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.
In this action thriller based on an early story by Stephen King, Los Angeles in the year 2017 has become a police state in the wake of the global economy's total collapse. All forms of entertainment are government controlled, and the most popular show on television is an elaborate game show in which convicted criminals are given a chance to escape by running through a gauntlet of brutal killers known as Stalkers. Anyone who survives is given their freedom and a condominium in Hawaii, so when a wrongly accused citizen (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is chosen as a contestant, all hell breaks loose. Cheesy sets and a slimy role for game-show host Richard Dawson make this violent mess of mayhem a candidate for guilty pleasure; it is the kind of movie that truly devoted Arnold fans will want to watch more than once. And check those credits--choreography by Paula Abdul!