Product Details

• Actors: Ellie Cornell, Clint Howard, David Palffy, Jürgen Prochnow, William Sanderson
• Directors: Uwe Boll
• Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Director's Cut, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Lions Gate
• DVD Release Date: September 9, 2008
• Run Time: 90 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 1.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (319 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0016PWTVQ
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #130,354 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The usual slasher-movie teens charter a boat to attend a rave in Washington's San Juan islands, find zombies there, and splatter their guts all over the place. House of the Dead shows early promise when the boat captain is the dude from Das Boot (Jürgen Prochnow) and the mate is the inimitably weird Clint Howard. Alas, things devolve from there. The movie includes frequent flashes from its video game inspiration, not that we need much reminding of the obvious source. Amongst the rotten dialogue, bad acting, and gratuitous topless scenes, there's one looooong shootout sequence in the middle of the picture that should be the main attraction for fans of this kind of thing. Otherwise, it's at the level of every other slasher movie, video game or no video game, in which stupid people do stupid things to keep themselves in harm's way. --Robert Horton

Product Description

HOUSE OF THE DEAD DIRECTOR'S CUT - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

97 of 107 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Lord have mercy!, March 30, 2004

By 

Inspector Gadget "Go Go Gadget Reviews" (On the trail of Doctor Claw) - See all my reviews

This review is from: House of the Dead (DVD)

There are people out there who will greenlight anything! That is the only explanation I can offer as to why the House of the Dead movie exists. And that's only scary part to the whole movie. It's so bad you'll go off movies forever. I seriously wanted to switch this off and turn the TV over to the Paint Drying channel but I was bound by my word to suffer the whole thing. I don't know why I do these bad things to myself.

As if it matters, here's the basic jist of the 'story'. A group of twenty-somethings are so desperate to go out to some island in the Pacific Northwest (Canada actually, because it's cheap) for the 'Rave of the Century' (which consists of about 8 people and un-raving music) that they pay some craggy old fisherman $1000 to take them there after they miss the main ferry. That's gotta be some rave to be worth all that dough! The fisherman warns them that the island is also known as the Island of the Dead (hang on-I thought this was HOUSE of the Dead?) and that they are all doomed yadda yadda yadda.

First faults here. Why would a tiny little rave (of the Century my foot!) be held on some remote island? Why would anyone willingly pay loads of money to get it? Why pay even more to the craggy old fisherman to take them back when they could just come back with the others?

Once they arrive they discover that the rave (which consists of about 2 tents, a small stage and a port-a-john) has been smashed, there's blood everywhere and no one is around. What would any rationally thinking person do? Run for their lives of course. But no, these clueless, obviously blind people decide to go look for them. Soon enough they discover an old ramshackle house that's 50 times as big on the inside as it is on the outside. Another half hour of stumbling around in the forest follows, as an excuse to kill of some of the lesser characters, and after much tedium they arrive back at the house again. The characters, like the movie, go nowhere.

Jammed into this ghastly disaster is a superabundance of gibberish dialogue, heinous acting, mumbo-jumbo exposition and zillions of clips from the once-popular arcade game of the same name. Why this was universally accepted as a good idea with the filmmakers I'll never know. The clips have no reference to any of the scenes and only degrade this trash even further, if that is at all possible.

It has nothing to do with the game save for some cheap, throwaway line at the end. It makes Resident Evil look like cinematic glory. Hell, even the Double Dragon movie seems multi-Oscar worthy in comparison to this junk. The only one who comes out of this with his dignity still intact is Jurgen Prochnow. He could have just taken his money and ran but he tries his best with the awful script and brings a tiny bit of pathos to his character. The rest of the cast suck I'm afraid. The characters are idiots and deserve to die.

Plus, if you cut out the swearing and pointless nudity, I see no reason why this film cannot be shown on Saturday morning TV. It's not frightening in the slightest. Pirates of the Caribbean is more scary than the skeletal bad guys in this film. And where did all those bad guys come from anyway? There were only a few people on the island to begin with. I guess this justifies the reason they chose to reuse footage over and over. I kid you not, you'll see the same zombie die a dozen times.

Who's ultimately to blame for that scandalous waste of celluloid? None other than director Uwe Boll. His control over the movie is non-existent. You can clearly the see actors have no idea what they should be doing and that the zombies aren't really taking it all seriously. The actors seem like they're reading off cue cards as they constantly pause in the middle of long sentences and carry on talking as soon as they see the next card. It all feels very unnatural.

Plus the film is shot like a two-part mini-series. I have indeed seen better TV productions. And don't get me started on the editing. The film is an incoherent babble with thousands upon thousands of pointless shots and dozens of meaningless camera pans. No real skill or talent was put into making this at all. It truly baffles and boggles the mind how movies this unfathomably bad can get made and George A. Romero can't even get anyone to take his calls. House of the Dead makes some idiotic reference to Romero in a lazy attempt to be 'post-modern' but it only irritates that they think THIS is in the same league as a REAL zombie movie.

For what it's worth, the 1.85:1 anamorphic picture looks great and the Dolby 5.1 soundtrack is clean but very unimpressive and only serves to pronounce the heavily over-used ADR even more. The DVD comes with extras but why torture yourself. Isn't this review warning enough? Stay away! You are all doomed I tell you! Doomed! Doomed!!!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The WORST zombie movie ever made.0 stars, December 23, 2004

A Kid's Review

This review is from: House of the Dead (DVD)

This terrible movie is so poorly made that it goes down in cinema history as the WORST zombie movie ever made.The plot(if there was one) was a bunch of teens visiting an island and battling zombies.This is a very stupid,horrible time-waster.

Here's the reason this movie is so terrible
1.The zombie's makeup,it looks like toilet paper and ketchup(the fake blood at Wal Mart looks state-of-the-art compared to this)

2.The acting,it is so atrocious, you'll wish these amateurish actors/actreses would die off soon.

3.The slow-motion scenes:This really messed up the movie,Like the scene were all the teens were fighting and the scene was slow-motion was this The Matrix part 4 or something.

4.The plot:The plot and storyline was so badly written that a little kid could write a better script with a piece of toilet paper.

5.The editing:Some of the worst editing ever.Scenes from the video game should up in quick flashes and the editors didn't edit the movie well.

and the casting:Truly horrible cast especially the captain from DAS BOOT.What a shame.

Don't ever buy,rent,or steal this movie.Burning every copy of this montrosity would help the world.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Award for WORST MOVIE of all time, March 7, 2006

By 

Duxman "Dux" (Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: House of the Dead (DVD)

Being big zombie fans, my girlfriend and I walked into this movie with high expectations. Mistake #1 - especially since this is directed by Uwe "best director ever" Boll. This movie which encompasses scenes from the video game of characters spinning around to die and the screen turning red - is quite possibly the worst movie of all time.

In fact, it has been 10 years since I walked out of a movie theatre and we did walk out of this pile of garbage. I will - the memory could be erased from my mind. Do not waste your time. Boycott all of Uwe's movies before its too late. Run, run fast from this DVD. The sequel is decent.