Following the three weeks of village filming, actors and crews returned to civilization, shooting in areas of Prague that would serve as a Paris street and an exterior shot of Valerious Manor. Additional forest shooting of more of the scene involving Anna, Velkan and the werewolf attack took place in Alkazar—a secluded area requiring the cast and crew to travel to set in four-wheel-drive, off-road vehicles. During soundstage lensing of a post-ballroom sequence in the constructed set of the waterlogged catacombs (with Jackman, Beckinsale and Wenham all sporting wetsuits beneath their wardrobe, along with the director in shoulder-high waders), a surprised Sommers was serenaded by his cast and crew, who remembered his birthday.
Of Pescucci’s work, Beckinsale says, “The costumes were just fantastic, not necessarily entirely practical, however. I had to do a lot of running around in high spindly heels and corsets, as well as swim in a massive ball gown. I’ve come to think that if a woman gets through an action movie, she’s much tougher than the boys, because they tend to get to wear sneakers and pants!”
The final Prague shooting took place on the backlot of Barrandov Studios, with Van Helsing and Anna tracking The Wolf Man to just outside of Castle Frankenstein. All the while that Sommers, Daviau, cast and crew were involved in first unit shooting, the second unit crew and its director, Greg Michael, were working in tandem with the main unit—often with Sommers and/or cast members switching back and forth between units. Michael adds, “I have a running joke with Steve: if it’s dangerous, difficult or boring—meaning time-consuming or highly-technical, which would exhaust the patience or resources of the main unit—that’s what I do. Second unit production schedule for Van Helsing was challenging to say the least… nearly 95 days [principal photography ran 109 days] utilizing a crew of over 150.”
Working in conjunction with Sommers, Michael and his crew were responsible for such key sequences as the villagers storming Castle Frankenstein (Pernstejn Castle, located on the eastern edge of Bohemia in the Moravian highlands), the local denizens watching Van Helsing and Mr. Hyde from the plaza below Notre Dame Cathedral (shot in Prague’s Old Town Square), as well as much of the breathless coach sequence.
One of the action set pieces in Sommers’ script called for Van Helsing to be suddenly thrown from the driver’s seat of a coach, landing between two of the six horses that are pulling the now out of control coach at full gallop…and Hugh Jackman would be executing the stunt.
Michael observes, “Any time you have an actor near an animal, it’s dangerous. You’re putting him in the context of an unknown—animals can become uncontrollable. And we have Hugh dangling precariously between the bodies of two horses. We obviously took every precaution. [Stunt coordinator] R.A. walked up to me and said, ‘Boy, if we do this, it’ll be one of the first times in film history where you’ve ever put a lead actor in this situation.’”
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