Chain Reaction (2006)

Very Cool!!!

good back-story, and good acting

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Olaf Ittenbach slowly but surely succeeds in making every movie he makes look better and better. For a low budget direct-to-DVD flick, the cinematography of "House Of Blood" (aka "Chain Reaction") looks mighty good. Excellent and gory splatter effects too (but sadly they are mostly displayed in only two main grotesque fighting sequences). The story, on the other hand is pretty damn thin and takes itself a bit too serious for this type of film. Still, it kept my attention and splatterfans will be pleased too. Americans might be careful renting this one, because the version currently available in mainstream videostores is heavily cut. They'll be missing out on some juicy stuff. Just keep making 'em, Ittenbach, I'll be watching them. -- PS: Since this comment dates back to 2007, I've seen Ittenbach's "Dard Divorce" in the meantime already. I liked "House Of Blood" a bit better.

This is one of the most unintentionally funny movies I have ever seen. The script defies logic and the acting is the worst I have seen in quite some time. I am still scratching my head and trying to figure out what they really wanted to do with this movie besides just be a really bad gore movie. Somehow a dead crow falls and hits a rock which rolls and down a hill and hits a doctors windshield which makes him crash into a bus transporting prisoners. The prisoners take him hostage and set out through the woods. Every at this point has heavy European accents and the background is obviously set around Germany, yet we are told that we are in Seattle! Okay, I guess? Well from there they walk into a fog and come out and there is an old cottage filled with people straight out of the 1700s. They speak like an olden time Yoda. We soon find out that these people are like vampires but look more like a a hairless werewolf/vampire hybrid if that makes sense. We have the standard slaughter scene of everyone but the doctor and this one female member of the tribe who has her inner vampire under control and helps him escape.The cops catch up to the doctor and take him into custody. He has all the blood of the victims on his shoes but they can't find the house, so of course they are going to send him to jail. All the while we keep getting these black and white flashbacks of the doctor as a kid trading a toy clown to the female from the cottage for a cross that she gives him with a dog laying in between them.Now we are in yet another bus transporting criminals. One of the men setting in the back of the bus says one of the funniest, unintentional gut busters of the year. We tries to pull off a thick southern accent and says "ahhh you don't wanna talk to Georgy Porgy". I laughed so hard that I had to pause the movie for at least 20 minutes.The bus makes it to the same stretch of road when, you guessed it, another dead crow falls, hits another rock which rolls that spooks a deer into running out in front of a car and she hits the bus. Rinse and repeat. Now we have the doctor yet again in the woods with more convicts heading straight for the cottage again. In one of the oddest scenes in a movie, when they reach the cottage one of the convicts says I can see it all now and we see his thoughts in which he is drinking, raping women, throwing money around and smoking cigars. After this scene the doctor says "no it will go more like this" and we see his thought process of them all getting slaughtered. So did he read the guys mind or what? Anyways, the group enters the cabin, we have a very weird scene of the doctor removing a bullet from one of the convicts scrotum. What makes this scene weird is there is twangy country music playing the whole time that really does not fit the moment.Once the monsters make it there we have the typical slaughter scene, with one exception that really left me perplexed. Everything in this house is from the 1700s, yet one of the convicts just casually bends down and picks up and chainsaw which starts with one pull of the string and starts sawing people. So this family lives like the 1700's, does everything that way, all their tools is that way, yet they have a gas powered chainsaw? Now were at the ending in which the doctor and the girl escapes. They make it to the road in which the doctor for some reason stands in the middle of the road with his eyes closed until, you guessed it, he is hit by a car which causes another bus crash. Only this time the girl is hit also and when she opens her eyes she is one of the monsters now. *sigh* I guess this means a sequel is unfortunately in the works. We cut to another black and white scene of the doctor full grown talking to the girl with the dog still between them and he thanks her.Wonder if the state ever decided to check into this one stretch of road and see why so many bus crashes happen there and lose so many criminals there?

