| Dracula 2000 Released: 2000 (Duh!) MPAA Rating: R Genre: Vampire Nuts And Bolts: Wes Craven, Dracula, New Orleans…and the most bizarre twist you will ever find concerning the most famous vampire of all time. Watch if you dare, bitches! Summary: The movie opens with a teaser flashback of the classic voyage of the Demeter from the original Dracula story. We see the passenger ship sailing towards England. Rats scurry about all over the place and the entire crew is dead. The Captain is tied to the steering wheel of the boat. He's pretty much fucked as well. The boat drifts into a British port, and we see beast like footprints leaving the boat onto the beach. A shadowy figure emerges onto the fog-shrouded streets of London. If you don't know how the rest of the story pans out, then I suggest renting any number of classic Dracula flicks. So endeth the flashback. The story then continues at Carfax Abbey, which is now part of some antiquities mall along the river. Matthew Van Helsing (Christopher Plummer), grandson of Abraham Van Helsing operates the dealership. Van Helsing's assistant is an eager young pup named Simon Sheppard. He also has a dealer working for him named Solina. Now Solina is actually playing both sides of the field here. She only took the job at Carfax so she could help map out a plan to break into a highly secured hidden vault in the basement of the building. She's working in league with the shop's architect Marcus (Omar Epps) as well as few other loose screws named Eddie, Nightshade, Dax, Trick and Charlie. As the shop closes for the evening, Van Helsing retreats to his private study to play with some leeches. He keeps them in little glass jars and injects himself with blood taken from their bodies. His arm is covered with purple bruises and gross veins running up and down the length of it. While the little druggie gets his jollies off with the leech blood, Solina and her pals sneak into the lower levels of the shop. They break into a vault and find a hidden chamber. Inside is a large silver coffin with crosses attached to the lid. Charlie tries to remove the lid to the coffin and this triggers a booby trap. A row of spikes slams down on him impaling him to the floor. Another iron wall of spikes likewise swings down and nails Dax. The rest of the crew isn't ready to fuck about with any more surprises, so they use some dynamite to blow up the side of the wall. They push the sealed coffin into the river and then make their escape. Upon hearing the explosion, Van Helsing puts down his dope needles and rushes to see what's up. He realizes that the thieves have stolen the body of his dealer, Count Dracula and he makes plans to track them down. Solina and the others hijack and airplane and begin their journey back to the United States. Nightshade is told to find a way to break the seal on the coffin. He does so, but manages to slice his hand open with the crowbar. The blood drips down into the coffin and Dracula is revived and ready to go. He quickly kills everyone on the plane and turns them into vampires. He then forces the pilot to take the plane to New Orleans, Louisiana. A few days later, the plane carrying the thieves is found in a swamp near Clarke, Louisiana. News reporter Valerie Sharpe records the spectacle and reveals how the pilot had been tied to the yoke of the plane with cables and metal piping. As her cameraman zooms in on her tits, Dracula rises from the swamp waters and kills Valerie and the cameraman. He turns Valerie and BOTH of her tits into vampires. While all this is going on, its time to meet the target of Dracula's affections. Mary Heller works at Virgin Records with her friend Lucy Westerman. Mary is a kookie sort of kid and she is plagued by bizarre nightmares of a sharp-dressed man (queue the ZZ Top music). The man of her dreams is of course Dracula, and through her visions she becomes privy to the events of the following week on the airplane. But Mary doesn't know who this bloke is, or why she has dreams about him. Matthew Van Helsing arrives in America and goes to an emptied auditorium in Clarke where the bodies from the crash are being kept. Not five minutes later, Van Helsing's assistant Simon Sheppard enters the room. Simon tracked his boss's route through a friend he has at the customs office. Van Helsing is forced to reveal his true origin to Simon. He is not really the grandson of Abraham Van Helsing, as Simon had believed. In fact, he is the original Van Helsing kept alive by daily injections of vampire blood, which he obtains by way of leeches. Although he has no other vampiric properties, Van Helsing is about 100-years older than he should be. In 1897, he and his friends Jack Seward, Quincy Morris and Jonathan Harker captured Dracula within an iron cage in Carfax Abbey. Van Helsing soon discovered that Dracula CANNOT be killed - ever. So instead, he bought Carfax and constructed an elaborate prison for the dead vamp. He has been keeping vigil over him, searching for a way to end his blood-sucking existence for the past century. After the old man bores the shit out of Simon with his long-winded story, the dead bodies from the crash rise from their shrouds. Simon kills Nightshade and spears Solina to a wall. He also squares off against Marcus driving a knife through his eye. Van Helsing manages to kill Eddie. He notices that Simon