Thursday, October 25, 2012

31 Days of Dracula | Richard Roxburgh (2004)



Probably the less said about Van Helsing the better. It should have been SO good. Hugh Jackman as a young Van Helsing teams up with Kate Beckinsale to fight all the classic monsters...

Actually, it's probably that last part where it went wrong. It doesn't make a lot of sense to have Van Helsing fight Dracula before Dracula. Maybe if they'd stuck to one monster - Frankenstein's for instance - it would have been easier to keep under control. Save werewolves for the sequel, then move on to a mummy or something. That would have been awesome.

But no, they wanted it all, including Dracula and his teenage-girl haircut. Disappointing.

7 comments:

Erik Johnson Illustrator said...

This movie was a disappointment and a half , capitalizing on the worst aspects of blockbuster action movies. Its pitch of "James Bond in Translyvania" should have awesome, but it was hindered by style over substance in regards to action scenes and excessive indulgence of CG.

The acting on Dracula was certainly bad, and looking at his hair, I can help me think he's try to dress up as Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction

Ken O said...

I love Van Helsing...because we got all those beautiful Classic Universal Monster DVD Box Sets to promote that shiny turd of a movie.

Michael May said...

@Ken: Touché!

@Erik: I tried to like the movie, but ultimately checked out when they CGIed Van Helsing jumping from carriage to racing horses. I know that's not an easy stunt, but it's such an old one that there's no excuse for not doing it with practical effects. Overuse of CGI is my major beef with Stephen Sommers' Mummy films too.

Wings1295 said...

I haven't seen the movie, and now I am not sure I want to!

Michael May said...

You don't want to. It's not even So Bad It's Good.

Erik Johnson Illustrator said...

You're not kidding about Sommers and going overboard with CG. I remember reading the introduction he wrote for a book of photos of the Universal Monsters were he described his filmmaking process as "Thats too little CG, Now thats too much, now thats just right!"

Seems a touch unprofessional, and a waste of studio funding to scale back from "too much", I'd hate to see that. No sign of any effects work in his own background, so it comes off like he really thinks "computer effects, thats what makes a movie good!"

Michael May said...

That explains so much. :)

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