VAN HELSING (2004)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

In my review of the three Stephen Sommers MUMMY films, I noted that the second in the series was "overstuffed with incidents" but that the movie's "crazed set pieces" played to Sommers' strengths as a maker of lightweight action-adventures. 

Sommers both wrote and directed VAN HELSING, just as he did the first two MUMMY films. (He only produced the third in that series.) However, VAN HELSING lacks even the tenuous moments of human drama that made the wild action of the mummy-movies palatable. Supposedly Sommers claimed to have been a fan of the Universal "monster mashes" of the 1940s, and to be sure, those too are improbable concatenations of monster crossovers. But they had charm and some crude poetry as well. Sommers's script seems to have nothing on its metaphorical mind but trundling one action-scene after another, but in the clumsiest manner possible.

A short prequel scene establishes that Dracula (Richard Roxburgh) has employed Doctor Frankenstein to create a monster. Moments after the doctor does so, only to be murdered by the count, a mob of angry villagers attacks Frankenstein's laboratory. Though Dracula and his three harpy-like vampire brides attack the mortals, the villagers set the building on fire and the newborn monster is apparently destroyed.

A year later, the Vatican-- which maintains an order of holy warriors to exterminate monsters-- summons Gabriel Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) and sends him to Transylvania to kill Count Dracula, who has some dire plan in store for humankind. Jackman, an amnesiac with a few fragmentary memories-- he seems to remember having fought at Masada in the 6th century CE-- has just finished executing the murderous Mister Hyde, but he's game for this new monster-hunt. 

In addition, Gabriel's supposed to succor a pair of local monster-hunters from an ancient family, Velkan Valerious and his sister Anna (Kate Beckinsale). But shortly before Gabriel arrives in Transylvania, the two sibs successfully trap and kill a werewolf, a minion of Dracula. Velkan is bitten, and he soon transforms into a wolf-man and falls under the thrall of the Count.

Gabriel arrives with a comedy-relief character in tow, and sparks fly when Gabriel meets the feisty Anna. Before they exchange more than a few words, Dracula's harpy-brides attack the village.

After these fragmentary set-ups-- which utterly fail to give any human resonance to either Gabriel or Anna-- the film then falls into a pattern of barely comprehensible set-pieces in which the two of them have fights with the brides or with Hairy Velkan. In between action scenes, it's loosely revealed that Dracula wanted to use the Frankenstein Monster to revivify the vampiric children his brides bore over the years-- all of whom were born dead. Implicitly then Dracula will use his brood to conquer the world, though this is vague at best. Yet the creation of Frankenstein is not dead, and Gabriel's next mission is to keep the vampire from gaining access to the monster. He fails to do so, but Gabriel, Anna and the comedy relief assault the castle in a do-or-die effort to stymie this plot. Oh, and though Gabriel kills Velkan, the monster-hunter is bitten, meaning that he himself is doomed to be a monster now.

There's some garbled explication about how Dracula, despite being able to control werewolves, is vulnerable to being slain by one (did anyone tell Bram Stoker?) But this messy plot-device does lead to the movie's only decent sequence: a kickass battle between Dracula (in a male harpy form) and Gabriel Van Hairsing.  There's also a big reveal of Gabriel's nature-- that he's some sort of immortal who slew the mortal version of Dracula in the 13th century-- but this too is inexcusably muddled and without dramatic impact.

Hugh Jackman was apparently told to play Van Helsing like Clint Eastwood as a monster-hunter, thus giving the actor nothing to work with. Kate Beckinsale comes off a little better as Anna, though her role too is terribly underwritten. Strangely, despite the actress having shown good cinematic fighting-powers in the previous year's UNDERWORLD, Sommers doesn't give the actress any good battle-sequences, just lots of climbing, swinging around, and getting tossed around by vampire brides. On top of all that, the ending's a downer despite the world getting saved.

Once in a while, Sommers' script suggest ways this FX-fest might have been given some characterization, but evidently he thought it was enough to just keep rolling out monster-scenes-- and some of his conceptions include absurdities, like having the Frankenstein Monster pop his artificial top at incongruous moments. The FX pushed the film's cost so high that only a major box office bonanza could have redeemed VAN HELSING, but the film only enjoyed moderate success.

For what it's worth, it's said that Sommers produced a specialty cartoon with Van Helsing and other characters in which the immortal hunter's nature might have been more fully discussed, but I have no information on that short.