving of individual names that I should have to remember. And with that, here we go: Cute Nice Guy will now be CNG - Good Looking Rich Boy will now be GLRB - Eye Candy Stupid Girl will now be ECSG - Sassy Sistah will now be S2 - Ex-Girlfriend Fencing Major will now be XGFM - and Tortured Introverted Narrator Boy (Rudy) will be TINB.

You might want to write this down, cuz you can't tell one dead college drop out from another without a score card! Later characters will all be labeled as such when they become of importance... this is gonna be like giving a little kid the Wall Street Journal and expecting him to find out how your stocks are doing, I can already see it.

So yeah, there's this "rave of the year" bash going on at a deserted island, conveniently labeled "Isla del Muerto" by the locals (somewhere in California maybe, I wasn't really listening) which, even those of us with the most rudimentary knowledge of the Spanish language (as picked up by Mexican luchadore horror movies) should know means "Island of the Dead". If you didn't then, well, you just got a free lesson in $.12 Spanish and should immediately go out and watch as many Santo movies as possible. Movie rule #34F-22P: any place nicknamed "of the dead" actually translates to "everybody who comes here will die".

As I was saying, there's this big stupid rave on Gilligan's Island of Corpses. Not that I know the code of rave ethics or anything, but since when are "rave parties" held in the middle of the day in mildly tropical, outdoor forest locations and corporately sponsored, as noted by the big banner that says "SEGA" on it?! The damn thing even comes complete with the little "registered trademark" insignia next to the top right side of the logo! Even the cornfield rave in Freddy Vs. Jason was less sell-out than this crowd, and that's saying something. House of the Dead is offensive to all the hard-working, live-off-their-rich-parents raver kids who put on their silver t-shirts, spike their hair up with their mom's Vidal Sassoon™, pop several hits of Ecstasy, and swing their glow stick party favors around like flags of honor and victory over the politically correct wasteland of social conformity in nightclubs across the country every Saturday night! They're the seeds of the world's future people, the saviors of our generations, the pioneers of... ah fuck it, they're morons and I need to cut little slits in my arms every time their existence is thrown in my face, just to spare the lives of the few "cool" friends I socialize with. Does this make me a good Samaritan, a conformist, a masochist, or just a putz? Don't answer that.

Right, whatever you want to call this Sega™ sponsored gathering of twenty-somethings drinking "responsibly", engaging in "safe" and "sensible" sexual practices, and no doubt trespassing on someone else's deserted island, it's happening and our 5 nitwits from the introduction have missed the boat and got left behind. That's no excuse to miss the "shindig" of the year though, so CNG negotiates passage to the island aboard a grizzled old fisherman named Captain Kirk's boat (you call $1000 for a one way trip on a skanky tub that reeks of rotten sushi a bargain?!). Kirk (played by Jürgen "Das Boot" Prochnow)'s not the real story though, as his first mate is. Why? Because he's Sally: a hook wielding Clint Howard who wears a yellow rain slicker like nobody since Corey Feldman's masterful performance in the opening flashback sequence of Friday the 13th Part V - A New Beginning! Stylin' and profilin' there Clint! Work that meat hook! Paris runways watch out, Mr. Howard's breaking down your walls this fall!

Yep, Clint Howard is here to save the day for b-movie lovers the world over as the overacted first mate with the shiny metal crate hook, rancid seaman body odor (stop laughing...) and a grave dislike of being involved with shipping these "holier than thou" post-teens to their dooms, not so much because of the whole dying thing but because he's not keen on the idea of putting his own grubby dental work in danger. Meanwhile, the mid-day party rages on into the late afternoon and... wait a sec, I need to rap my head around this. The boat for this party was to have left dock at 5pm, with the 5 leftovers showing up at 5:15 and negotiating passage on the trawler within approximately 15 minutes, meaning the movie should be clocking in around 5:30pm at this point. Back at the party couples are already stumbling drunkenly off into the woods to fuck, chicks are taking off their tops and grinding their asses into the random tents of guys they probably never met before getting dry humped from them by the volleyball nets (another staple of raves?!). Now, given the MTV Beach House type DJ stage they've got set up (again, courtesy of Sega™) and all the tents and kegs and tables and party streamers and the volleyball game net and various other bullshit all over the place, you've gotta think that it took them more than those 30 minutes to get there via boat, unload all the party elements and drink enough to get a healthy party buzz going before rushing into the "sex with random people" part of the festivities! You're gonna wear yourself out before it even gets dark if you kids keep that pace up!

