I like Steven Sommers. I like him alot. DEEPRISING. Awesome! The first MUMMY. Super! VAN HELSING. BALLS IN MY MOUTH TERRIBLE!!!!! The Universal Horror Monster movies of long ago are some of my favorite movies. As a kid these are the only horror movies I would watch because as a kid I was a wuss with an X-Men like special ability to poop my pants anytime FRIDAY the 13 came on KDEB (local fox station back in the 80's). Eighties horror was too gory but monsters are awesome so I had to depend on the safe horrors of old black and white Dracula and Frankenstein. When the studio ran out of ideas for an original horror movie they simply packed a film with Dracula and Wolfman and Frankenstein and some mad scientist and Igor and Abbot and Costello. Those films aren't so great. But what if they made a Universal monster movie with all the classic great villains together mixed with today's special effects and a hero that is super badass who has all these cool weapons that are suppose to kill lots of creatures? Well, instead of getting one of my favorite movies of all time I got MOULON ROUGE 2: HERES SOME CRAP!!! When production on VAN HELSING was announced I was excited. Yea, Steven Sommers is way too heavy on the CGI but he made great action monster movies that delivered on their promise. Kill lots of monsters. The MUMMY part 2 sucked but everyone makes a mistake, right? I anticipated every headline on the internet hoping to get a small glimpse of the visual direction and tone Van Helsing was going for. The sneak peak posters with all the monsters and the hero in silhouette were exciting because the look of Van Helsing was similar to VAMPIRE HUNTER D so you knew this movie was going to be BADASS despite knowing it was going to be PG-13. Seeing the trailer I was even more convinced this was going to be one the best monster movies ever. I couldn't wait. Finally in the theater the movie began........From the very beginning everything sucked. The acting was way too over the top and nothing looked real. I'm a pretty forgiving guy so I let it slide when the Frankenstein monster tries to start an opera right before the flaming windmill he is standing on gives way and he falls screaming "WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?" . At least that is what I assumed was happening. Twenty minutes later I gave up. That was the worst part because I knew I still had two hours to go before the movie was over.
Like MOULON ROUGE tried to bring back the classic 50's musical, VAN HELSING attempts to capture a classic style of acting and production values that are iconic in the traditional Universal creature feature. MOULON ROUGE didn't understand the Broadway style acting so every performance is over the top and greatly exaggerated to cartoonish proportions. Also MOULON ROUGE was lazy and didn't want to write its own music so it said "Here's a bunch of Madonna songs. She is still A-list, right?" VAN HELSING does the exact same thing except the Madonna songs thingy. Every line is delivered as awkwardly as possible with a emphasis on whaling and screaming and moaning. I couldn't understand what anybody was saying half the time. But that's how they talked in the classics, right? Nope.
The plot is about the worst Dracula ever, who wants to harness the life force that keeps Frankenstein alive. Dracula wants to bring to life the still born children he has had with his three wives. That sounds kind of creative. But his children are millions of snot-dwarf-bat-thingys that are cocooned in snot sacks. Lame. Van Helsing shows up with his cool gadgets to stop him. Unfortunately he can't hit anything with his fully automatic crossbow and Dracula can't be killed by traditional means so all his cool stuff means nothing. That's right wooden stakes, sunlight, universal health-care, none of that can stop him. Brilliantly (sarcasm) the only way to defeat Dracula is to turn into a werewolf and bite out his throat. Only a five year old would think that was cool. Here's another great idea. Lets take Frankenstein and make him really smart and deep. He is going to be a good guy. Lets give him a lot of dialogue but let us make him look retarded so everyone will laugh when he speaks. Also turn his head into an aquarium and give him a beat box for a left leg. For a finale lets have Frankenstein swing around like Tarzan, that would be cool. Nothing makes sense. Nothing comes together. Everything is blue and incredibly boring despite being packed with monsters and action and horny friars. I wasted two years waiting for this sucker. I want my two years back.........Never mind I would just waste them anyway.
As always love to all especially the two people who actually read this crap,
Jason
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