6. BULLET TIME OF THE DEAD
From: House of the Dead (2003)
Above: Nope, not here
So, yeah, the House of the Dead movie – if you didn’t already know – is about a bunch of kids who go to an island near Vancouver for a rave sponsored by Sega.
Above: Actually it’s a pretty tiny rave
All of them are then devoured by zombies, except for a core group of survivors who, after spending the movie cowering in fear, suddenly develop expert firearms proficiency and dive headlong into a series of stupid, Matrix-wannabe combat stunts. Because, you know, that’s what fans expect to see from a zombie movie.
It’s insipid, horrible and irredeemably hokey. What’s worse, it’s long, and it’s only made longer by a sequence in which one of the characters, after watching another character get mauled by zombies, has a fast-forward flashback of the entire scene we just watched.
Above: DID NOT NEED TO SEE AGAIN THANK YOU
Oh, and sequences from the House of the Dead games are liberally spliced in, possibly to add “context” and be “total bullshit.”
Above: Actual movie still
We’re tired of talking about this thing now. Just watch it already, provided you’ve got seven minutes and nothing better to do:
5. ZOMBIE DOG FACE KICK
From: Resident Evil (2002)
Really, you didn’t even need to sit through Resident Evil to know about this one – it was burned into everyone’s mind the second it showed up in the trailers. The idea of someone in the Resident Evil universe delivering a flying kick to a zombie dog’s face is so ridiculous (or at least it was, prior to RE4) that it instantly became the image most readily associated with the movie.
But first, a bit of context: the Resident Evil movie centers around Alice (Milla Jovovich) who’s trying to escape the underground Umbrella lab from the first game along with some friends, several of whom wind up like this:
Above: Ewwwwww
Later, alone, Alice meets several of these handsome chaps:
After emptying her gun into the faces of the zombie dog pack, she runs out of ammo and discovers that there’s one dog left standing. Not knowing what else to do, her T-virus-enhanced superpowers take hold and she does the only thing that makes sense: she kicks the dog in the head, which sends it flying through a window.
Above: BAM
You can see it in action below:
4. ANIMALITY!
From: Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)
When you can’t get Christopher Lambert to come back for the sequel to your relatively successful videogame movie, that’s a clear sign that something’s very, very wrong. But the producers of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation soldiered on anyway, creating a cheap-looking Z-movie that enraged fans and was simply ignored by everyone else.
Above: Seriously, they got James Remar instead
However, once we’d put aside our fan-rage (only took us about 10 years), we began to appreciate Annihilation for the camp masterpiece it is. Everything in this movie is either unintentionally silly, over-the-top stupid or completely unnecessary, from the way Sub-Zero makes his grand entrance…
Above: I CAN FLY PEW PEW
… to everyone’s preferred method of navigating short distances…
Above: Why walk when you can somersault?
… to the way Shao Kahn looks:
Above: “DADDY I CONQUERED A EARTH!”
Easily the dumbest scene, however, comes near the end, when Shao Kahn (Brian Thompson) is beating Liu Kang (Robin Shou) like a little schoolgirl.
Suddenly, Liu Kang’s course of action becomes clear: HE HAS TO TURN INTO A REALLY SHITTY CG EFFECT.
Above: Oooooooooooooooookay
There’s only one really appropriate response to this, but Shao Kahn apparently came prepared:
Above: OH IT’S ON NOW
Cue a really dark, boring battle between two awful CG automatons, which ends at the exact moment the movie’s special-effects budget does.
Above: RARRRR BLARRRRR
So, yeah. We kind of liked the Animalities better when Liu Kang just turned into a Chinese dragon and bit a guy in half. But then, that wasn’t this jaw-droppingly awful:
