Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2004 11:15 am
Safe to read. "Spoiler point" is marked below.
I give it a 6.5 out of 10.
If I had it on DVD I'd watch it every once in awhile.
I'm not a big fan of traditional horror. The old Dracula films always seemed cheesey to me so I haven't watched them and therfore wasn't familiar with the Van Helsing character. Abraham Van Helsing was created by Bran Stoker as the force of good who battles Dracula's evil. For this movie they changed his first name to Gabriel, and made him a combination of Blade (a guy with a gimp sidekick who provides him with fancy weapons that wouldn't work in real life) and Jack Crow (the Vatican's vampire killer from John Carpenter's Vampires).
**SPOILER**
**SPOILER**
**SPOILER**
**SPOILER**
**SPOILER**
Oh yeah, and they made Van Helsing an amnesiac who finally discovers that he's "the left hand of God" who originally killed Dracula. I can only assume that they were trying to allude to him being the angel Gabriel, but they don't elaborate on this, and there's no real reason (storywise) why he should forget this. The plot was not enhanced at all by Van Helsing not knowing who he was, nor was the revelation anything special.
Has anybody ever tried to swing from a rope with just one hand? I have. The fall was painful. Van Helsing has more unpossible rope swinging than any two 1950's pirate or Robin Hood movies combined.
But really, you don't watch these movies because you want to see something realistic, and cheesey lines are expected, so I can't fault the film too much for them. I'd definatly watch it again if I didn't have to pay for it. It's pretty mindless, but that's what you have to expect from these types of movies.
Things that annoyed me most:
1) All that damn rope swinging.
2) Hot chicks wearing high heels to fight monsters.
3) Stupid baby vampires (that look like toenail fungus with wings!).
I give it a 6.5 out of 10.
If I had it on DVD I'd watch it every once in awhile.
I'm not a big fan of traditional horror. The old Dracula films always seemed cheesey to me so I haven't watched them and therfore wasn't familiar with the Van Helsing character. Abraham Van Helsing was created by Bran Stoker as the force of good who battles Dracula's evil. For this movie they changed his first name to Gabriel, and made him a combination of Blade (a guy with a gimp sidekick who provides him with fancy weapons that wouldn't work in real life) and Jack Crow (the Vatican's vampire killer from John Carpenter's Vampires).
**SPOILER**
**SPOILER**
**SPOILER**
**SPOILER**
**SPOILER**
Oh yeah, and they made Van Helsing an amnesiac who finally discovers that he's "the left hand of God" who originally killed Dracula. I can only assume that they were trying to allude to him being the angel Gabriel, but they don't elaborate on this, and there's no real reason (storywise) why he should forget this. The plot was not enhanced at all by Van Helsing not knowing who he was, nor was the revelation anything special.
Has anybody ever tried to swing from a rope with just one hand? I have. The fall was painful. Van Helsing has more unpossible rope swinging than any two 1950's pirate or Robin Hood movies combined.
But really, you don't watch these movies because you want to see something realistic, and cheesey lines are expected, so I can't fault the film too much for them. I'd definatly watch it again if I didn't have to pay for it. It's pretty mindless, but that's what you have to expect from these types of movies.
Things that annoyed me most:
1) All that damn rope swinging.
2) Hot chicks wearing high heels to fight monsters.
3) Stupid baby vampires (that look like toenail fungus with wings!).