Van Helsing (2004)
Directed by Stephen Sommers
Famed monster slayer Gabriel Van Helsing is dispatched to Transylvania to assist the last of the Valerious bloodline in defeating Count Dracula. Anna Valerious reveals that Dracula has formed an unholy alliance with Dr. Frankenstein's monster and is hell-bent on exacting a centuries-old curse on her family.
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What critics compared Van Helsing to
With its anachronistic weaponry, horror themes, and references to well-known stories, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is most reminiscent of Hugh Jackman's Van Helsing.
Stephen Sommers's Van Helsing was almost universally panned upon its release in mid-2004, but looking back now, the rhetoric surrounding its critical impalement reads as oddly dated: Rex Reed, in a review typical of its broader reception, called it "a noisy, nasty and repulsive video game-slash-theme park haunted-house ride," all but heralding its arrival as the death of a more sensible cinema.
Last year's movie version of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter didn't exactly blow the roof of the multiplex, nobody really remembers The Brothers Grimm, and the less that's said about Stephen Sommers' insufferable Van Helsing experiment, the better.
Think Army of Darkness rather than Van Helsing , an R-rated version of the famous Brothers Grimm tale that’s a bit of ridiculous fun.
They were shooting for sort of a witch hunting “Zombieland,” an f-bomb riddled “Van Helsing” packed with comical anachronisms – a Bavarian forest past with witch trials, pump shotguns and primitive tasers, where bottles of milk have woodcut pictures of “Missing Children” on the labels.
For one, it's not outrageously dumber than its revisionist folklore-themed predecessors "Van Helsing," "Red Riding Hood" or TV's "Once Upon a Time," and it's far more goofily violent.
Some of these are likely beyond his control but they result in a generic vampire tale in the Underworld vein that comes closer to the infamous Van Helsing than a memorable re-interpretation of a legendary monster.
Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 Dracula was one of first films to recently paint the world’s most famous vampire as a tragic figure less bent on global domination (see the ridiculous Van Helsing for details).
Such as in 2004’s “Van Helsing” with the vampire hunter Hugh Jackman, sometimes Dracula is just a character within a larger story.
It had the odd effect of making me look back on a previous Universal monster mash, the miserable Van Helsing, with a degree of fondness; its Dracula was played with efflorescent wit by Richard Roxburgh, who knew how to do it — play with the accent as though it were taffy, and be more arch than a roomful of drag queens.
It’s no Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (and it’s a hell of a lot better than Van Helsing), but Dracula Untold can at least take credit for being a slick, quick, and almost willfully silly genre concoction.
A double-werewolf smackdown feels too much like " Van Helsing ," a scene in London is nearly wasted, and Geraldine Chaplin , as the old gypsy Maleva, is frankly no Maria Ouspenskaya .
We tolerated the Mummy remake because it was big and fun (the sequels and spin-offs less so), but we dismissed the chock-full-of-monsters Van Helsing for being ludicrous and silly.
Anthony Hopkins, in his second classic horror remake (he was Van Helsing in Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula), pops up now and again looking malevolent, but Sir John is more a necessity of the plot than a legitimate character.
Unlike Van Helsing, however, they’ve learned their lesson about messing about with their successful formula of old and this new wolfman movie is based on the classic one – going so far as using Curt Siodmak’s 1941 screenplay as the template for this fresh go round.
Resting comfortably between the shrieking borefest that was Van Helsing and the lush gorefest of Sleepy Hollow, The Wolfman is not the unmitigated disaster that many were expecting … or even, let’s admit it, hoping for.
But compared to Van Helsing (2004), Universal's last exercise in high-decibel horror schlock, this is fairly satisfying, particularly a ghoulish episode in a Victorian insane asylum.
The comic book version of Sabbac is this beefy and beastly big horned beast of a demon whereas the film version of him is clunky and is along the lines of the bestial form of Dracula in the 2004 Van Helsing movie.
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Van Helsing would be a notorious flop only a few years later, and their subsequent attempts to capture the same ground in the past decade — Dracula: Untold , the 2017 version of The Mummy — would each fail in their own spectacular way (an entire cinematic universe crumbled a few years back, and nobody really noticed or cared).
"The Creature from the Black Lagoon," "The Wolfman," "The Bride of Frankenstein," and "Van Helsing" were all confirmed to be parts of the series in addition to "The Invisible Man," but Universal made the unfortunate mistake of kicking things off with a bland and boring reboot of "The Mummy."
Although most of Universal’s one-shot horror flicks in the 21st century have proven to be dreadful ( Van Helsing , The Wolfman , Dracula Untold ), that didn’t stop the studio from plundering its priceless past by launching a new interconnected franchise with the release of 2017’s The Mummy .
Director Genndy Tartakovsky, a veteran of animated TV shows Star Wars: Clone Wars and The Powerpuff Girls, is tasked with bringing these disparate characters together, something that stumped the makers of 2004 misfire Van Helsing.
I did this once with Van Helsing, the 2004 vampire equivalent of The Last Witch Hunter.
Director Daniel Espinosa ( Life, Safe House ) has plenty of fun with the CGI, and while the facial morphing is mighty impressive, the increased battle sequences end up trending more toward soulless, Van Helsing -style gymnastics.
Channeling the energy of flat CGI-heavy early 2000s flicks such as Van Helsing , Morbius makes minimal effort to justify its existence beyond the obvious afterthought of tying it into a larger cinematic universe.
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All I know is it was possibly the worst case of CGI effects I’ve seen since Van Helsing .
Reminding me a great deal of 1989’s Sylvester Stallone/Kurt Russell cartoonish (if still slightly watchable) showcase Tango & Cash as well as director Stephen Sommer’s 2004 abomination Van Helsing, this is as annoyingly bludgeoning a major Hollywood spectacle as any I can recollect in ages.