REVIEW: Dracula 3000 (2004)

“Come in, Review Command Central…come in…we have an unidentified object on the horizon. It seems to be just floating in dead space, doing absolutely nothing at all. It looks like…a DVD case, and it is glowing a strange, radioactive green, like something that came from the lowest depths of a sewer. Oh, God, it’s coming closer! It’s about to crash into us! Oh, God, save us from this unholy fate! What has my life become! The DVD is overlapping the ship! It’s devouring us whoAAAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!”

Director: Darryl Roodt

Starring: Casper Van Diem, Erika Eleniak

IMDb

Hmm, I just found the above tape recording on this abandoned spaceship I conveniently started wandering around in. And here’s the DVD! “Dracula 3000”…sounds absolutely horrendous in every way possible! I think I’ll review it. Hell, I’ve had worse reasons to review things.

We start off with about three minutes of credits. I know I haven’t told you anything else about the rest of the movie yet, but seriously, once you read the rest of the review, it will make sense why this is so ridiculous. I’m really not sure it’s a good idea to advertise who made this movie, guys. It’s really not going to do their resumes very much good. Do you really want the people who very charitably donated their time to making this to be homeless on the streets?

Well, either way, the opening of the movie dispels all pretensions of this being good, as it starts out with a ship about to self-destruct. The movie even knows it’s not going to have anything worthwhile – so it’s just skipping all the bullshit and starting right out with a self-destructing ship with its sole member, some old guy who will serve as our exposition machine throughout the film, dying off. That’s a point in the movie’s favor actually. If they just rolled the credits now, this would be by far the best Dracula movie I’ve ever reviewed on this site. Which isn’t saying a lot, but shut up.

Then we skip to 50 years later, because that’s not pointless, is it? Oh, you mean it is? You mean it doesn’t matter what time any of this takes place because it’s all arbitrary made up nonsense? Huh, well I guess I was wrong when I rhetorically asked myself that question. We get this guy named Van Helsing with a wimpy voice talking about his crew and how stupid and incompetent they all are. I know that sounds like my usual sarcasm, but no, I’m dead serious. He says the navigator never has any idea where they’re going, the scientist is only half as smart as he thinks he is, and is still the smartest person BY FAR on the whole ship, and the hired gun is basically dumb as a rock with no redeeming value outside of recon missions.

There has never been a good movie that introduced its characters like this. Never.

So, yeah, you heard right – apparently these people have absolutely no idea what they are doing, no clue how to run a ship and are just kind of aimlessly drifting through space, like useless space debris. Except I think space debris is actually more intelligent than these idiots. Who even gave them this ship? They basically just admit in the first five minutes of the movie that they’re completely incompetent in every way possible! You’d have to be high to think these people deserve to pilot a goddamn space ship! They should be back on whatever planet they came from serving fast food. Or, hey, here’s a thought – maybe they’re so worthless that the space federation just wanted to get rid of them as fast as possible. That makes more sense.

So, being geniuses and all, they naturally send over the weakest, smallest female they have to check out this abandoned ship they find, because finding an abandoned ship is literally the oldest sci fi cliché in the world. She’s jumpy and gets scared of everything, and is the most likely to get killed or captured if there is anyone there. Why didn’t they just send someone with more nerve? I couldn’t tell you.

It turns out he's faking the choking on the "poisonous" air...but I really wish it was real, just to illustrate how stupid the crew is. Oh well. I still have my imagination.

They make jokes about how she basically doesn’t get paid anything and her job generally sucks. I just love the logic Captain Van Helsing uses – “you have complaints and grievances? We don’t care, get your ass on the ship.” Like any good team, the women on the ship are subject to constant sexual harassment from the males, with no sign of any stop to it. I’m so glad years and years of scientific development has made our species so much more tolerant and intelligent as individuals. Personally I think the future needs an equivalent of Rosie the Riveter to set things straight here.

Oh and there’s also Coolio as 187, a stoner who apparently does nothing but get high all the time:

This one image, even out of context, shows everything wrong with the movie in one frame.