I'll give the writers the shadow of a doubt as far as the concept that there could've been corporate lackeys setting up the shit for this box social long before the ravers in question arrived to "partay", but that would still only give the kids 30 minutes to head out on the boat (shovel on another 5 or 6 minutes for the ever present stragglers), unload, start the booze a flowin' and get the proverbial party on... which I guess in this case is actually a literal party... The point being? These lads 'n' ladies must be a crew of complete lightweights if they're all stumbling around doin' drunken white folk "Soul Train" this soon into the night. You know what, to Hell with it. If House of the Dead wants me to believe that you can Mardi Gras a bunch of idiot college kids in 15 minutes, then I'm just going to stumble along confused with the rest of 'em.

Captain Kirk and the kiddies head out for Rave Island, evading customs agents in the process. No doubt the captain's dealing in some illegal goodness on that ship, and considering they're running headlong into a zombie island massacre I'd say it'd better be guns they're hauling and not nose candy if any of them expect to walk away from this movie... which I genuinely hope no one does. Back at Party Beach, the carnage finally kicks in, as the only girl at the rave without salt water bags hanging from her ribs goes skinny dipping (well, "topless dipping" I guess you'd call it) while her new brain dead screw rod watches drunkenly from shore. But when "Matt" disappears, mini-boobs exits the water and gets lost looking for her walking hard-on, stumbling upon a really old looking house... that sits in the middle of a graveyard... Movie rule #34G-16C: the first person/persons to seperate from the party are also the first to die horribly.

In all her kegger girl genius, she enters the house ("of the dead" of course), finds Matt doing his best impression of a watch on a ghoul's arm, then gets ravaged by a handful of the living dead. These aren't just any living dead though, as these zombies have shiny red light bulb eyes for the new millennium! Thank you cinematic giants of the year 2000, for somehow improving our lives in ways the movie-going audiences have yet to fathom!

Well, there goes my New Year's resolution to be nice to crappy hack movie makers...

Our boatload of fodder arrives on the isle of evil spirits, and while the quintet follows their map to the site of the par-tay, Kirk and Sally unload their illegal contraband to a hidden location on the land mass in case their friends from the government decided to play follow the leader... which they did of course, dropping Kirk's old military amiga Casper (a Jill Valentine Wanna Be who will from now on be referred to as JVWB for exactly that reason) on the other side of the island. It's always good to have at least 2 or 3 members of your victim party be good at some kind of combat to make it a little more believable. Too bad for Sally he lacked any such training, as he's soon overcome by unseen attackers. So much for the cast's one saving grace...

Finding their party officially deserted CNG, S2 and XGFM play search party, while GLRB & ECSG stay at the site to play the role of "sexually motivated murder victim couple". Sure enough, while GLRB's off taking a piss, ECSG waits in their love tent where she too is attacked. Where's her humpin' hubby during all this? More on that later. As for the inquisitive trio, they too happen upon the house (again, "of the dead") in the middle of the woods, only this time instead of a posse of flesh munchers, these guys find what's left of their friends. Labeled as such they are: Loser With Camcorder = LWC; Asian Chick in American Flag Jumpsuit = USA (just go with it); and of course TINB is with them. After a recap of the rave slaughter thanx to LWC's amateur version of Ghouls Gone Wild (and so many Romero references so as to make them blatant and unentertaining as opposed to delightfully tongue-in-cheek), the group heads back to the site to pick up the screwing duo and get the fuck out of Partyville as an ominous looking quilt-face guy watches from the bushes...

Gee (he pondered sarcastically), I wonder if he's got something to do with this...

Upon returning to the campsite, the gang finds GLRG trapped in an overturned Port-A-John™ and covered in (or rather dabbed in "too conveniently placed to look even the slightest bit realistic" in) shit streaks like that guy in the "Jackass" episode. While he blows the dingleberries outta his nose hairs (and would somebody please tell him about the Dirty Sanchez smear he's got running across his cheek?!), ECSG materializes out of nothingness and snaps the crap outta LWC's neck!

For those of you keep score at home, yes, she is officially a zombie at this point.

This career change doesn't last long for the girl though, as she gets her pretty pink panties ("DNA" and all) blasted out of her ass and what little brains she had left ventilated out the portside of her skull. The shooter? JVWB, here to fulfill action movie rule 17B-18P: no matter what history the main antagonist(s) and protagonist(s) may have, they will abandon all bad feelings and combine resources when faced with a common threat - i.e. a natural disaster, crooked cops, or a mob of zombies/demons/miners possessed by the ghosts of Martian metal heads.

Back at la bota, Captain Kirk finds himself under siege like Segal, fending off Isla del Muerto's Olympic synchronized swimming team as it's time for the movie to kick into "brain poppin' on a large scale" mode. It's not long after this that our fun lovin' zombie-fighters-to-be start liberatin' fluorescent pink undead head squeezin's from one side of the island to the other, saving CNG's ass all along the way from ghouls that swim to ghouls that spew acid. This of course fulfilling action movie rule #15C-37L: the guy who talks the biggest shit is always the one who can't do shit when the plot hits the fan.