is preparing to cut off Solina's head, but warns him that they don't have time to finish her off because the police are coming. Dracula meanwhile is exploring the decadence of New Orleans. We discover that he is searching for Mary Heller. The reason he wants to find her is because she is the biological daughter of Abraham Van Helsing. But since she was conceived during a time when Abe was injecting himself with vampire blood, Dracula assumes that he has as much paternal rights as Van Helsing does. In fact, it was this blood tie between the two that enabled Dracula to know that she was living in New Orleans. Meanwhile, Solina is arrested and taken down to the parish police station. They throw her in an interrogation room and the cops try to talk to her through a sheet of two-way glass. Solina shatters the glass and pulls one of the cops into the interrogation room. Dracula appears in the booth and kills a police psychiatrist that had been witnessing the affair. Dracula sends Solina away and goes to Virgin Records to check out the new Snoop Dog CD. There he meets Lucy. Lucy spills all over herself at the sight of the macho vamp and invites him back to her place. Dracula isn't really interested in her. He would much rather chomp down on Mary. But it's written in the vampire rulebook subsection B that Dracula must ALWAYS drink the blood of any woman he finds whose name is Lucy. So they go to the apartment shared by Mary and Lucy. The house actually used to belong to Mary's mother. Mary isn't home, so Drac figures that this would be as good a time as any to fuck Lucy's brains out. Needless to say, he turns her into a vampire as well. Simon on the other hand manages to find Mary right outside the back lot of Virgin Records. He tells her that he is with her father and that he has something important to tell her. Before he can reveal anything though, Marcus appears. Marcus is still pissed off over the loss of his eye and the two start fighting. Marcus kicks a metal trash bin into Simon slamming against the side of a van. But Simon manages to get the upper hand and cuts Marcus' head off. The head flies off landing in a dumpster. He then informs Mary of all the crazy shit that I've just described to you. Van Helsing, not realizing that Simon has found his daughter, goes to Mary's house in search of her. He finds Dracula there waiting for him. Dracula's pretty pissed off that Van Helsing had the audacity to produce a child using his blood. So he chucks the old man against a full-length mirror and then sicks his vampire bitches on him (Valerie, Solina and now Lucy). Now I have often fantasized about what it would be like to be sucked off by three chicks at once, but this is certainly not the way that I would approach the scenario. The three women kill Van Helsing and then impale with a broken bedpost. Dracula eventually finds Mary and he takes her to the roof of some tall building overlooking the various Mardi Gras parades below. On the top of the building is a really gaudy looking cross-shaped neon sign with a picture of Jesus painted on it. While Dracula is putting the moves on Mary, Simon is downstairs trying to get to her. But he has to fight through Dracula's busty bitch brigade first. SPOILER WARNING: DRACULA'S TRUE ORIGIN WILL NOW BE REVEALED! Dracula reveals the reason why he can never be truly killed. Not only is he Vlad the Impaler, the infamous 15th century Romanian prince that we've all come to know and love; but he is also that backstabbing Jew, Judas Iscariot. For those who are biblically challenged, Judas is the guy who betrayed Jesus Christ after the last supper and sold his ass out to the Pharisees thus ending in Jesus' crucifixion. He was hung soon after, and apparently God was so pissed off that he decided to curse Judas even more by making him the world's first vampire. After rattling all this shit off to Mary, Dracula munches down on her and turns her into a vampire. Simon meanwhile is having a devil of a time with the vamp chicks. He succeeds in driving a stake between Valerie Sharpe's humongaloid boobs but he gets his ass handed to him by Solina. Dracula and his new love-slave enter the room just as Solina and Lucy tie Simon up to a pole. If you've ever noticed, these buildings always have conveniently placed steel poles for which to tie people to. Dracula orders Mary to drink from Simon, but Mary would rather cut off his head. Her rationale is that Simon would seek their deaths whether he was turned into a vampire or not. Dracula concedes and hands Mary a very large knife. She walks over to slice off Simon's nugget, but instead spins around and cuts off Lucy's head with one swift blow. She then spins around again and drives the knife into Dracula forcing him through the window onto the rooftop. Simon frees himself and gets into another knuckleduster with Solina. He gets his ass smacked around for a bit, but finally manages to chop the bitch's head off with some garden shears. As Eric Cartman would say, "That's Hella-Cool!" Mary meanwhile, grabs some electrical cable from the ugly neon sign and ropes it around Dracula's neck. As Dracula struggles to free himself, Lucy pushes his ass over the ledge. The neon sign creaks over slightly and Dracula is swinging by neck staring up into the painted face of Jesus Christ. At this moment the sun comes up and Dracula's body