Does that even look like it belongs in the same movie as the rest of this shit?! Seriously, did they just spend all the money they had getting Coolio to sign on for this movie? Great job, guys; you got a mediocre actor and now you have no cash left for the vampire effects. How do you think getting him to sign on for this went?

Movie Studio Exec: "Coolio, we can’t find anyone to play the black vampire in our Dracula in space movie. We tried every other person we can think of, went through hundreds of auditions, and you are the only appropriate person we can think of to play a crazy vampire. Will you do it?"

Coolio: "Hmm. Depends. What kind of a script is it? Is it worthy of my artistic talents? I did write Gangsta’s Paradise, you know."

Movie Studio Exec: "You get to wear fake teeth, mug to the camera and jump around like an insane asylum inmate on crack, while half-singing some of your dialogue."

Coolio: "…"

Movie Studio Exec: "…there are also racial stereotypes involved. You will be able to assert how much of a gangster you are."

Coolio: "Excuse me. It's gangsta. Not gangster."

Movie Studio Exec: "What?"

Coolio: *disapproving glare*

Yeah, that sounds about right.

So basically these characters constantly bicker with one another and never display any kind of competence. I can’t even tell you how stupid most of the dialogue in this is. Oh, so the stoner character talks about nothing but drugs all the time? The big dumb guy only thinks about getting laid? I’m sorry, but didn’t we have an important space mission going on here? These people are about as business-minded as the crackheads that live under the bridge. They make the crew of Aliens look like serious entrepreneurs in an important meeting to decide the fate of the company. There’s cajolery and good fun, and then there’s completely slacking off like morons. But what am I to expect from the ship that’s probably the class clown of the intergalactic space ship community?

So they wander around aimlessly, exchanging dumb dialogue and bickering with one another over pointless shit, because that’s what every bad screenwriter falls back on when they have no other character development to put in. They find the dead captain of the ship, who is now just a perfectly preserved, not bad-smelling at all skeleton with a cross in his hand. Apparently the future world in this movie has “outlawed” crucifixes now – huh, I guess the separation of church and state is taken much more seriously in the future.

Maybe it's an ancient artifact. WITCHCRAFT! RUN! PRAY TO YOUR GODS!

But here’s the thing – apparently nobody ever taught these people religious history, because they all think the crucifix is a big plus sign. One of the characters even says “maybe he really likes math!” Seriously, movie? They don’t have any kind of history or cultural relativeness to fall back on in this future? They haven’t even the faintest clue what a crucifix is? How dumb are these people? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, though, seeing as we live in a world now where people barely even know the Bill of Rights or who fought who in the Revolutionary War.

Suddenly I’m very sad for humanity. A moment of silence then, for our lost intelligence.

Anyway, Coolio and the muscle of the crew, Humvee, find a bunch of coffins in the loading area and start to break them open, finding nothing but sand. Coolio cuts his hand and, surprise, this leads to more uninspired bickering. Isn’t that just great? Fortunately, Coolio gets bitten by Dracula after this, when the others leave, and frankly, I think I figured out why he was chosen for this movie: it was actually a diabolical plot by the record industry to make him immortal and sell more albums. Unfortunately, they did not foresee his decline in popularity as the years went on. And so, we just got this goofy-ass performance:

Jesus Christ, he's making Peewee Herman look subtle.

Seriously, he’s out of his mind in this. It’s like they just told him to imitate Ed from Fright Night and try to outdo him in over the top wackiness. It’s totally un-subtle. Hmph. I prefer my Z-grade vampire movies to have Shakespearean level acting. Anything less is just unacceptable.

Okay, now he's just off his meds. This is the kind of performance that, if done at childrens' birthday parties, gets people thrown in jail.

So he runs around, does goofy shit, half-sings a lot of his dialogue like a crazy person, until Vice Captain Aurora shoots him a bunch of times. The bullets don’t hurt him, obviously, and then he gets Mina as his first victim. Aurora runs away, but runs into another guy, Count Orlok, who mostly just looks like a D&D player who got lost on his way to the bathroom:

"I am the game master."

This is really supposed to be our Dracula for the movie? Count Chocula was scarier. Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker’s Dracula evoked more drama. Even the prissy vampires in Underworld were cooler, and THAT is saying a lot! This guy needs to go back to Party City and get better makeup.