While the crew takes a moment to collect their thoughts and discuss strategery, Kirk uses the time to whip out his back story database! Seems the Captain knows the local legends enough (rule #07X-12A: "local legends" are always scientific fact) to educate everybody on the origins of the undead, which plays as follows: Hundreds of years ago (in a galaxy far far away...) a crazy Spaniard scientist named Castillo was exiled to the island for committing unspeakable atrocities in the name of sweet mistress science on his neighbors. Obviously his experiments worked, explaining how the island is now crawling with re-animated partiers and just who the dashing jigsaw puzzle-faced guy in the underbrush is. Enough with the chit-chat though, cuz now it's time for the funniest part of the movie: the big undead shoot-out Matrix dance party sequence! Yay!

Armed to the teeth with the impossible array of boomsticks and hand cannons stored in the Captain's little box of contraband (also know as the Instant Armory In A Box™) and enough ammunition to take down the commonwealth of Scandinavia (given that Scandinavia is as such, which it probably isn't), what was once a small group of not-the-shiniest-apples-in-the-bag party kids becomes a small army of battle hardened super warriors with inhuman vertical leaps that would make Jordan drool...

Yes, let the horribly choreographed, lame CGIed, generic bullet time carnage begin... I'll try to laugh too much. After all, I wouldn't want anyone to miss out on any of this Shakespeare quality dialogue or Brando caliber acting.

Whoa Captain, I advise caution. Scotty says the main thrusters won't be able to stand up to another hit of sarcasm like that, as "she canna take nah moor"! Just do as I say and arm the photon torpedoes, bitch...

As if the look of the entire sequence wasn't enough to kill good taste, shove it into a shallow grave and piss on it's headstone, there's an equally painful auditory assault to back it up. Appropriately titled "House of the Dead" (now there's the originality this movie has been trying so hard for...), this generic hip-hop horror anthem powers our dime store action stars through their 10 minute zombie fighting sequence, 25 seconds of which is spent on a dizzying montage that replays the seven minutes of the fight sequence up until that moment! Sure, this scene may take a bite out of the otherwise Oscar (Mayer) caliber story and acting of this celluloid laxative, but a 10 minute fight sequence (especially one this bad) isn't a respite, just a different species of wolf in another sheep's Calvins! Asking me if I'd rather watch this scene or any other scene in the movie is like asking me if I'd rather have my toenails yanked out one-by-one or my fingernails! I still can't believe how blatantly the whole thing self-gratifies itself with a TWENTY-FIVE SECOND techno re-cap! BLAH!

By the time the big shoot-out ends and the group has fortified themselves in the titular structure, JVWB has had her legs chopped off, GLRG and USA have been gang-munched, Kirk's been chomped a few times himself (later exploding himself with grenades via action movie rule #09L-27T: at least one of the doomed characters must sacrifice themself in an explosion in an attempt to stop the villain/villains and save their friends) and CNG stops crying about his ruined modeling career (zombie acid facial) just long enough to make face love with S2. Oh, and speaking of inappropriate times to make a "hook up", the resident exes are exes no more, making them, uhm, ex-exes? I don't know, I failed geometry, the point is, who didn't see that looming like Godzilla over the horizon? Movie law #09J-46V: if two characters were once romantically involved prior to the movie but this is no longer the case at the movie's opening, said hearts will be reunited in, if not before, the final scene and said reuniting shall "feel so good".

Finding the presumed workshop of Castillo in the house, the surviving partiers stumble upon some more undead guinea pigs from puzzle puss's Junior Mad Scientist Playset™ and attempt holding them off with cinematic nitpicker head rape #78: the kids barricade the only door leading into the lab with the intent of holding the ghouls off long enough for some conveniently placed barrels of gunpowder to ignite, apparently not realizing that the door opens into the lab and not outward from it! This fact is lost on the pursuing cadavers as well though, as they can't seem to realize which way the door opens either...

This is like some horrible field day in movie Hell, it really really is...

More zombie pirates, gunshots, explosions and general chaos break out, eventually claiming the lives of all except for XGFM, TINB, and seemingly GLRB, who's changed clothes since last we saw him and leads the duo into the house's basement. Once there though it's revealed that GLRB is really Castillo wearing the mook's severed visage like a bad Halloween mask. Trapped in the madman's den with various sharp utensils and still more undead conquistador minions, the heroes must remain detained while Mr. Bad Guy recaps his own origins... well, it has been a long time since he's had guests after all, and we all know how these villain types like to talk about themselves and their plans for global conquest.

It takes a big ego to want to take over the world... or just a really shat on, beat up one to want to blow it up.

