Last year I found at Big Lots the collector’s edition DVD of Van Helsing<\/i>. Came in a brown box, had a couple of extra discs that included some of the original Universal Monsters movies. It was, I think, five dollars, and since I hadn’t seen Van Helsing<\/i> since the weekend it came out, I picked it up.<\/p>\n
I didn’t like Van Helsing<\/a><\/i> when it came out. I called it, at the time, “a stupid fucking piece of shit<\/a>,” a judgment that several of my friends called unnecessarily harsh. At the time, I worked for EB Games, we had to push the living hell out of the Van Helsing<\/i> tie-in game, and one of my friend suggested that it was because of that experience (the game, frankly, was terrible, and trying to sell a godawful game sapped one’s soul) that I hated the movie. Another suggested that my love of the Universal Monsters movies should have forgiven Van Helsing<\/i>‘s sins; “Allyn, they’re not very good movies.”<\/p>\n Maybe time would make a difference. Maybe Van Helsing<\/i> wasn’t really that<\/i> bad.<\/p>\n This was what I thought, anyway, as I bought the collector’s edition.<\/p>\n No. Van Helsing<\/i> really was that bad. Time wasn’t kind to it at all.<\/p>\n There are things about Van Helsing<\/i> that I like. There are a few scenes that I think, on their own and placed in a different movie, are actually interesting and have potential. I like Van Helsing<\/i>‘s version of the Frankenstein Monster.<\/p>\n But the overall effect of the movie is unremitting stupidity. (The werewolf\/full moon thing always bugged me.) To me, Van Helsing<\/i> exists to look pretty. It has no existence beyond that.<\/p>\n Also, Richard Roxburgh is, by far, one of the worst screen Draculas ever. Yes, even worse than Leslie Nielson. (Roxburgh is, I believe, the only actor to portray Sherlock Holmes, Professor Moriarty, and Dracula on screen.)<\/p>\n The film of Van Helsing<\/i>‘s ilk that I do enjoy is LXG<\/i>. This mystifies many people, including the friends cited above, because LXG<\/i> (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen<\/i>, that is) is reputed to be an even dumber film than Van Helsing<\/i>. I can’t even say I like LXG<\/i> for the Alan Moore factor; I’m indifferent at best to the League<\/i> comics. (For that matter, LXG<\/i> has as much in common with its source material as From Hell<\/i>; outside of the names of characters and basic relationships between them, the films go off in their own directions.) I just come away from LXG<\/i> feeling entertained; the character arcs and the narrative arcs generally work for me in ways that Van Helsing<\/i>‘s don’t, though anything involving the Nautilus is as absurd as anything involving Dracula’s magic realm in Van Helsing<\/i>.<\/p>\n One last thing on LXG<\/i>. I see Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows<\/i><\/a> as LXG<\/i> done better — or done right. Besides sharing a villain — Professor Moriarty — the films share the villain’s plot — upset the balance of power in Europe to tip the Great Powers toward a world war and then profit by selling both sides technologically advanced munitions. That was something that struck me several months ago, and I was amused by it.<\/p>\n Anyway. Van Helsing<\/i>. Yes. A deeply stupid film.<\/p>\n Though if a Hollywood producer came to me and said, “Van Helsing 2<\/i> — go,” I know what my pitch would be. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last year I found at Big Lots the collector’s edition DVD of Van Helsing. Came in a brown box, had a couple of extra discs that included some of the original Universal Monsters movies. It was, I think, five dollars, and since I hadn’t seen Van Helsing since the weekend it came out, I pickedContinue reading “Van Helsing Revisited”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29300,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[4134,4216,4208,4214,4215,875],"class_list":["post-6225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-dracula","tag-frankenstein","tag-hugh-jackman","tag-richard-roxburgh","tag-universal-monsters","tag-van-helsing","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}