Anyway, enough rambling and on with the movie review. This movie stars Christopher Plummer, Johnnie Lee Miller and Gerard "This is Sparta!" Butler. Plummer plays Van Helsing - who has kept himself alive for all these years by injecting himself with blood drained from a certain well-preserved "corpse" he keeps in his antique dealership vaults. A gang of theives perform a heist at the old Prof's place and steal a certain coffin - awakening a long dormant pointy-toothed Count of great renown.
Much of the action takes place in New Orleans during Mardi Gras season. Seems old Vlad takes a shine to Van Helsing's daughter Mary (that's Mary...ya know...as in Magdalene - pay attention as there is an amazing and different plot twist on our favourite Vampire Prince's origins in this movie). Anyway, lots of people get turned into Vlad's henchmen and during one set to in which one of the undead is killed by him, Johnny Lee Miller gives the world a classic line..."Never, EVER, f**k with an antiques dealer".
Gerard Butler portrays Dracula with much aplomb - imagine a cross between a particularly suave rock star and a male model from a shampoo commercial and you kind of get the picture. He obviously enjoyed the role, and manages to stay just the right side of camp. while getting to unleash some killer one-liners and even a nod to Bela Lugosi's portrayal with the line "I never drink....coffee". At one point someone tries to stop ol' Drac by flashing a Bible at him. He casually grabs it from them, tosses it to one side and sneers "propaganda".
"New Haemoglobin for men. Because I'm worth it!"
Ultimately, we cut to the climax and get the reveal on who and what Drac's origins are (and in so doing, find out why he doesn't like silver, crucifixes and the like) and also who Mary Van Helsing was in a previous life - hey imagine if Bram Stoker and Dan Brown were forced to write a Dracula for the modern era.
So, whilst this movie may never make lists of "classic" vampire movies, I really enjoyed it - even despite it's loudness for the MTV generation (although it does have the classic "Bloodline" by Slayer in the soundtrack, so the loudness isn't all bad). I particularly enjoyed the Biblical twist too, which had some great visuals in the flashback scenes and another great line, "Blood of my Blood, Flesh of my Flesh". Ah, Vlad Dracula, Tepes, Dragon Prince of Wallachia.....interesting origin presented for you here. Give this movie a try, keep an open mind and you might just enjoy this New Testament of Dracula.
For now my Strigoi.....DO have nightmares.
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