There's a cabin in the middle of the woods, far from modern civilization, inhabited by a group of unusual people who speak Old English and become demonically possessed savages with a craving for "anything with blood in it." Poor Dr. Douglas Madsen(Christopher Kriesa), traveling to pick up medical equipment, happens to come across a bus wreck carrying evil inmates who have eliminated the security assigned to keep them detained. Forced against his will, Doug will have to follow the four inmates into the woods as they head for the Canadian border only to find the cabin which occupies the strange folk who warn them repeatedly to flee before the turning occurs. What commences is a slaughter, but thanks to one of the group, a young lady named Alice(Martina Ittenbach), Doug escapes. When he tries to explain to a detective(Jürgen Prochnow)what happened to him, he isn't believed and must face the idea of prison. He's the only one who came out alive with four missing inmates and dead security guards..Doug seems to be in a bit of trouble. Well, prison might be better than what awaits him. Traveling in a bus with other inmates, they drive through a female traveler, out of her car to see about a deer she hit, causing an eerily similar wreck to the one that occurred at the start of the film. A feeling of deja vu for Doug and, as before, another group of inmates will force the doc to accompany them into the woods, with a goal of heading north..just guess what happens.Forget the story-line, director Olaf Ittenbach's horror tale is mostly a German splatter-fest..pure unadulterated gore movie, loaded with outrageous violence. I mean the religious freaks in this house turn back flips using the wall as a springboard for petesake! I didn't know if they were supposed to be a relic from another time, or luchadores needing a wrestling ring. You get an arm amputation, eyeballs pried away from a victim's face as it's being ripped apart, heads exploding(..including one nifty scene where a demonically possessed savage's face forms back together from it's shredded remains)from shot-gun explosions, a face being stabbed with a spate, lots of blood splatter from bullet riddled bodies(..it appears that A LOT of squibs were used in this movie), guts being pulled from bellies, etc. The Doc even gets to remove shrapenal from an inmate's nut-sack, for crying out loud. There's a nice attempt, straightly executed, at how fate, or a divine force, can guide certain people to a specific fate. The undesirables from prison who often find themselves supposedly heading north only to meet an ominous fog within the woods which leads them to this cabin housing God's chosen to feed on their flesh. I guess that was what this crazy movie was attempting to accomplish. I just laughed this aspect off and rather enjoyed the battles between inmates and demon-baddies. Simon Newby really lays it on thick as the first heavy, Arthur, spending his time on screen barking orders and threatening dire consequences towards anyone crossing him. Doug gets treated like dirt the entire running time of the film. First he's the constant source of bullying, given little chance to survive, only remaining so because of the assistance Arthur's brother, Spence(Luca Maric)needs with a torn arm with a bullet wedged causing an artery to bleed badly. Then later, Doug must deal with a quiet psychopath, Paul Anderson(Dan van Husen), who likes to wax poetic, often quoting from books and writings from popular writers. I found van Husen amusing as Anderson, the kind of bloke who loves to hear himself talk and has a superiority complex..he informs Doug that he'll remain alive as long as he pleases Anderson's intellect. You really can't give much thought to things that often matter in movies..a decent storyline and acting. These departments in "House of Blood" are missing. I will say this..Olaf Ittenbach has some style, but his attempts at messing with the chronology in the story-line(..going back and forth in time, often in the case of Doug, such as his interrogation scenes tied in with the second act and how events unfold in Doug's life and how the whole escape of the inmates came to be), I felt were unnecessary. The Old English will probably have many viewers trying to hold back giggles. Thee and thus, it becomes quite tiresome. And the opening actors who play the inmates Doug must deal with overact, often blurting profane lines with each other, often shouting, and always quite annoying...they're like rejects from an episode of HBO's OZ. They're a source of amusment as well as they really try hard to elicit evil by heightening their voices towards each other. Perhaps with half-decent material, Olaf might have potential.

the only reason why I'm giving this movie a 4 out of 10 is because there are some really good car crash effects, and you have to admit that for a low budget movie the effects in it are pretty descent, but plot is not a strong on this one,story either and the performance of the actors is really really bad, no true feelings, lack of emotion, and a lot of w.t.f scenes, this is a pretty disposable film, there are a million of them, better played, more effects, better photography, not so absurd choreography, etc... but the weakest link in this film i have to say and agree with many of you guys, are the dialogues, they are not firm, they lack of credibility and overall its too long for a movie that crazy! see it...if you dare!