Anyway, he bites her and next thing we know, she’s coming in to the rest of the crew acting like everything is okay. Is she a vampire? Will she murder the rest of her crewmates? Will Batman get out of this pinch okay? Will Lassie get Old Man Thompson out of the well in time for supper? Find out all the answers and more after these messages!

Huh…that was something…and I’m pretty sure most of those questions have very little to do with the movie.  Either way, I'm not answering the last few. Too bad. Anyway, they suspect Aurora of being a vampire, and so they tie her up to the chair she’s sitting in and make her stay there as a captive. I’m fairly sure the director just wanted to exercise his bondage fetish, as if she really was a vampire, she wouldn’t have let them tie her up…but we’ll go with it, and the movie is almost over anyway.

Coolio comes back and tries to fool Humvee into letting him in, by giving him the whole “we’re both black and we said we’d stick together” speech. How has racial equality actually gone BACKWARDS in the future? Well, at least Humvee won’t actually fall for it…oh, who am I kidding; would you be even the least bit surprised if I told you he did fall for it, and in less than a minute, too?

"Bros for life!!!"

Sigh…and I was just starting to have some hope in humanity again. Thanks, Dracula 3000. Thanks a lot. I guess we should just let North Korea and Syria blow up the world now – honestly if this is the kind of future we’re in for, it might be the best move.

So Coolio and Humvee fight, and it’s all pretty stupid, but then Van Helsing comes in and shoots at Coolio some more, wasting all of his bullets. Even when Coolio gets up after being shot the first time, Van Helsing just tries again. Are you stupid? Bullets don’t kill him, you Neanderthal! Luckily Humvee stabs him with a pool cue and kills him. Note also that they didn’t have enough money to do any ‘turning to dust’ effects…lame.

You already had sand in previous scenes, guys. You could have at least jump-cutted Coolio out of the scene and put sand there...sure it would have been stupid, but what ISN'T in this movie? C'mon.

They untie Aurora when she reveals she can’t be a vampire, because she’s – dun dun dun – A ROBOT, sent to monitor how incompetent they are and get them in trouble for it like they deserve! Humvee says they should just leave her tied up, because otherwise she’s just going to get them in trouble. Well what do you think is going to happen then, dipshit? Leaving her tied up is just the stupidest idea possible.

Up in the computer room, Van Helsing and the wheelchair-bound scientist guy research ways to kill vampires. The computer passes through several phrases like ‘stakes’ and ‘sunlight,’ but for some reason, the characters just ignore those right now. They do notice that Van Helsing shares his name with the famous vampire hunter from the 1800s, and yeah, that IS a pretty big coincidence, huh? Of all the ships that could have come across a vampire, it has to be the one with a Van Helsing descendent on it. What a coinky-dink.

And when Van Helsing meets up with Orlok and fights him, Orlok says that it’s destiny that they’ve met up. Yes, truly this movie is the rightful sequel to the Dracula storyline – a generic looking white guy in his 30s and the pimply D&D-playing Dracula fighting in the middle of the rejected Jason X sets. Such heart-wrenching drama!

Oh yeah, showdown of the century, man! D&D Dracula versus Lame-O Van Hellsing! Bring it on! Who's got the popcorn?

Meanwhile, Aurora tries to get Humvee to come help save Van Helsing, but he doesn’t believe her and thinks she’s just trying to lure him into a trap. So, he’ll open a door to someone he KNOWS is a vampire, because they were friends, but when someone he knows isn’t a vampire tells him to open a door, he gets suspicious? Something about that doesn’t add up. Even though he said he wouldn’t leave, the next scene shows him leaving, simply because he’s annoyed by the scientist computer wheelchair man’s whining. What a great character. What a great movie, right?

To add insult (and comedy) to injury, Orlok kills off Van Helsing, who was supposed to be our main character, and turns him into a vampire. Van Helsing gets unceremoniously killed off by Aurora, and Orlok gets his arm ripped off in a door, and that’s the last we see of either of them. Wow. How utterly underwhelming. Oh and somewhere in the middle of all this, Orlok goes and turns Mr. Wheelchair Scientist into a vampire, making the world’s first handicapped vampire!

