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CORRIDOR OF HORROR |
DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 2, No. 7 |
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socks it to DRACULA 2000 |
 Sexy Jeri Ryan from TV's "Star Trek: Voyager," sucking up a storm as one of Drac's disciplettes. |
Craven's anemic Dracula
sucks--& not just blood
By
JOHN STANLEY
of TheColumnists.com
I don't get it. Help me out, readers. Give me a clue.
Why do they put Wes Craven's name ahead of Dracula's? As in the current theatrical release "Wes Craven's Dracula 2000." Or as in the more formal and more pretentious rendering: "Wes Craven Presents: Dracula 2000." Does it have something to do with crass commercialism?
Although I appreciate his many contributions to the horror genre, including the creation of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Scream" series, Craven didn't create the classic vampire character. In fact, during all his years as a film-maker, Craven has never shown a cravin' to adapt Bram Stoker's novel, or fiddle around in any way with the franchise.
So why should he be expected to do something with Dracula that's any better than all the movie guys who've tried it before him? Do they really think this kind of advertising and titling is going to help, no matter how much the movie is the same old stuff that Hammer was cranking out (only better) back in the 1960s?
I'll never understand the crassness and dumbness of Hollywood movie marketing with something as enduring as the World's Best Known Bloodsucker of the Night. So many fine actors have portrayed him, and portrayed him well. Starting with Bela Lugosi and working forward to Christopher Lee and Jack Palance and Frank Langella and Klaus Kinski and Gary Oldman and . . . yeah, even Leslie Nielsen in Mel Brooks' 1995 send-up. Why blow it all in 2001?
So here we are in 2001 already and along comes Craven with his choice of Gerard Butler, who looks like one of those hunks who poses for sexy novel covers. Who looks more like a fashion show-off for bikini briefs and ruffled shirts. A threatening, menacing, deadly vampire he isn't. He should get a job posing for Gentleman's Quarterly and forget movies.
I've got to wonder if the Weinstein boys at Dimension were just using (borrowing?) Craven's name, and the real blame for this exercise in gore and gushing blood rests with Joel Soisson, who wrote the goofball screenplay. And I've got to wonder if Patrick Lussier, a film editor who has worked on many of Craven's earlier pictures, isn't also to blame. He worked over Soisson's script and then manned the camera without capturing an ounce of effective atmosphere. His work here is no better than it was in the God-awful "The Prophecy 3: The Ascent," which I had to endure as "Creature Features" maven.
With the hope that the plot of "Wes Craven's Dracula 2000" is a delightful read--it sure as hell is not a fabulous watch--allow me to try and describe what at first seems indescribable: A gang of very stupid crooks led by Jennifer Esposito breaks into a subterranean vault that's kept under tight security. Among these brainless bandits are Danny Masterson, Sean Patrick Thomas and Omar Epps. Oops. The vault just happens to belong to Professor Van Helsing (Christopher Plummer, in the only decent role in the whole picture) who has been keeping Dracula's corpse enclosed in a steel coffin all these decades, staving off old age by taking an injection once in a while of Drac's own plasma, tubed up from the crypt below.
Despite some death traps that knock off two of the robbers, Esposito's bandido band escapes with the coffin in a plane headed for New Orleans. But en route, Drac escapes his steel enclosure, mainly because one of the guys is dumb enough to open it. Drac kills off the rest of the gangling gang and callously crashes the airship into a swampland. (The crooks don't die, they are resurrected as disciples of Dracula. The busty women become the brides of Dracula and seduce other men and women by wearing flimsy negligees.)
Meanwhile, we cut to New Orleans where Van Helsing's long-estranged daughter (Justine Waddell) is having nightmares that Dracula is coming into her bedroom. Why there is a weird psychic link between the two is never clearly established. (In this movie anything can happen without explanation, and does.) But one thing is established: she works for a Virgin Records store. The "Virgin" is everywhere you look. I bet Craven and the Weinstein boys got a lot of free music CDs after this movie was made.
The daughter, still surrounded by a lot of "Virgin" logos, as if maybe the word is symbolic, snaps out of it and looks puzzled and worried. She figures she's having a bad dream, but something tells her it's more than a dream. That kind of dialogue.
Meanwhile, Van Helsing and his young assistant (Jonny Lee Miller) have arrived in New Orleans armed with an odd collection of weapons that includes a device that fires elongated bullets that serve as vampire-killing stakes when they hit their targets. A few wicked looking, curved knives are thrown in because, don't forget, you also can kill a vampire by cutting off its head. So heads fly through the air with great frequency, and bodies are punctured by assorted stakes, bullets and other sharp things that just happen to fall into the frame.
Anyway, Dracula kills off Van Helsing and puts his body under a bed for his daughter to find, and then takes off after the daughter, who's still standing close to more "Virgin" signs. He keeps wooing her with his hypnotic charm and then starts sinking his fangs into her neck. And talks a lot about the art of sharking blood. Your blood, my blood, we all got blood, kid. The two fly through the air as if they've seen "The Matrix" once too often, flipping and flopping and plopping. The excitement builds.
Finally Drac gets her up on a rooftop in New Orleans, during the height of Mardi Gras, where he reveals that his true identity is Iscariot Judas, the dude who betrayed Jesus Christ for a handful of silver and ended up hanging himself. This may sound like an ingenious twist on an old theme, but its biblical significance pales and seems pretty ludicrous when Dracula ends up hanging from a crucifix on top of the building, with the sun coming up over the horizon and threatening to burn him to death. And . . . but why go on.
You can see that the real blood getting sucked here is the blood of America with a lousy Dracula movie that deserved to go directly to video. Unfortunately, Dimension had the clout and dough to get it into distribution. Our tough luck.
Oh, I forgot to mention one actor who once played Dracula. His name was Max Schreck and he starred in F. W. Murnau's silent classic, "Nosferatu." Guess what. A movie is coming out soon called "Shadow of the Vampire" and just from the trailer it looks like it's going to be a helluva lot better than "Wes Craven's Dracula 2000." It recounts, in black and white, how Murnau made his movie with Schreck, only it appears Schreck might have been a real vampire with designs on sucking up to the producer and various cast members.
I just wish Wes Craven hadn't sucked up to the Weinstein boys.
© 2001 by John Stanley. Photos © Dimension Films.
You can comment on this column or contact John Stanley with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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