Oct 092005
 
two reels

One hundred years ago, the youthful vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing (Rhett Giles) killed Dracula, but failed to protect his wife from a lesser vampire prince, Sebastien (Andreas Beckett).  This caused Van Helsing to make a deal with the Church, making him immortal as long as a vampire prince survives.  Since that time, he has destroyed the nosferatu, and the few that remain exist as homeless beggars, abstaining from human blood so they won’t get caught.  But Arianna (Denise Boutte), one of the most powerful of the undead, brings Sebastien blood, which reinvigorates him, and he leads the vampires back into action.  It is up to Van Helsing to recruit a band of religious warriors and stop the monsters.

After Van Helsing, it was inevitable that smaller production companies would start pumping out Abraham Van Helsing action hero films.  It beats the old version of the character, an elderly moral authority, but since he was always dull in that form, that’s not saying a lot.  How many films of this old-made-young, stuffy doctor, running around with an arsenal, is too many?  However many that might be, this is one over it.

But, ignoring the unnecessary and repetitive nature of this project, how does Bram Stoker’s Way Of The Vampire stand up?  It’s a mixed bag.  The low budget is obvious, but some innovative, if overdone camerawork and lighting effects distract from the low production values.  The b&w prolog, the sepia toned vampire perspective, and the slow-motion/fast-motion movements of the vamps give the film a sense of style often lacking in monster films that come from the shallow end of the funding pool.

The script is uneven.  Too much time is spent with Van Helsing training people we don’t care about and wish weren’t in the film, and normal people, such as police and hospital administrators (who might have problems with Van Helsing cutting bodies apart in an operating room), are missing.  But the reemergence of the vampires after years of hiding is an idea that has legs.  Painting them as street people gives the picture a nice, revolution-of-the-poor feeling

The playboy vampire prince, who would rather feast on naked young girls than plan the defeat of his enemy, isn’t an original personality, but one that’s still fun onscreen.  And Arianna, the warrior vamp who has a more realistic notion of how to survive, supplies a feeling of needed satisfaction when no one else is doing anything sensible.  Unfortunately, Van Helsing is dry as bone (is this guy ever, in any film, interesting?).  His semi-girlfriend has no discernible personality, as is the case with all the other humans and just about all of the vampires.

So, we’ve got a direct-to-video vampire movie with some skill behind the camera, and a little blood and skin in front of it.  It is almost fun.  Where it falls down is with the acting.  The best job is done by Denise Boutte, and she’s not up to the level of an extra in any mainstream film.  The rest make her look like an Oscar nominee.   Rhett Giles and Andreas Beckett are impossible to believe in their roles, but at least I can tell that they are actors.  The majority of the figures on screen appear to be whoever was hanging out at the local bar when the director realized he didn’t have a cast.  Their tones rarely have anything to do with how they should be feeling, but as they tend to shuffle and look uncomfortably at the floor, I’m guessing what they are feeling is an intense desire to leave and get another shot of bourbon.

There isn’t nearly enough gore and nudity to put this into the amusing, exploitation category.  That means the talent of the performers is important.  To bad they had none.  Maybe if they’d been given some help with clever dialog or complex motivations…but they weren’t.

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