bursts into flame. With the death of Dracula, Mary is no longer a vampire. Simon and Mary collect her father's things and go to Carfax Abbey to live happily ever after. Acting/Dialogue: As any movie fan will tell you, a Dracula flick HINGES on the strength of its leading actor. And Gerard Butler, in my opinion, does not cut a very good Dracula. For starters, there's his appearance. When I envision Dracula, I think of someone who has an aristocratic, noble bearing. They need to convey a feeling of strength and magnanimous arrogance. But Butler looks like he just stepped off the set of General Hospital. In a way, he's almost too good looking to play the most infamous bad guy of all time. He looked much scarier during his audition reels, which can be found on the special features of the DVD. Now THAT was a motherfucking Dracula! I also didn't buy his accent. His accent didn't sound remotely Slavic. In fact, it didn't really sound recognizable at all. I'm left with the impression that Butler was just trying to peg down the most sinister voice he could muster, and was not actually trying to be 'Dracula'. I think Butler's successor Steve Billington nailed the essence of the character much more convincingly in the sequel to this movie, Dracula II: Ascension. This movie probably would have gotten higher marks from me had they went with somebody else. I also have issue with Justine Waddell's performance as Mary. There's nothing really wrong with the girl's work, but there's just something about her that irritates the shit out of me. And finally, we have Christopher Plummer; an A-list name who will now join the ranks of kick-ass actors like Edward Van Sloan, Peter Cushing, Lawrence Olivier, Anthony Hopkins and now Hugh Jackman as the indefatigable muy-macho vampire-killing engine of destruction Abraham Van Helsing. Plummer nails the Dutch accent perfectly and brings a recognizable sparkle to the Van Helsing roll. It's inconceivable to me to think of this actor NOT playing Van Helsing at some point in his career. Now as many know, Plummer also played a villainous role as Warlord Chang in Star Trek XXIXIXV: The Undiscovered Frontier Home. But he's not the only Star Trek personality to be found in this film. Sci-Fi nerds across the globe will find another reason not to leave the basement as they watch Star Trek Voyager's Jeri Ryan bouncing her boobs all over the screen as the curvy Valerie Sharpe. However my fellow Star Trek fans, Jeri never takes her top down so you can put the lid back on the Vaseline jars okay? Oh yeah…and Omar Epps is in this movie-If anybody cares. Gore: Most of the gore happens by way of decapitation, which is just FINE by me. The severed heads are pretty well done and they don't look like obvious wax props the way they do in most other films. We get a lot of splattered blood being thrown about, but anything else is rather tame. The movie is worth checking however for the decapitations alone. Guilty Pleasures: There's a lot of gratuitous cleavage, but not a lot in the way of full-blown boobies. We see Lucy's nips during the extremely unsexy Dracula-Lucy love scene. We also see a couple of Mardi Gras partiers flashing the goods for the sake of some cheap plastic beads. The ladies get several shots of Gerard Butler stalking about without a shirt on. The Good: When I first saw this movie, I was kind of let down. I allowed myself to get caught up in the hype. After all…it had all the tell tale signs of being the most kick-ass Dracula film ever made. Wes Craven's name was stapled to the credits; a name that inspires confidence if nothing else. It took place in New Orleans. In the past twenty years, New Orleans has become the new Transylvania. So that likewise made the film enticing. And finally, we were being served a Dracula movie that was NOT just another rehash of the Bram Stoker novel. How long has it been since we saw a Dracula flick that didn't include Jonathan Harker or Mina Murray? So needless to say…I was super-psyched for this flick. But after seeing it in the theater, I left feeling nonplussed. Like a peanut butter and deviled egg sandwich, it just didn't sit right. Maybe it was my mood at the time. Maybe it was the poor casting…who knows? But prior to reviewing it, I decided to give Dracula 2000 another shot. And I can say with some sincerity, that it really is a pretty decent flick. What I love most about this movie is how they decided to break the chains binding them to the tradition of previous films. Rather than bore us with another retelling of how Dracula was once Prince Vlad, director Patrick Lussier decided to go for broke and tie his origin into the biblical account of Jesus Christ's crucifixion. This course change really works and adds a mountain of depth to the core character without challenging the Dracula legend illustrated in previous projects. Tying Dracula to Judas Iscariot makes a lot of sense. It helps to explain his hatred of crucifixes and holy water. And it helps to explain a vampire's aversion to silver (A recent addition to vampire lore). The new origin really does come to us as a breath of fresh air and originality; a hard thing to accomplish when dealing with the most over-used vampire story of all time. I also dig the fact that Van Helsing is still alive and kicking. The fact that he has been sustaining himself on vampire blood for the