As we knew already, Castillo was an hombre de sciencia (an impossibly buff one at that) and dabbled in horrors against humanity along the lines of sacrificing the healthy parts of others to use on himself, thus granting him a sort of artificial immortality. Basically, he was trafficking organs and limbs long before anyone even knew what a black market was... you know, beyond the slave trade... shhhh, you didn't hear that one from me.

The story time love-in is ended prematurely with a TINB grenade (*yoink*ed from the real GLRB's belt... who still has eyelids despite his face being peeled off), causing enough mayhem so he and XGFM can escape outside. While they sit down and rest for a sec, you-know-who appears from behind them, wielding a sword and his face none the worse for wear considering he just had a pineapple's worth of shrapnel detonated right in front of him.

Remember earlier in the movie when the little tidbit was dropped that XGFM had majored in fencing? Well, when TINB gets his ass busted, she puts those "mad skills" to the test against a guy who's probably been doing it for centuries... which would explain why she loses and gets a blade sheathed in her breast plate. However, gloating over his victory proves fatal for the villain as muy macho TINB comes up from behind and decap-attacks the ghoul with his trusty axe!... which is as effective against him as it was against David Gale in '85: not at all. Yes, the rolling head of Castillo controls his body from a far, using it to strangle our hero. Before Mr. Sleepy Hollow can finish off the Tiger Beat reject, XGFM uses her last ounce of strength to stumble over and stomp the fluorescent pink goo from the baddy's brain box. Mmmmm, nougat.

Finally, living up to movie rules #02W-11Z ("the cavalry always arrives just in time to be too late") and #21P-06F ("leave the ending wide open for a sequel"), a chopper full of guys in black suits arrives on the island to "secure" the island, i.e. "take over Castillo's operations so the government can create an army of undead soldiers to take over the world with". On the chopper ride over, TINB's voice-over instills us with the true horror element of the film: the possibilities for a sequel. Considering the way this turd was power flushed down the Horrorwood crapper though, I think it's safe to say we'll be spared that travesty.

Then again, since TINB reveals his last name to be "Curian", as in "the name of the lead villain from the video games" (a name drop that director Boll snidely comments that only 5% of the audience "eating zair paupcorn" would pick up on...), I guess you could make it a case that the games are sequels and Uwe Boll's already beaten us... DAMN YOU BOLL! DAMN YOOOOOOU!

Okay, so in the long run it wasn't as perversed as Super Mario Bros. was. There weren't any lizard men in trenchcoats with tiny heads trying to pass themselves off as fanged mushrooms, no tears in the time-space continuum brought about by prehistoric meteor crashes, nor evolutionary laser cannons disguised as video game peripherals. There weren't any bullshit plot elements like mystic medallions or world ending scrolls of ultimate power either, just a bunch of intolerable "raver kids" and techno music... which actually makes me contemplate which is worse.

What's with the "dead" here? Some of them shuffle like Romero's directing them, while others sprint like they're straight off the set of Return of the Living Dead and still others are so sensible as to have ordered spring loaded shoes from the ACME™ Fall Catalog to help them pursue their prey. Certified by Mr. Wile E. Coyote himself! Even worse, there are some zombies who don't seem to know what it is they're supposed to do, as in the middle of the big flashy MTV action sequences they just walk around in circles bumping into each other!

Also, just to speak out in frustrated gamer anger, Boll decided that by "peppering" the movie with scenes taken directly from the game, he'd be making an "interesting" bridge between scenes. Since this is (supposedly) based on the game, this would normally make sense... except that there are no forest sequences in the fucking House of the Dead games, so when the audience is suddenly hit with one of these moments set in a village, castle or industrial complex, it makes no fucking sense! That, and everybody knows it's based on a video game Uwe, and if they didn't I doubt it would really make a big difference either way.

From the traditional elements, I hate the cast for being horrible actors. I hate the writers for their pitiful dialogue and brainless, generic story. I especially hate Uwe Boll for ripping off The Matrix like every other hack director since 1999 and running the "fine art" of the dolly shot into the ground like a five year old obsessed with his new talking toy and repeatedly pulling the damn string no matter how pissed off the people on the subway train are. Speaking of which, I was nowhere near the 59th Street station on August the 17th of last year. As for Uwe (pronounced "ewwwwwwwww" for good reason), pistol whip this bitch. A tumor on the testicles of both the horror and action genres. Alone in the Dark? How does this butt goblin find work!? He's been quoted as calling video games "the books for the new generation". Not that I'm a huge fan of books (unless they come with the word "comic" before them), and not to say that some games aren't life changing experiences, but House of the Dead was nothing close to a "landmark", a "genre definer" or anything beyond "something to waste 20 minutes on"... guess that means Mr. Boll actually got this bowel movement (or "Boll movement"?) right after all...

I only hope Clint Howard leaves this off his resume... and yes, I thought Ice Cream Man and Ticks were both better that House of the Dead.