Van Helsing (2004)

                           VAN HELSING

                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: Not as bad as it might have been, but

     still no bargain.  This is a fast-paced and

soverblown CGI-fest that leverages off of the

sold Universal monsters but does not actually

     swant to use them.   Writer-director Steven

     sSommers of the MUMMY films handles action

     sscenes well, but is poor with directing acting

     sor even giving us a very good story.  This is

     sa film of dubious thrills and no chills

     swhatsoever.  Rating: 0 (-4 to +4) or 4/10

You can tell everything you need to know about Van Helsing from

the poster. The name VAN HELSING conjures up images from the

novel DRACULA. Two actors have owned the role enough to play it

more than once. One is Edward Van Sloan, and the other Peter

Cushing--both of them advanced years and rarely physical. The

original character uses his brains, not his brawn. The poster

shows him jazzed up, young, and recast as an action hero to appeal

to a teenage audience. There is little attempt to make him

consistent with the character as written.

That transform on the character is really the essence of what

director Stephen Sommers has done with the entire film. The

teenage audience does not want a hero who thinks and solves

puzzles like how to track down a vampire. They want a hero with

big futuristic weapons who can fight CGI villains. And they want

the monsters to be equally physical. Sommers previously jazzed up

the old Boris Karloff mummy Im-ho-tep and made of him the CGI

mummy who was monstrous in all the wrong ways. He showed he could

make a computer-aided monster movie and give it an air of

respectability by trading off a traditional Universal Studios

monster.  Now he has moved on to do a film like HOUSE OF

FRANKENSTEIN and HOUSE OF DRACULA but with 21st century comic book

sensibilities (or lack thereof), tailored for those kids who

believe black-and-white films cause eyestrain.

If you don't have a poster, everything you need to know about VAN

HELSING you can learn by considering his crossbow. It fires bolts

like a machine gun.  It has a rocket launcher.  And it has a bow

with a taut bowstring. Why does it need a bow? Well the story

takes place in the late-1800s and they don't want to damage the

period feel. Not much, they don't. Of course the women's

fashions are skimpy and revealing. I guess that is what clothing

was like in Victorian times.

As the story opens Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman, just a tad bland for

an action hero) is fighting to subdue Dr. Jekyll's evil side,

Edward Hyde. Except this Edward Hyde is big like a rubbery-

looking Incredible Hulk. Van Helsing dispatches him and that done

he returns to Rome. It seems that Van Helsing is a sort of James

Bond for a secret organization in the Vatican. Van Helsing gets

his orders from Cardinal Jinette. This film's token distinguished

actor Alun Armstrong plays the cardinal. (Armstrong's weasel-like

looks get him great villainous roles like Thenardier from LES

MISERABLES and Wackford Squeers from NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. Here we

see far too little of him.) Once Van Helsing is fitted out with

new weapons by the Vatican's equivalent of Q he is dispatched to

Transylvania to fight a threat from Count Dracula who has a plot

for vampirism to break out as an epidemic in a big way. He is

given a friar Carl (David Wenham) as his humorous sidekick.

(Aren't all sidekicks humorous?) Intentionally or not Van Helsing

and Carl seem to be recreation of the heroes of CAPTAIN KRONOS,

VAMPIRE HUNTER.

Sommers superficially ties his current fantasy creations into the

old Universal monster movies, but with little respect for the

originals. It is something of a forced fit. In the original

Dracula had the power to move about unseen by turning into a bat.

Sommers reinvents this power saying Dracula and his brides can

transform themselves into bat-winged harpies who attack from the

air and have little interest in hiding themselves. It is a

complete subversion of the original concept of what a vampire is.

The new wolf man is the size of a bear like in THE HOWLING, and

borrowing an idea from Paul Schrader's CAT PEOPLE (1982), the

human does not transform into the animal but the creature bursts

from inside the human's skin and presumably leaves a human skin

laying around. Everything is done at a fast pace with one action

scene after another to cover over the paucity of plotting. Kate

Beckinsale in tight swashbuckling clothes seems rather extraneous

to the plot, but she is usually a pleasure to see on the screen.

This is a CGI action-fest rip-off and wannabe from a parallel

universe where LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN was an enviable

success. Perhaps the film will be a critical success in that

world.  VAN HELSING gets a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale or 4/10.

As a side note, Universal Home Video has released what they call

Legacy Collections of their Dracula, Frankenstein, and werewolf

films. The timing suggests the relatively good price for the

classic films is intended to use them as a throwaway promotion for

VAN HELSING (!). After Carl Laemmle, Jr., left Universal the

studio never again showed proper respect their horror series and

this continues that tradition. The werewolf set includes four

classic werewolf films; the other two have five films each.

Together they represent all the series films of the three monsters

with the exception of ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN. Over

the years I had lovingly collected individually VHS copies each of

these 14 films (okay, 13 of them). I am happy to get them all at

a reasonable price at the quality of DVD reproduction. I am a

little sorry to see them dispensed as mere "bonus features." It

is one more case of tails wagging dogs.

                                        Mark R. Leeper

                                        mleeper@optonline.net

                                        Copyright 2004 Mark R. Leeper

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X-RAMR-ID: 37750
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1279920
X-RT-TitleID: 1132255
X-RT-AuthorID: 1309
X-RT-RatingText: 4/10