The most worthless vampire in the whole world! The most pointless of all Satan's creations!

Seriously, what is the point? He can’t get out of the damn wheelchair even after he turns into a vampire! How is he going to reach anyone’s neck to bite them? Just rolling him down a ramp would kill him, frankly. In the movie’s constant quest to outmatch its own stupidity, Aurora stabs him violently to death and murders him easily. When Humvee asks how she knew he was a vampire, she says “I didn’t know.” So she’s just the kind of person who violently stabs people ON THE OFF CHANCE that they might be a vampire. Very nice. Charming.

The plan they come up with is to steer the ship toward the sun and kill Orlok that way. We don’t see Orlok again, because this movie is just that amazing and cares so much about its plot. Humvee and Aurora find out they only have 12 hours until the ship goes into the sun. Aurora says that she used to be a Pleasure Bot, and the two go off to have sex off screen.

Really, at this point they weren't even trying. I mean this ending is just...WOW. It's such an insane cop out! Really I'm convinced this whole thing was just a joke. And that's why I can't take it seriously enough to get mad. Not really.

And believe it or not…that’s the last we see of them. Not fighting off Orlok, not doing anything heroic, not even remembering their dead friends…just going off to have sex without a care in the world. Then we see the ship explode, and that’s the end!

Dracula 3000 didn't do so well on opening weekend...in fact, it "bombed." In the truest sense of the word...ha ha...okay, my humor is getting as bad as the movie's. I'd better stop.

Or rather, I can’t even say ‘end,’ because it’s not an end. The movie just tapers off like they ran out of money and ideas, which, frankly, they probably did. Dracula 3000 is just about as stupid as it sounds – vampires in space? Really? It’s barely even worth reviewing at all. The only reason I did was because I found it on this abandoned spaceship, like I said. I always review things I just find in creepy abandoned places. It’s not weird at all.

Hey, what’s that? Who are you? Why are you coming closer with that menacing set of teeth? What are youAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHH! NO! DON’T EAT MY HEAD! AGGGHHHH! IT'S DRACULA FROM THE FUTURE! HE'S FOUND ME! Have mercy on my soul!

Let this review be a warning: avoid Dracula 3000! Avoid it at all costs! Remember me as a critic of films!

If anyone would actually claim any of these images, I'd go ahead and just agree they were copyrighted to you. I guess they're copyrighted to the owners. But really, I'm guessing this lost more money than it made, so not a lot of incentive there, is there?

The Month of Terror: Dracula 2000 (2000)

Amazing, a movie that actually manages to screw up the Dracula story even more than the 1991 version with that ridiculous Gary Oldman costume. I didn’t even think that was possible. Yes, Dracula 2000, brought to you by the genius minds that brought you sequels to White Noise, Pulse, Children of the Corn and Hollow Man, is another gem of a movie that you just can’t describe in a short review…so I made a really long one again, happy?

Director: Patrick Lussier

Starring: Gerard Butler, Jonny Lee Miller, Justine Waddell

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0219653/

"Don't ever fuck with an antiques dealer!"

-Jordan Chase

Our movie begins quite beautifully with scenes of London in the 1800s, with a bunch of dead people on a ship. I’d say these scenes had a point, but really I just think the director wanted to take a vacation to London, as we flash forward unceremoniously to the present day, without any kind of transition. Then we see Christopher Plummer and Jordan Chase from Dexter talking about some stuff in a room. Chase proceeds to flirt with the token attractive woman in this unnamed and vague company, who turns him down like a bad grade on a math test. Burned, Chase! Burned!

Then we see that this attractive woman is actually a part of some gang of robbers planning to break in and steal stuff. They find a secret passageway, a dungeon full of skulls and smoke and a big coffin, and, being idiots of the highest order, think that Plummer decorated the place like that to scare off thieves:

Looks like a rejected Buffy the Vampire Slayer set.

