The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)

"An anthropologist goes to Haiti after hearing rumours about a drug used by black magic practitioners to turn people into zombies."

It's very windy outside (and inside too now that I've just had a plate full of chips and beans), so what better way to end my "Hallowe'en Countdown" than with Wes Craven's zombie movie.

You don't see the connection in that segue, do you? It's okay, there isn't one other than the tenuous link between Haiti being destroyed by an earthquake a couple of years ago and the current "Frankenstorm" allegedly being about to destroy the East coast of America. It's just like how there's no connection between zombies or slashers and Hallowe'en, but that hasn't stopped other horror bloggers from writing about them for the last month.

Even though I've tried to keep my own reviews on topic during this month with lots of ghosties, witches, and other supernatural entities, "The Serpent and the Rainbow" has been haunting me ever since I got it in Universal's "Cult Horror Collection" 4-movie pack (along with "Phantasm II", "The Funhouse" and "Sssssss"). I remembered it as being a decent thriller rather than a horror so I couldn't wait any longer to see if it would still hold up today.

Inspired by the book "The Serpent and the Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist's Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombis, and Magic", this has to be one of the most overambitious movies Wes Craven ever made. It's certainly a far more realistic and "back to basics" depiction of zombies than George A. Romero's ghouls. The zombies here are the drugged, hypnotised and brainwashed kind as in "White Zombie" (1932) or "I Walked with a Zombie" (1943).

The filming in Haiti and the Dominican Republic adds a lot to the atmosphere even though the voodoo rituals depicted are full of typical Hollywood excesses and clichés. In its favour, "The Serpent and the Rainbow" includes more details about voodoo and Haitian black magic than "The Vineyard" (1989), for instance, but they are still rather minimal and contrived.

Standout moments in "The Serpent and the Rainbow" include Bill Pullman wrestling with a very tame jaguar, Michael Gough being not very different from Alfred in the "Batman" movies for all of five minutes, and of course, the lovely Cathy Tyson constantly forgetting which accent to use and giving a quick flash of her boobs.

Most people rave about Zakes Mokae who is, without doubt, very sinister as Dargent Peytraud, but I found Brent Jennings to be far more entertaining as Louis Mozart. The scenes with Bill Pullman and Brent Jennings playing off each other are the best in the movie.

I wish I could say the same for every other scene that Bill Pullman is in, but I've never liked him as an actor. His role as Dennis Alan is, however, one of his best despite barely rising above two-dimensional. What do you expect though? This is a Wes Craven movie after all.

I'm not sure if it was added as a joke or a cliché, but one thing to remember from "The Serpent and the Rainbow" is that screaming, "I'm a U.S. citizen!" will never do an American any good at all. The rest of the world doesn't care, hates Americans anyway, and identifying himself as such a coddled, easy target in such a foolish manner is more likely to get the shouter's head kicked in than anything else. Oh yes, the xenophobia is rife in "The Serpent and the Rainbow", and with good reason given the political unrest in the background.

If you can't stand Bill Pullman constantly grinning and want "The Serpent and the Rainbow" to end in a downbeat way then stop the movie at 1 hour and 20 minutes. If you want to see a lame and formulaic horror movie ending full of explosions and dated effects, just continue to watch the last 17 minutes. In fairness, the final payoff scene is nicely done, but the silliness preceding it will probably make you groan in disbelief.

Overall, "The Serpent and the Rainbow" is a slightly more cerebral '80s horror movie than all the Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers tripe, and is well worth rewatching at this time of year (or any other for that matter).

Anyway, watch out for all the blustery winds and rain which the TV news is unnecessarily sensationalising. There's no need to panic, the stores will still be open, and you don't need to buy every can of beans and soup in the supermarkets. If you still have electricity, just stay safe indoors and watch some scary movies. It's Hallowe'en tomorrow!

Dracula III: Legacy (2005)

"In the near future, Uffizi and Luke travel to the remote reaches of war torn Romania to rescue Elizabeth and finish the vampire once and for all. Along the way, they encounter TV news journalists and a corps of rebels trying to fight the vampire uprising which plagues their country."

As much as it's silly to even hope for the second sequel in a trilogy to be worthwhile, I was still expecting "Dracula III: Legacy" to be entertaining. I know that I should have learned my lesson way back when "Return of the Jedi" turned out to be a steaming pile of crap. I even saw the pattern forming with "The Godfather: Part III". Unfortunately, I have remained overly optimistic up to and past the recent awfulness of "The Dark Knight Rises". One day, I'm sure someone will be able to make a trilogy with a decent final third. Ah, but what do I care about non-horror movies anyway?

With all the positivity that a true horror fan could muster, I loaded my "Dracula III: Legacy" DVD into the player, and was thanked with one of the most boring and insulting pieces of lousy filmmaking that I have ever seen in my life. What a shame!

Even a day later, I still feel emotionally drained by the whole horrid experience, but not in the cathartic way that leads to a comfy sleep wrapped up in cats. No, in this case, I was drained of anything good that I could possibly say about "Dracula III: Legacy". As a vampire movie, it certainly did its job in sucking the joy right out of me.

