Dr. Moreau's House of Pain
*
DVD
Directed by
Charles Band
Written by
Earl Kenton
Cast
Peter Donald Badalamenti II .... Gallagher
John Patrick Jordan .... Eric Carson
Lorielle New .... Alliana
Steve Quimby .... Johnny Q
unrated
72 mins
Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to be afraid. Be very afraid.
Not
because of the scary content you're about to see - if you're dumb
enough to rent you a copy of "Dr Moreau's House of Pain" - but because
of how magnificently puerile and lousy the content is.
The only thing scary about "Dr Moreau's House of Pain" is that it got made in the first place.
So
what we have here is the story of a young man with a rare blood
disease. And when that young man heads out to get that rare blood
disease cured by a fellow named Dr Moreau, he goes missing.
His
brother sets out in search of our diseased young man, and what he finds
defies explanation - an island populated solely by half-human,
half-animal beings called "manimals", and their deranged genius
creator, Dr Moreau.
Who am I kidding? This doesn't defy
explanation. This no more defies explanation than the number of fingers
on our right hand. It says right on the back of the box that this is
some kind of sequel to H.G. Wells' classic literary work: "The Island
of Doctor Moreau", Which, frankly, scares me - and I'll tell you why
shortly.
So then the brother, Eric, manages to find that his
brother has become a manimal himself, and thus convinces the other
manimals to rise up against Moreau and rejoin civilzation.
Which is a pathologically stupid idea anyway. Where, exactly, will they go - the suburbs? I can just see that one:
"Hey,
honey...you see the new family that moved in across the street? I swear
the husband looks like a pig and the children have been digging in our
garbage for the last three hours. They killed a raccoon that was going
after it about fifteen minutes ago."
So as to why this scares me
green, in case you haven't been reading the above captions I add in, or
you haven't seen them yet, this has been directed by Charles Band.
Long-time horrorphiles will know right away, Charles Band is the man
responsible for a goodish chunk of Full Moon Entertainment's
direct-to-video library, among them the entire Puppet Master series,
Tomb of Terror, Birth Rite, and a horde of others on display here for
the truly obsessed among you:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0023929/
You're
going to put a classic work of literature, from H.G. Wells no less, the
father of modern American science fiction, in the hands of a man whose
primary responsibility for the last thirty odd years has been
direct-to-video titles that virtually nobody has ever heard of.
Why am I forced to think that this can't possibly end well?
This
is like putting a Ferrari in the hands of a Hyundai repairman. This is
roughly akin to having a Piper Cub pilot fly an SR-71 Blackbird. Just
because he can work a calculator, he is not qualified as a quantum
physicist. It just doesn't WORK.
And it really doesn't work
well. The first ten minutes watch like a poorly done forties detective
picture, complete with lines like "dame," "gumshoe," and "clam up." In
fact, the more you watch, the more it looks like Dick Tracy with more
blood, primary colors and DeSotos and all.
And of course, it's
not a Charles Band picture until an unknown actress removes her top.
Charles covers this within the first seven minutes.
The ending
packs more blood, violence and disgusting things than you thought could
be packed into a measly five minutes of film. There's even a small but
not too unexpected surprise waiting.
The special features include a mere pair of trailers for Dr Moreau's House of Pain and Puppet Master: The Legacy.
All
in all, Dr Moreau's House of Pain is indeed what you'd expect from the
truly brainless idea of giving the keys of major literary fiction to a
Z-grade hack who wouldn't know quality cinema if it crawled up his pant
leg and started licking him.
Tags:
Video Film House of Pain 