Come to think of it, why did Plummer decorate the secret passageway like that anyway? He’s clearly keeping the Dracula-coffin down there to keep it safe, so what’s the logic in decorating the place like a cheap haunted house? Why go through the trouble of putting up all those skulls and everything when he could have just put it in a room and locked the door? Not like anyone would see it if he was just using it to keep the thing in. I guess he’s just got a flair for the most ridiculous and over the top drama.

So yeah, the robbers activate a bunch of traps that were rejected from Indiana Jones 17 and a couple of them get killed off and impaled on stuff, which shocks the surviving robbers about as much as getting a letter in the mail. They just kind of shrug it off, take the coffin and go. This gets Plummer and Jordan Chase mad, as you can clearly tell by the way they scream every other line as if they’re in a terrible soap opera. Because that makes it dramatic! About as dramatic as a bunch of kids fighting on a schoolyard anyway…

We also get introduced to Mary, who has dreams apparently directed by Rob Zombie, although I would also accept ‘dreams directed by Tim Burton’ if you please:

Stop tormenting me, strobe lights and quick cuts!

She lives with her friend Lucy, they talk about boys (because that’s all girls ever do when they’re alone, you know), and that’s pretty much it. BACK TO THE ROBBERS!

They’re on a plane transporting the coffin back to wherever the hell they came from, and they all pick on this one guy for no reason except that he’s white and has a dorky Jew-fro style haircut that just begs to be made fun of. He opens the coffin after whining and complaining to himself, and is suddenly engulfed in a cloud of pot-smoke that I think was used by the writers to create the script!

Look at that hair; it's practically its own meme.

Actually it’s Dracula, played by Gerard Butler. He then proceeds to hide and wait for more idiots to come out. Which they do, leading to several long, drawn out minutes of those terrible ‘stop kidding around man!’ scenes you get in every terrible horror movie. Joy. But then using his incredible 'appearing ominously in doorways' power (which is pretty much all he does throughout this movie), Dracula turns everyone into vampires and crashes the plane.

But the wonders don’t end there, as then we get one of the strangest hallucination scenes ever as Dracula and Mary see each other through the door of the plane somehow? But one side of the door is the cockpit of the plane, and the other side is her room…and then he goes into her room, and attacks her until Lucy walks through him like a ghost? It’s hard to describe, but that’s because it’s just visually confusing as hell! I get what they were going for, but seriously, what kind of insane brain-cobble produced this anyway?

Well, I guess David Lynch was called on set to direct a scene after all...

After that, we get the BEST NEWSCASTER EVER as she wears a skimpy dress and talks incredibly dramatically about the robbers’ plane, which crashed in a lake. I mean really, saying things like ‘this is a lake of death and doom today’ is just silly. And I love how the camera-man is drooling over her the whole damn time. “I’m just recording this for my own jerk-off sessions later tonight, thanks!” But then Dracula just kills them, although even THAT is rendered incredibly silly by the fact that you see it through the camera so you can’t actually see him doing it:

"And tonight on National Enquirer News, we have a newscaster who they probably picked up from a brothel down on the bad side of town..." 

"...and flying men propelled by their own farts (that are actually vampires killing them; but that's just a conspiracy theory)!"

So then we get some exposition from Plummer on why Dracula is so evil: he hates Christianity. Yup, that’s it; just like any common acne-ridden 14 year old internet troll! Dracula’s just angsty! Oh, and apparently Christopher Plummer is actually the real Van Helsing, who kept himself alive by injecting himself with Dracula’s blood over the years just to make sure he doesn’t get out of his prison. And while doing THAT, he apparently also had time to father a daughter! And that daughter was Mary! See? It all makes sense now…except it really, really doesn’t. Let’s take a closer look at this ridiculous subplot:

First of all, how did he know that Dracula’s blood would give him any kind of special powers anyway? He’s counting on them to let him live forever, but how can he possibly tell that would work without some kind of problem occurring? Second of all, how did he know he wouldn’t run out sometime in the 100 years since he killed Dracula? What would’ve happened if he came in one day and tried to drain the blood but found out there wasn’t enough? “Whoops, my bad! Guess I should have just left it to my descendants or something, like any other sane person would have!” Third of all, he really had time to father a daughter? So much for devotion to the cause. You’d THINK a guy smart enough to figure out a way to live forever would be smart enough NOT to have sex with someone with that demonic blood in his veins! But I guess stupidity is necessary to move the plot forward!

