When a director is as widely reviled as Uwe Boll, you expect his filmography to be made up of howlingly hilarious clunkers that justify his reputation as the German Ed Wood, but House Of The Dead is the only true good bad movie on his resume. According to Dr Stephen Hawking, a films tackiness can be measured by how long it takes the women to go skinny-dipping, something Boll accomplishes in the first ten minutes, which rates 8/10 (gloriously tacky) on the Hawking-o-meter. Then he has to ruin everything by introducing a group of pinheads who not only think nothing of attending a rave on Isla Del Morte (thats Death Island in case you dont speak Mexican), but also hire Clint Howards hook-handed sailor and Jurgen Prochnows Captain (named Kirk) to take them there. Fortunately, Howards fears turn out to be well-founded and our apathetic airheads are eventually despatched one by one in a series of cheesy bullet time sequences, but by then youll have given up on the story and the characters and started enjoying it for the stupid situations and daffy dialogue. What other horror movies are so bad they're stupidly funny? Shout out any we missed down in the comments.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
