Written and directed by: Stephen Sommers
Starring: Hugh Jackman (Van Helsing), Kate Beckinsale (Anna Valerious), Richard Roxburgh (Count Vladislaus Dracula), David Wenham (Carl), Shuler Hensley (Frankenstein's Monster), Elena Anaya (Aleera), Will Kemp (Velkan), Kevin J. O'Connor (Igor), Alun Armstrong (Cardinal Jinette), Silvia Colloca (Verona), Josie Maran (Marishka), Samuel West (Dr. Victor Frankenstein), Robbie Coltrane (Mr. Hyde), Stephen Fisher (Dr. Jekyll)
There are crimes against humanity and there are.....well.....in the entertainment sense.....crimes against humanity. Stephen Sommers' Van Helsing is an applicable example.
And considering these facts that the film cost $150 million to make (without including the funds Universal dished out in marketing), was expected to have a revenue of $175 million, but actually generated only $120 million, one has to believe that Universal is thinking this film was a crime as well. (I can only surmise that Universal agreed to the project because they wet themselves over the prospect of Dracula and his vampire wives making thousands of Undead babies that can only come alive when Frankenstein is strapped to an electric table and tortured via lightning strikes.)
The biggest crime of the film is Sommers' revisionist ways in creating this storyline. Sommers grabbed all of the Victorian villains and monsters-- Dracula and his three vampire brides, werewolves, Frankenstein, and Jekyl & Hyde-- and brought them all into one film in which Van Helsing (who works as an assassin for the Catholic Church) is commissioned to hunt them down and kill them.
In Junior High, the joke about Friday's lunch menu was that it was mystery-meat surprise-- whatever leftover meat from the week's menu was uneaten it would be incorporated into one dish on Friday. I'm sure that wasn't the case but it sure did taste like it sometimes. Van Helsing is the film version of mystery-meat surprise.
The script becomse too big for itself right away, especially in regards to the characters Dracula and Van Helsing, both taken from Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula. In Stoker's book, for example, Van Helsing is an old doctor and professor who figures out how to kill the Undead. He successfully kills Dracula in the end of the novel by driving a stake through his heart.
But in Summers' film, which takes place after the events in Stoker's novel, Van Helsing has transformed from an older man into the strapping Hugh Jackman, who sports long and thick hair (that probably made Fabio green) and a physique chisled exclusively at Gold's Gym. Was he reincarnated? Did the Pope give him the elixir of everlasting-life? Who knows.
And when Dracula informs Van Helsing that he indeed was killed by him years ago, it wasn't only Van Helsing scratching his head. Anyone familiar with Stoker's novel was scratching theirs too. Indeed, Sommers copped out when he did not explain how Dracula came back to life, how his vampire brides came back to life, how they were able to have thousands of Undead babies, etc.
Other crimes:
1) I won't be surprised if I read a news byline in Variety that the Transylvanian accent has been banned from being spoken in films. This movie could be registered as a comedy because of it.
2) What was up with all of the James Bond-like gadgets that the Vatican Secret Service built for Van Helsing (i.e. semi-automatic silver arrow shooter with changeable cartridge and an explosive that consisted of the equivalent of the light-intensity of ten suns)?
3) Van Helsing seemed a rip-off of better films such as Indiana Jones, James Bond, Aliens (the Undead babies hanging in egg-like wombs), Star Wars (Dracula's workers looked like those Jawas with goggles), and Gremlins (the Undead babies look like Gremlins sporting bat wings).
