Van Helsing
Posted by 7th on July 30, 2004

If there's one thing I really dig, it's vampire flicks. I've loved 'em since, at the tender age of three, I sat at my aunt's house and watched the ORIGINAL TV movie version of Stephen King's Salem's Lot. Let me give you an idea of how bad it is.

I thought Love At First Bite was funny, and was excited to hear recently that a sequel has gone into pre-production.

I thought Buffy The Vampire Slayer was a GOOD movie (Paul Reuben's endless death scene is one of my all-time favorite movie moments... plus it reminds me of Peter's extended falling scene in the Pawtucket Pat episode of Family Guy.)

Lost Boys is on my list of 100 most favorite films (even though it was directed by Joel Schumacher, who also cursed the world with the bastard that is Batman and Robin... and is a fag...)

I loved Dracula: Dead and Loving It. I loved Las Vampiros Lesbos. I loved Vampyres (and so did Playboy readers.) Hell, I even have a real atrociously bad low budget film from China called Thunder Ninja Kids that has Kabuki-looking vampires that hop everywhere, and I even find it mildly amusing.

So imagine my elation when I saw the previews for Van Helsing. I will be honest and say I had some reservations when I found out it was written and directed by Stephen Sommers, the (ahem) mastermind behind the Mummy series. But it had Hugh Jackman in it, who was better than average in the X-Men films (though he was oustaged by Halle Berry's tittahs in Swordfish) so I thought it would be worth at least a cursory glance. After having sat through it, I'd have to rate it somehwere between an enhhh and the BAAAARF text box from River City Ransom...

Van Helsing is a "re-imagining" of the character of Abraham Van Helsing, the old professor of medicine who has fought Dracula in hundreds of films, mostly made by Hammer and starring Peter Cushing in the role of the old but saavy vampire hunter. He was last played (to great effect) by Sir Anthony Hopkins in Bram Stoker's Dracula, which (here's a shocker) is one of my favorite Coppola films. Leave it to someone like Sommers to take a character with such a rich heritage, all the way back to Stoker's novel, and shit all over it.

This film concerns one Gabriel Van Helsing. Gabriel was found unconscious and naked on the steps of the Vatican. He has no memory of who he is or how he got there. But as he lives under the care of the ROman Catholic Church, he displays an uncanny knack for killing the ungodliest of creatures. When we first see him, he is in Paris, chasing after Mr. Hyde. Even though Mr. Hyde is completely CGI here, he still doesn't look as good as the live action Hyde from Last year's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (though it's obvious that Hyde's designers for Van Helsing saw that movie...) So Van Helsing kills Hyde, then upon his return to the Vatican, is sent on a mission to Transylvania, where he meets Kate Beckensale, here on her second vamp outing, having played the vampire Princess in last year's Vampire/Matrix hybrid Underworld (which gave me goth wood.)

It seems she and her brother are members of a family who have fought Dracula for centuries (Simon Belmont, if you're out there, conact your lawyer!) After her brother is unceremoniously turned into a werewolf, she seeks Van Helsing's help to bring Dracula down.

Dracula, meanwhile, has bigger fish to fry. It seems that, years ago, Dracky paid one Victor Frankenstein to create a monster, a monster made with one purpose in mind... to act as the main cog in a machine that would birth a legion of little gremlin-like vampire smurfs, so Dracula can rule the world! Or something.

At any rate, the local villagers took after Frankie and his creation, just as they did at the end of the classic Boris Karloff film. And just as in that film, the monster flees to a windmill, which the villagers promptly set ablaze. The monster falls through the burning wood to his death... or so we're lead to believe. As it turns out, he fell through the floor of the burning windmill into an underground cave, and has hidden there ever since, knowing that if Dracula discovers his survival, he can be used to bring Hell on earth.

As you can see, Sommers has been a busy little monkey making this project... all his own, for better or worse.

