.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

Films based on video games have not been too successful at the local multiplex. Witness the colossal embarrassment of Super Mario Brothers starring Bob Hoskins, Street Fighter with Jean Claude Van (-who gives a-) Damme and even Resident Evil, which despite generating a sequel, still only squeaked out a marginal profit. With all these bombs originating from the coin slotted monster machines in plazas and pool halls, what were the producers thinking when trying to adapt the popular House of the Dead to the big screen?

It took me all of 14 minutes to realize that there was no 'thinking' at all.

House of the Dead is a below average, non-original horror film. Just how unoriginal? Well, let's go through the cheap horror film handbook and make sure we have all our clichés in order: A bunch of sexed up 20-somethings. Check. A location cut off from the rest of the world. Check. A bunch of zombies that attack for no apparent motive. Check. A grizzled old man with a secret, mad scientist, a smart-ass with a video camera, and an arsenal that just happens to be at our victims disposal. Check, check, check and check.

All this results in House of the Dead being one of the worst movies of the year, and that is maybe being kind. On top of the atrocious acting capabilities of the actors and the laughable dialogue, House of the Dead offers nothing new, fresh or remotely entertaining. The story surrounding youths being attacked by the resurrected ghouls has been done to death in bad, but infinitely better films, like The Evil Dead , Return of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead .

Usually, when I view a film that is this bad, I try to find someone to blame, but in the case of House of the Dead , there are just too many guilty parties to point fingers. Sure, I could blame the studio for giving a director (Uwe Boll) whose best effort so far was the gawd-awful Sanctimony starring Casper Van Diem the helm. I could blame the writers who thought it might be fun to have a boat captain named "Captain Kirk" (not surprising since Dave Parkers only other credit was the Star Trek spoofing Free Enterprise ), and enriched us with such a catchy tagline as 'The Dead Walk.You Run'.

But ultimately the person to blame the most is myself. I continue to either visit the theatre of pay for rentals of these terrible attempts that I only add dollars to the overall movie's gross and that only encourages them to make more of this crap. When will I learn.