| Schmaltz | 3 |
| Violence | 8 |
| Romance | 5 |
| Nudity and Sex | 4 |
| Plot | 6 |
| Buckets o' Blood | 7 |
| Terror | 4 |
Link in the Internet movie database
Synopsis: Drrrrrrracula, that fiendish of blood-drinkers, is back from the near-dead. He awakens in Europe when a small, rather doomed group of thieves steal his casket under the mistaken impression that a 20th Century man would use a coffin, plaster skulls and spike-traps to hide his bearer-bonds. Dracula awakens on a plane bound for North America and helps himself to a snack of several idiot thieves and Jennifer Eposito, immediately catapulting him to the top of every Spin City fan's hate list, because now Stacy can only appear during night scenes. The plane crashes, as Dracula mistakenly believes that tying a dead man to an airplane yolk is the same as activating the autopilot (Yes, yes, I realise that this was a reference to the Demeter. It still bears pointing out as a non-meta-reference 'stupid thing that drac did'.). Valerie (Jeri Ryan) Sharp -- believe me, she isn't -- appears on-site to report on this late-breaking news, only to be assimilated into yet another collective.
Meanwhile, Van Helsing (Christopher Plumer) and his plucky assistant Target: The Dork Hostage... er, Johnny (Simon Sheppard) scramble to the colonies to bring back Drac! Dracula decides that he needs a little bit more Vitamin C in his diet and puts the bite on Lucy (Mary's ditzy and meta-referential roommate), completing his collection of starlets in this film and making him a Drakulon Master (warning, Vampirella reference)!
The movie then turns into Blade. Yes, I know several other reviews have stated this, but after spending almost half an hour trying to say this in a unique and special way, I realised that there's absolutely nothing else that fits.
Commentary: This film racks up a lot of style points and in an amazing move for a vampire film right about now, it doesn't lose those points in execution! The writer's managed to work some fairly nice character development into the mix, allowing even the vamp-gals to retain some pleasing personality rather than becoming simpering slaves to their haemosanguous boyfriend. It's a treat to watch Eposito's vamp-debutante show, again and again, that her personality remains much the same as it was pre-bite -- she's just changed allegiances and stepped up to a higher-grade sun-block.
Speaking of the vampire trio, our director friend has made a 'bold and daring move' in today's vampire industry and shot this film almost entirely without skin and in the doing has made his vampire women far more alluring and sensual than those who flash a bit of bosom every time the director's mind throws itself back to the age when 80's teen slasher flicks roamed the earth. Some of the girls -- Eposito especially -- get quite daring in this displays but still manage to retain their ethereal beauty in the doing. Perhaps being brought up on Hammer Horrors which (remember, I was watching the televised versions with all the US cuts) had a certain style about how it presented its vampirized victims. They would move with a ghostly grace, wearing low-cut, diaphanous gowns and seem to be pale shadows (but shadows nonetheless) of their former selves. I suppose this trained me against the 'bare it all' tendency of modern vampire films which have traded in allure and sensuality for hard-core nudity. It's a shame and a half, if you ask me.
The script has a nice plot twist towards the end of the film. It's one that's very 'in vogue' with today's views on vampires but even so, it's quite a pleasing one that doesn't cram Ann Rice down our throats, sideways, wearing cleats and a German WWI helmet. Dracula suffers from a flaw which is ironically mirrored in the aforementioned Hammer Horrors: he doesn't really get enough screen time until the very end. We focus far too much on Mary Heller and her Sting-like saviour and ultimately the movie becomes pear-shaped because of this, as we're not given enough time to observe Dracula revealing clues which would lead up to the revelation at movie's end. The clues are there, however, and I was able to figure out the ending fairly early on -- I just wish that Dracula had been more a part of the slow unveiling of the tapestry.
The camera angles and music are top-notch and well-played. Visually, the movie's an absolute treat and in audio, very rarely does the sound-track intrude upon what we want to hear. The scenery is sumptuous and conveys mood almost perfectly. The characters are well-played even if some of them do succumb to the sad, sad fate of being too stupid to live (after all, when a leach jumps off of a corpse and grasps your eye, you do not continue to poke at that corpse unless you want to wind up supper to an even bigger leech). All in all, this is a good movie on which to blow a few hours.
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