Cast:
Bruce Glover, Denny Sachen, Kerry Dustin, Ernest M. Garcia, Chaba
Hrotko, Tom McGowan
Director:
Peter Horak
Genre:
Comedy, Horror
Our
next movie is based on a character which has appeared in COUNTless
movies before; Dracula, (see what I did there?).
There’s
Bela Lugosi’s 1931 early Dracula, which is better than his role in
Plan 9, (however, this is mainly because he’s not dead during
filming), (click here for my Plan 9 blog)). Or Christopher Lee’s
superb Dracula in the Hammer Horror series, (this is the version
which leaps to my mind when thinking about the caped nibbler).
I
even like Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, (1992), which
admittedly did drag, but which I thought Oldman’s performance was
brilliant. And yes, like most kids in the 90’s, I did go out
and buy myself a pair of blue shaded sunglasses. Oldman looked
cool, I looked a tit.
With
so many Dracula movies already produced was there room for one more
and is this modern interpretation something to sink your teeth into
or did it just bite?
Steven,
(Danny Sachen), is devastated when his girlfriend, Julia, (Kerry
Dustin), drowns during a water skiing accident. Being a Disney
fan, he wishes upon a star that a recently drowned women will come
back to life, (he then boards a big eared elephant and flies to
Europe).
The
star misunderstands and brings Carla, (Kerry Dustin, again) back to
life! Confusingly she looks exactly like Julia, has also
recently drowned and just so happens to live in the same Czech
Republic village that Steven is on his way to…..
Steven
has a car accident on his way to the village and wakes up in a pub
owned by Carla’s dad. Confused when he sees Julia’s
doppelganger staring back at him, Steven realises that his wish must
have brought her back to life, (well d’uh!). He finds out
that this is not Julia, but in fact Carla and promptly forgets all
about his old squeeze and starts to fall in love with this new, alive
version.
Meanwhile,
Carla’s friend, Dana, (Nathalie Huot), disappears down by the lake
with no trace except some blood stained clothes. The men of the
village believe that local resident and pain in the neck, Count
Dracula, must be active again. They waste no time and recruit
Dracula’s greatest enemy, Van Helsing, (Bruce Glover).
Helsing
and Steven set about trying to defeat Dracula by visiting his castle
and trying different ways to succeed in their task. Silver
bullets do not work, a grenade is batted out of play by a violin
wielding Dracula and stakes are of the menu, (sorry).
The
pair are ready to give up but are shaken back into action when Carla
is kidnapped……
Will
Steven and Helsing manage to rescue Carla before she is turned into a
vampire? Can they finally defeat Dracula? Will the film
makers actually spend any of the budget on the movie?
The
answer to the last question is yes, but they managed to get change
from a fiver.
Die
Hard Dracula looks cheap, feels cheap and sounds cheap. No
expense was paid in order to produce this movie. I should have
liked it but as I write this blog, I am still undecided.
The
acting is bad, I mean really bad, stupendously bad, Madonna bad!
Sachen is not a strong enough actor for the lead role. Also the
character of Steven may have the sports body and good looks, but he
is whiny throughout. This is not the trait you want from the guy
you hope saves the day and you end up wanting his neck to have 2
puncture wounds by the end of the movie.
Dustin
had 2 roles and both of them were quite poor. Admittedly, Julia
was not in the movie for long but her falling into the water and
drowning was a worse dive than a Premiership footballer.
Carla’s character, on the other hand, could not decide where she
was from and straddled between East European, East Coast USA and East
Anglia. 2 bites of the acting cherry, 2 epic fails.
Bruce
Glover is probably the most famous actor, (Mr. Wint from Diamonds are
Forever, (1971)), but his Helsing is just a comic character and a far
cry from the arch nemesis of Dracula and dark Vampire hunter usually
portrayed on the silver screen. Dracula need not fear this
Helsing as he couldn’t defeat Sesame Street’s The Count, Count
Duckula or Grandpa from the Munsters.
As
for Dracula? Well he is played by 3 actors and there seems to
be fat Dracula, old Dracula and not so old Dracula. None are
scary, none are noteworthy and none will work again.
Two
things puzzle me about this Dracula. Firstly, why does he all
of a sudden have the ability to fire lightning bolts like Count Dooku
from Star Wars? Did the writer and director Peter Horak get
confused between the 2 Counts as I’ve not encountered this special
ability before? Is this like Superman IV, when a desperate
director threw in a load of new superpowers in an attempt to make a
character more interesting? (click here for my Superman IV blog)
Secondly,
why is he over-dubbed throughout the movie? This is just really
weird and as this is not a foreign film being dubbed into English, I
am at a lost as to why they have done this? The sound is pretty
lousy and is recorded in glorious chewed up cassette tape, so an
over-dub was probably needed, but for the entire movie…..?
The
soundtrack is just lifted from the aforementioned chewed up cassette
tape and is just a compilation of music recorded from Classic FM.
The opening title music is ‘Dance of the Knights’, which in the
UK is best known as the title music for the UK version of The
Apprentice. This immediately gives the start an unintentionally
funny beginning as all I can think off throughout is Lord Sir Alan of
Sugar grumpily shouting he’s ‘not a happy bunny’ at Dracula and
to Steven, ‘You had one job, bump Dracula off and you made a right
mess of it, you’re a bloody shambles, you’re fired!’.
So
was this a movie to sink your teeth into or did it just bite?
The answer is, I can’t make my mind up.
The
problem is Horak doesn’t seem to know if he is making a horror or
comedy movie. Ironically, the horror bits are funny and the
comedy bits are unfunny. I wish they had stuck to the horror
genre as I think we could have had an unintentionally funny movie on
our hands and it would have been considered so bad it’s good.
Throughout
the movie, I was reminded of Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, (2003), (click here for my The Room blog), not in terms of story, but in the sense that when it
takes itself too seriously that is when it is at it’s entertaining
best as it becomes so funny. But the problem is the comedy bits
appear and the movie falls flat again and you end up bored and
uninterested.
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