WATCHING VAN HELSING WILL GIVE YOU CANCER
Okay so maybe the cancer part isn't true, but the new movie, "Van Helsing," is just plain bad. Written and directed by the creative genius that brought us wonderful pieces of cinema such as The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, and my personal favorite "Deep Rising," Van Helsing is easily the worst movie I've seen since 1997's "Batman & Robin."Before I continue... an explanation is required. First off, I knew Van Helsing wasn't going to be a good movie walking into the theater. However, because the movie showed a 19th century warrior battling against Dracula, Frankenstein, and a Werewolf, I figured it was the closest anyone would ever get to making "Castlevania: The Movie."
I'm not sure how someone gets 200 million dollars to make a movie that's essentially an unnoficial sequel to the awful movie adaptation of last year's "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." In this movie, the character Van Helsing is a super secret monster assassin who works for the Vatican. Wasn't Van Helsing a scholar and a professor who used his intelligence to find a way to kill vampires? How the hell did he become an 19th century James Bond with a machine gun crossbow?
Here, I'll spoil the movie for you so you don't have to waste 6 - 8 bucks. Dracula's big evil plan is to bring to life thousands of his dead children using Dr. Frankenstein's life giving machine. You see, Dracula spent 400 years screwing his 3 annoying vampire brides. These brides gave birth to "children" in the form of pale gargoyles that burst forth from egg sacks that hang from the ceiling of Dracula's secret lair. Since Dracula and his brides are "undead," the result of them mating is a stillborn gargoyle fetus. If his children can come alive, then Dracula will rule the world with his army of retarded gargoyle children that resemble the creatures from Gremlins.
During a flashback, Dr. Frankenstein is killed by Dracula and the doctor's equipment is stolen by Dracula's army of gas mask wearing midgets (I'm not kidding). Meanwhile Frankenstein's monster comes alive and escapes while the townsfolk attack Frankenstein's castle. Dracula's main problem is that the machine doesn't work without Frankenstein's Monster being used as a giant fuse for the machine. Yes, this is how ridiculous this movie is, and from there it only gets worse.
Van Helsing is ordered by the Vatican to protect a Romanian family that has sworn not to enter Heaven until they vanquis Dracula and all his evil. Here's the real stinger as we see Mr. Helsing enter a fully constructed Vatican City 40 years before the Vatican City was built. So Mr. Helsing gathers up his new gadgets from the underbelly workshops of the Vatican, collects a cowardly friar as a comic relief sidekick and heads off to Transylvania to stop evil.
From there on the movie only gets worse and worse. While I'm not going to give an entire plot summary, I'm going to list some key moments in the film that can do nothing but hurt your brain if you watch them.
During the middle of the film, Van Helsing, Anna (might as well be "Natasha" with that horrible accent) and the friar sidekick are trying to transport Frankenstein's Monster away from Transylvania and back to Rome (the Vatican) to prevent Dracula trying to revive thousands of his dead children. Anna says to Van Helsing, "Nothing travels faster than horse in Transylvania, not even werewolf!" Yet no later than 5 minutes into the following chase sequence do we see their stagecoach (a stagecoach that is getting pulled by 6 horses) get attacked by a werewolf. WHAT?
Kate Beckinsale's character gets thrown through a stone walls at least 3 to 4 times in this movie. Each time she bounces off objects like a tennis ball then manages to flop down on the ground without a scratch. Yet at the end of the movie she DIES because she's tackled by a werwolf. WHAT?
Each character in this movie manages to perform some kind of Tarzan swing off a wire at least twice. To add insult to injury, even Frankenstein's Monster manages to pull off the Tarzan swing at the end of the film. Apparently there wasn't any way to do anything in the 19th century without some form of elaborate swinging.
Hell I could go on and on about what's wrong with Van Helsing. Ever since Friday, I've been trying to undrestand how such a ridiculous and awful movie could even see the light of day. Then it hit me. The only way I can explain how a movie with Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula, werewolves, gremlins, and Mr. Hyde all rolled into one manages to be worse than 1987's "Monster Squad," is with this quick little photoshop.
