CAST: Christopher Plummer (Van Helsing), Jonny Lee Miller, Omar Epps, Lochlyn Munro, Jennifer Esposito, Shane West, Jeri Ryan, Gerard Butler, Colleen Fitzpatrick
SCR: Joel Soisson
DIR: Patrick Lussier
STUDIO: Dimension Films

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I don't get it. Help me out, readers. Give me a clue.

Duh . . . Why do they put Wes Craven's name ahead of Dracula's? As in the current theatrical release "Wes Craven's Dracula 2000." Or as in the more formal and more pretentious rendering: "Wes Craven Presents: Dracula 2000." Duh . . . Does it have something to do with crass commercialism?

Although I appreciate his many contributions to the horror genre, including the creation of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Scream" series, Craven didn't create the classic vampire character. In fact, during all his years as a film-maker, Craven has never shown a cravin' to adapt Bram Stoker's novel, or fiddle around in any way with the franchise. In no way does he owe this fictional fanged fella. What right does anyone have even to suggest ownership of something the Irish writer created more than a century ago? Duh . . . I don't care where the quotation marks come or what the original intention had been in titling this turkey.

All of that aside, why should he be expected to do something with Dracula that's any better than all the movie guys who've tried it before him? Do they really think this kind of advertising and titling is going to help, no matter how much the movie is the same old stuff that Hammer was cranking out (only better) back in the 1960s?

I'll never understand the crassness and dumbness of Hollywood movie marketing with something as enduring as the World's Best Known Bloodsucker of the Night. So many fine actors have portrayed him, and portrayed him well. Starting with Bela Lugosi and working forward to Christopher Lee and Jack Palance and Frank Langella and Klaus Kinski and Gary Oldman and . . . yeah, even Leslie Nielsen in Mel Brooks' 1995 send-up. Why blow all that heritage in 2000?

Because this is the year of the odyssey, right? Make that the bungled odyssey because here comes Craven with his choice of Gerard Butler in the role of Drac. Gerard Butler? Hell, he looks like one of those hunks who poses for sexy novel covers. Who looks more like a fashion show-off for bikini briefs, thong style. How about ruffled shirts? A threatening, menacing, deadly vampire he isn't, and will never be, no matter how many years he trains at the Copacabana School of Acting. He should get a job posing for Gentleman's Quarterly and forget movies. Drain blood money somewhere else, hunky baby.

I've got to wonder if the Weinstein boys at Dimension were just using (borrowing?) Craven's name, and the real blame for this exercise in gore and gushing blood rests in the vericose veins of Joel Soisson, who wrote the goofball, anything-goes screenplay. And I've got to wonder if Patrick Lussier, a film editor who has worked on many of Craven's earlier pictures, isn't also to blame. He worked over Soisson's script and then manned the camera without capturing an ounce of effective atmosphere. His work here is no better than it was in the God-awful "The Prophecy 3: The Ascent," which I had to endure as "Creature Features" maven for this website back in ‘98.

With the hope that the plot of "Wes Craven's Dracula 2000" is a delightful read--it sure as hell is not a fabulous watch--allow me to try and describe what at first seems indescrible. A gang of very stupid crooks led by Jennifer Esposito, a woman who keeps screaming that there has to be a gold-mine for her somewhere in the world, breaks into a subterranean vault that's kept under tight security. Among these brainless bandits are Danny Masterson, Sean Patrick Thomas and Omar Epps. Oops. The vault just happens to belong to Professor Van Helsing (Christopher Plummer, in the only decently portrayed part in the whole picture) who has been keeping Dracula's corpse enclosed in a steel coffin all these decades, staving off old age by taking an injection once in a while of Drac's own plasma, tubed up from the crypt below.

Despite some death traps that knock off two of the robbers, Esposito's bandido band escapes with the coffin in a plane headed for New Orleans, never thinking that maybe something awful is inside, something that might harm them. (Are we to believe that Esposito and her guys have never seen a vampire flick in their miserable lives? Sorry, Lussier, but it doesn't wash.) But en route, Drac escapes his steel enclosure, mainly because one of the guys is dumb enough to open it. And bend over to see what's inside. This dude does not last very long after that. Drac kills off the rest of the gangling gang and callously crashes the airship into a swampland. (The crooks don't die, they are resurrected as disciples of Dracula. The busty women become the brides of Dracula and seduce other men and women by wearing flimsy negligees and flipping around through the air, Matrix style.)

Meanwhile, we cut to New Orleans where Van Helsing's long-estranged daughter (Justine Waddell) is having nightmares that Dracula is coming into her bedroom. Why there is a weird psychic link between the two is never clearly established. (In this movie anything can happen without explanation, and does.) But one thing is established: she works for a Virgin Records store. The "Virgin" is everywhere you look. They might have even stamped it on her forehead, she acts like one. (I bet Craven and the Weinstein boys got a lot of free music CDs after this movie was made.)

The daughter, still surrounded by a lot of "Virgin" logos, snaps out of it and looks puzzled and worried. She figures she's having a bad dream, but something tells her it's more than a dream. Could some strange for be entering her life? Boy, is she dumb. She could have passed the test to join the gang of grave robbers.

Meanwhile, Van Helsing and his young assistant (Jonny Lee Miller) have arrived in New Orleans armed with an odd collection of weapons that includes a device that fires elongated bullets that serve as vampire-killing "stakes" when they hit their targets. A few wicked looking, curved knives are thrown in, because don't forget, you can also kill a vampire by cutting off its head. So heads fly through the air with great frequency, and bodies are punctured by assorted stakes, bullets and other sharp things that just happen to fall into the frame.

Anyway, Dracula kills off Von Helsing and puts his body under a bed for his daughter to find, and then takes off after the daughter, who's stilled standing close to more "Virgin" signs. He keeps wooing her with his hypnotic charm and then starts sinking his fangs into her neck. And talks a lot about the art of sharing blood. Blood of my blood, blood of your blood, all that stuff that Christopher Lee did a lot better in those British films. Your blood, my blood, hell, we all got blood, kid. The two fly through the air, Matrix style, flipping and flopping and plopping. The excitement builds to a crashing crescendo -- or a crashing bore, depending on your outlook.

Finally, Drac gets her up on a rooftop in New Orleans, during the height of Mardi Gras, where he reveals that his true identity is Iscariot Judas, the dude who betrayed Jesus Christ for a handful of silver and ended up hanging himself. This may sound like an ingenious twist on an old theme, but its biblical significance pales and seems pretty ludicrous when Dracula ends up hanging from a crucifix on top of the building, with the sun coming up over the horizon and threatening to burn him to death. And . . . but why go on. We all ended up giving several pieces of silver to the greatest Judas of all, Dimension Films.

You can see that the real blood getting sucked here is the blood of America with a lousy Dracula movie that deserved to go directly to video, to proudly take its place alongside the box for "The Prophecy 3: The Ascent." Unfortunately, Dimension had the clout and dough to get it into distribution. Our tough luck.

Oh, I forgot to mention one actor who once played Dracula. His name was Max Schreck and he starred in F. W. Murnau's silent classic, "Nosferatu." Guess what. A movie is coming out soon called "Shadow of the Vampire" and just from the trailer it looks like it's going to be a helluva lot better than "Wes Craven's Dracula 2000." "Shadow of the Vampire" promises, in effective black and white photography, how Murnau made his movie with Schreck, only it appears Schreck might have been a real vampire with designs on sucking up to the producer and various cast members.

I just wish Wes Craven hadn't sucked up to the Weinstein boys.

--reviewed by JOHN STANLEY