Main cast: Casper Van Dien (Captain Abraham Van Helsing), Erika Eleniak (Aurora Ash), Coolio (187), Alexandra Kamp (Mina Murry), Grant Swanby (Arthur “The Professor” Holmwood), Langley Kirkwood (Orlock), Tiny Lister (Humvee), and Udo Kier (Captain Varna)
Director: Darrell James Roodt
Looking at the cast list, you may think to yourself that this straight-to-crapper Dracula 3000 would be a glorious B-grade cheese fest. No, it isn’t. Trust me, this movie has no redeeming camp value at all. No, Casper Van Dien doesn’t even have the decency to show any skin and neither does Erika Eleniak. Boys and girls, there is really no reason to watch this shockingly un-amusing movie unless you want to spend some time waiting for the lobotomist’s schedule to be cleared. By the way, this movie is not a sequel to Dracula 2000 so don’t be fooled.
Set in – what else? – year 3000, this movie has a spacecraft crew stopping by at this Transylvania Station only to check out why the space station is deserted. The fact that there is a VCR in the space station when we’re supposed to be in the fourth millennium should have warned them to flee but noooo. The most irritating of the bunch, 187, bites the dust quickly only to be reincarnated as a vampire. That’s when Capt Abraham Van Helsing and his crew realize that they are now being stalked by Count Orlock, our vampire, who is hoping to make a permanent migration from the dead planet of Transylvania in the Carpathian galaxy to Earth.
There are so many things wrong in this movie. For example, Orlock isn’t threatening or even menacing. Whenever he appears on screen with his ridiculous pointed cape and pudgy physique, he reminds me of an out-of-shape accountant in a Halloween party instead of a genuinely scary bad-ass monster. Coolio overacts and hence becomes unwatchable instead of entertaining, with his line to Erika Eleniak’s Aurora Ash (“Did I ever tell you how many times I’d see you and want to ejaculate all over your bazonkas? I want to watch my anaconda spit all over your snow-white ass!”) qualifying as one of the worst examples of why people with low mental capabilities should never be allowed to write movie scripts.
The director and the scriptwriters (of which the director is one of them, and oh my heck, I can’t imagine that it takes more than one idiot to come up with a script this dumb) can’t make up their mind as to whether they should go for camp or straight-out sobriety. But their idea of “genuinely scary movie” consists of ripping-off scenes wholesale from movies like Alien Resurrection, only this time their budget is probably $500 and it shows. In the last thirty seconds or so in this movie, they decide to abandon all pretenses at presenting a sober horror movie and go for camp. Since it’s the last thirty seconds of the movie, it’s an understatement of all understatements for me to say that it’s too late and they really shouldn’t have bothered on my behalf.
I can go into details about the idiots in the movie, the plot illogicality, the blatant rip-offs of scenes from other comparatively better movies, but there’s no point, really. This movie boasts spectacularly unfunny moments, awkward pacing, bad special effects, a “villain” that makes me laugh hysterically at how ridiculous he is, and a belated attempt at redeeming camp (in the last thirty seconds!) that only drives home how stupid this movie is. You haven’t suffered brain damage with the best of them until you’ve seen Fat Lard Dracula in this movie screaming like a kiddie in his first visit to the dentist.
And of course, the ultimate insult is being that Casper Van Dien (or Elena Eleniak for the guys) doesn’t even have the decency to get naked or at least show some bare butt to give people a reason to risk multiple thrombosis of the brain by watching this movie. Watch this movie only you have plenty of alcohol at hand or a spare brain after your brain explodes at the end of this movie.