past century inexorably links the tow together in a way that has never been explored before. This helps strengthen the idea that the two are arch foes of one another. Unlike previous incarnations, Dracula and Van Helsing now have a personal tie that helps to fuel their respective hatred for one another. The sound quality on the DVD is also extremely kick-ass. I like to pipe it in through the stereo so I get that nice quadraphonic surround-sound quality. All of the sound effects are very stark and in-your-face. This heightens the experience of any horror film as far as I'm concerned and when mixed with the crunching nu-metal soundtrack riffs, it makes for a pretty wild ride. The Bad: Most of my problem with Dracula 2000 was summed up in the Acting/Dialogue section, but I guess it bears repeating. Gerard Butler just wasn't getting the job done. In all fairness, he's got some pretty big boots to fill. He's competing against Gary Oldman's performance in the '92 Dracula; a film that is still fresh in everyone's mind and is often considered to be the definitive Dracula. So while I appreciate the fact that he didn't spend the bulk of his screen time imitating Count Chocula, I don't feel that he is giving us anything particularly memorable. I also had a major problem with the way they killed off Van Helsing. What a crappy way to go! This isn't just some no-account vampire hunter we're talking about here. This is Van Helsing! He's the most famous vampire slayer this side of Sunnydale. I'm not saying that he should have given Dracula much of a fight, but Lussier could have given him a better send off than that. To have Van Helsing killed off by three arbitrary vamp chicks is a gross disservice to the legacy of the character. It trivializes the entire dynamic that Lussier was attempting to forge between the two great adversaries. I also think Lussier missed out on some great opportunities to showcase New Orleans. As said before, New Orleans is the new Transylvania for the modern vampire. In 1976, novelist Anne Rice penned a little story that would change the vampire dynamic for all time. Interview With The Vampire spiraled out of control and spawned more spin-offs than Star Trek and became the subject of two major motion pictures (Interview With The Vampire and Queen Of The Damned). Like nearly all of her novels, Rice's work takes place in the Louisiana port city of New Orleans. Of all potential vampire settings, New Orleans is probably the most appropriate. It's a contrary little town that blends staunch religious conservatism with hedonistic decadence - two qualities that really don't mix well together. But that's what makes the place so seductive to a vampire story I suppose. Now Lussier gives us a few brief glimpses of the Big Easy, but we really don't see much more than Mardi Gras fluff and a couple of fast scenes of Lafayette Cemetery. I think he should have gone to extra lengths to personalize the city and work it more into the story. Otherwise, it becomes very obvious that he is merely trying to rub up against the back of Anne Rice's ass and hoping that her shit tastes like strawberry pie. Now that I think about it…I kind of wish people would quit trying to bite off of Anne Rice's shtick. Some films are worse at it then others, and Dracula 2000 certainly isn't the worst of offenders. But after having viewed somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty vampire flicks, I am really getting tired of this whole romanticized euro-trash erotica bullshit. It can work when done well, but occasionally I'd like to see some vampires who are a little bit…I don't know…macho? Take John Carpenter's Vampires for example. You didn't see any of that pussy-ass weak romantic shit with that flick. Same with Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark. Hollywood constantly wants to shove this "sensitive" shit down our throats when all we really want is some blood, some guts and the occasional topless vampire whore. Is that too much to ask? This isn't to suggest that I don't enjoy Anne Rice's stories or the neo-vampire inspirations that has since sprung from them. But enough already! Once in a while I want to see a vampire movie that ignores the dramatic "humanity" factor and just seeks to provide us with some cheap thrills. With Dracula 2000, you end up with a little bit of both. That can be both a good and a bad thing I suppose. To conclude, what we have here is not exactly the definitive Dracula movie. Hell, it's not even the most memorable Dracula story. But it adds a few layers that were never really braved in prior attempts and remains a not-entirely-shitty way to spend a Thursday evening. Great Lines: "Never…Ever fuck with an antiques dealer!" - Simon to Marcus "You cannot imagine what I've had to endure. I have felt the very breath of God, chosen to suffer like no man before." -Dracula "I never drink…coffee." -Dracula to Lucy. This is a cheeky homage to the classic line, "I never drink…wine." It can be kind of humorous I suppose, but it doesn't really work for this movie. "I am Mary Van Helsing. I am my father's daughter. And none shall take that away." -Mary Overall Rating: 7 out of 10 severed heads (I would have easily given this one an 8 had they used a different leading actor and had they used better dialogue). |
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