Also I really like the Michael Jackson dance moves the hot vampire chick does in the science lab where she’s being held:

You could have at least put in "Thriller" or "Smooth Criminal" at this point...might have made the movie better...

And then we get another fight scene with some of Dracula’s goons, full of Matrix-style wire-jumping, terrible one-liners and implausible set-ups…and where are they supposed to be, anyway? Could they just not afford a real morgue, and so they had to film in a high school auditorium-slash-gymnasium?

After that, we see Dracula approaching Lucy at the video store where I’m sure they have much better movies than this one available. She decides to take him home, because I guess the creepy guy in the black trench coat who approached her in the video store is a good enough catch for her standards, and surprise surprise, he kills her soon after. Mary discovers that Lucy went off with some guy, and, jumping to the most bizarre conclusion possible, she of course automatically suspects that it’s Dracula at work. Because a hot blonde girl like this:

…couldn’t POSSIBLY have gotten a date otherwise, right?

Christopher Plummer goes to Mary’s house too and gets killed off easily by Dracula. So much for the great Van Helsing, right? Ho hum. So then we see some more of those wonderful schizophrenic editing in the Rob Zombie style as Mary returns and starts seeing things in the house. She fights some of Dracula’s posse, including the news-lady for some reason, and then runs away only to find Jordan Chase outside! They run away and go to a church, because…I guess the director felt like he hadn’t ripped off The Crow enough with all the shots of Gerard Butler wearing black perched on top of roofs, and had to compensate for his own insecurities.

Through more fight scenes that not even 4^th graders who like The Matrix would find endearing and lines so stupid that I’m surprised the actors willingly said them, the movie pretty much gets nowhere. However, there is one line so over the top and so silly that it actually makes the movie worth it…for a few seconds, anyhow. It’s when Jordan Chase is fighting off the vampire chicks. He beats them down and then screams “DON’T EVER FUCK WITH AN ANTIQUES DEALER!” at the top of his lungs, like some kind of battle cry. Yes. I believe we have a new indictment into the hall of absolute AWESOMENESS. No other line in this movie touches this level of over the top cheese.

But yeah, after that it pretty much produces nothing of worth, and I’m almost positive the writers ran out of ideas after that too, because the movie can’t even hold my interest for two seconds anymore. Jordan Chase chases the vamp-chicks around and Mary is kidnapped by Dracula and blah blah blah. They fight on the roof until it’s revealed that…DUN DUN DUN

Somebody call Mel Gibson, I think we have a new movie idea: Dracula and Jesus Christ!

No. No, you can’t be doing this, movie. You seriously can’t!

No, what are you thinking, movie? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Dracula is Judas? What? Why? What was wrong with the original story so much that you had to add this religious crap into it? It makes zero sense at all and just turns the whole thing into an even bigger joke. This isn’t Dogma or some nonsense where you can just make stuff like that up! At least in that movie it was played for comedy and satire. Here’s it’s supposed to be serious! Ugh. Let’s just finish the damn review.

So Dracula turns Mary into a vampire and tells her to bite Jordan Chase, but in a VERY SURPRISING TWIST she fakes it – didn’t see that one coming, did you? It’s only been used in EVERY OTHER MOVIE EVER MADE after all! Then he throws her off the building but she wraps some wire around his neck before she falls…and wait a minute, wouldn’t the fall barely hurt her anyway? I mean it’s been shown in this movie itself that vampires are almost invincible, so…what? Dracula burns up, Mary turns back into a human somehow, becomes a Buffy the Vampire Slayer rip-off and then we mercifully get the credits!

Phew. So in case you couldn’t tell…this was stupid as hell. It made as much sense as the ramblings of a fever-ridden fourth grader on a sugar high, the acting AND writing was terribly over-done and over-dramatic, the story was a pile of clichéd horse crap and the characters weren’t very interesting. I will say it was at least entertaining, but it was entertaining in spite of itself rather than for any actual merit. And that’s never the way to go.

So are you guys ready for the sequel?!?!? I am!