So Dracula wants to birth millions of these stupid little vampy smurfs, who gestate in coccons that hang from the rafters of his castle, and look like the Jolly Green Giant blew his nose all over the inner passageways. I swear, they look like five foot long snotty chair clingers. Apparently, we're expected to believe that these humungous globs of goop came from the vaginas of Dracula's three brides. I tell ya, if I ran into a woman who had festoons like these hanging from her drawers, getting a little would be the last thing on my mind.

These cocoons must be opened by a massive dose of electricity, which for some reason must be siphoned through the monster's frame before being properly modulated... Perhaps Dracula has alternating current, and Frankie is the DC adaptor. At any rate, let's think on this for a moment. If Drackie succeeded in spreading these diminutive vermin across the Earth, what would be left for he and his wives to eat, eh? His kids would eat him out of house and home! And in his case, sending them to college wouldn't accomplish a DAMN thing.

So while all this is going on, Van Helsing is slowing unraveling the clues with the help of his comic relief "not quite a monk" side kick, who is also the designer for all of Van Helsing's admittedly cool weaponry. Through means too exhausting to describe, Van Helsing learns that he is what is known as "The Left Hand Of God," which basically means he's a bad mother fucker who's not to be messed with. He also learns that he is over 400 years old, and is partly responsible for Dracula becoming the monster he's...well... become. Lastly, he discovers that, while stakes and such will kill everyday vampires, Dracula can only be killed by a werewolf... So guess who just happens to get bitten halfway through the movie?

The first time I watched this movie, I promised myself that I'd shut off the logic center of my brain and just enjoy it for the roller coaster ride it was filmed to be. And for the most part, I succeeded. And then a friend of mine pipes in and points out a rather glaring error in logic that, I must admit, escaped my notice on the first viewing. So I procured a copy of the film off the internet (what, you thought I was gonna pay to see it again?) and sure as the world, he was right.

I won't go into details on it, but will just say this. In the "bridge" scene where everyone seems to be flying around on cables, the monster's at one point hanging some sixty feet beneath the bridge. He looks up at the window where Beckensale is locked in mortal combat with the last remaining vamp bride, which is some sixty feet ABOVE the bridge. Somehow, he manages to swing upwards from a dead hang, and then crashes through the window at a downward angle, as if he'd swung down from a higher ledge or window. Laws of physics be damned!

But even this I can forget. After all, even Robin Crusoe himself stripped naked, swam out to his ship, and then filled his pockets with as much as he could carry. No, what upsets me most is the real motivation, the real inspiration, for this film, and it sure as hell wasn't Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff, or any one of a number of cheesy schlock films that are regarded as classics simply because of their age. No, this film can be most directly attributed to much more recent film, a film that came out in Japan around 1985 or so... and for some reason, none of the other reviews I've read on Van Helsing have caught it. The film, of course, is Vampire Hunter D.

On the DVD release of the Van Helsing animated short is a documentary about the making of Van Helsing. In it, Sommers expounds on his great love and affection for the character of Van Helsing (which he literally rapes, pun intended) and the monster movies that made him and his arch nemesis famous. But he never mentions Vampire Hunter D. Not once, the rat bastard. But for anyone who has actually SEEN Vampire Hunter D, the resemblance is obvious. You don't even have to watch the damn movie... just look at the posters, will ya?

Same hat... Same clothes... same profession... same country... same villains... The only differences are the time period (D takes place in the future) and the character's backgrounds (Van Helsing is the Left Hand of God, and D is a vampele, half human, half suckhead... and he has a talking face in his left palm... which would be a dream come true if you ask me... you could jerk off and give yourself head at the same time, what's not to love?)

The fact that Sommers took obvious, obvious inspiration from the D films (the sequel was released not too long ago) cannot be brought into question. Just watch the films. It speaks for itself. Had he simply come out and said he was a fan of the films and wanted to pay homage to their art, their genius... their shitty English dubbing... then perhaps I'd have an easier time swallowing it... As it stands, it would take an ocean of beer to get this shitburger halfway down my throat... Watch it only to compare with its superior, Vampire Hunter D.

-=7th=-