Just look at the picture above. Do these guys look like vampire-hunters to you? Doesn't it look like a scene from some really bad comedy about a homeless guy and his mentally challenged friend? I'll let you decide which is which. Honestly, I think Patrick Lussier may have even intended for this movie to be the one which I jokingly just described because whatever he created here was certainly nothing like "Dracula II: Ascension".

While it may have had the same characters, promoting the wrong two of them to lead status was a schoolboy error. From the ending of the previous movie, I wanted to see more of Diane Neal and Stephen Billington bringing a reign of terror to the world as the new vampiric royal couple. I did not want to see any more of Jason Scott Lee's character who was supposed to be left for dead with an arrow through his heart, and I certainly didn't want a lowly morgue orderly to become a hamfisted and ham-acted hero.

Although their travels through war-torn Romania were interesting in a completely anachronistic and xenophobic way, it was pretty obvious that the filming was only done there because it was cheap. I know that "Dracula II: Ascension" was filmed in Romania too (at the same time as this in 2002), but the former had the right pace, imagination, and, I would make a guess, used up the bulk of the available budget. This third part was nothing but leftovers or sloppy seconds.

What happened to Dracula and his lovely bride? Replacing the most attractive female with Alexandra Westcourt as a reporter covering the war didn't make up for it. As pretty as she was, she was hardly a sexy vampiress.

Dracula didn't even make an appearance until the end and had only about as much on screen time as the combined (and rather pointless) cameos by Roy Scheider in both films. To make matters worse, Stephen Billington was replaced by Rutger Hauer! What the hell? Hello? Did nobody notice how awful he was at playing the vampire Lothos in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (1992)? That was such a cringeworthy Rutger Hauer role that it is now the stuff of legend.

I can forgive whoever cast Rutger Hauer as Dracula for not realising that his inability to play a vampire would also be apparent to anyone who saw him suck as Kurt Barlow in the "Salem's Lot" remake since, although that was made in 2004 and "Dracula III: Legacy" was released in 2005, chronologically, this movie was made first. I wonder why Stephen Billington didn't continue in the part? Was he written out to give Rutger Hauer a job or just to add a recognisable cult name to the cast? Continuity had been thrown out of the window with the first sequel so I'm sure nobody even questioned the decision.

At least the gorgeous Elizabeth returned for a few minutes near the end, and the fight between Dracula and Father Uffizi provided some much needed action in any otherwise almost completely actionless borefest. It again made no difference that the Dracula who could never be killed created a huge plothole in the twist ending. Or did it? I'm still not entirely convinced that something other than the obvious hadn't been set up for yet another lacklustre sequel.

What a total disappointment. I now have one of Patrick Lussier's "Dracula" movies rated as very good, one as average, and there's only one place that this can go. With great regret, I now consign "Dracula III: Legacy" to The Dungeon. May it rot in peace.

Dracula II: Ascension (2003)

"The burned corpse of Dracula (Stephen Billington) is revived by a wheelchair-bound scientist, Lowell (Craig Sheffer), and his devoted students in an effort to cure Lowell of a fatal disease."

Would you believe that a direct-to-video sequel could actually be good? No? I'm still not sure if it's any better than "Dracula 2000" technically, but I have to say that I had a thoroughly enjoyable experience watching "Dracula II: Ascension" for the very first time.

As I said in a previous post, I had no idea that any sequels to "Dracula 2000" even existed until I recently bought the DVD pack of all of them. Either my local Blockbuster in England didn't bother to get them, or I was interested in other things at the time. I know it's hard to believe, but, really, I do have other hobbies.

Anyway, "Dracula II: Ascension" was apparently filmed back-to-back with the second sequel, "Dracula III: Legacy" (which didn't get released until 2005 for some reason), and so is really the first half of a completely different story rather than continuing with the same cast of characters from "Dracula 2000". Thus, there's no sign of Gerard Butler, Jonny Lee Miller or even Justine Waddell. The absence of the latter two pleased me greatly.

Apart from the director, Patrick Lussier, being the same, and the title having "Dracula" in it, there's only the slightest link possible with the original film. The burned corpse of Dracula, which was apparently left to the local authorities to cut down from the illuminated Jesus sign, provide the vampire body which is the centre of all the shenanigans which follow. Strangely, he's never once referred to as "Dracula" during the whole movie, and he's blond like Lestat, so make of that what you will.

Of course, "Dracula II: Ascension" owes more to "Blade" than it does to anything by Anne Rice. Jason Scott Lee plays a laconic, half-vampire, Catholic priest to the best of his ability, but the "Blade" influence overshadows his ethnicity. I'm not entirely certain, but I think the comic book version of "Blade" was supposed to be English. Maybe I'm confusing him with someone else since it's been years since I read a comic. The point is, it doesn't matter if a vampire-hunter is black, white, yellow or purple because "Captain Kronos" was the first anyway. You thought I was going to say "Blade" again then, didn't you?

Now that I've brought "Captain Kronos" up, I'm sure he was the first character I remember who was bitten by a vampire and survived. Other than the mythology about destroying the head vampire to release the victims as invented by Bram Stoker, there wasn't any attempt to change that prior to Hammer. In the Wes Craven/Patrick Lussier "Dracula 2000" story, Dracula cannot be killed, so obviously they had to do something new which was actually done before slightly differently. Thus, you have Father Uffizi (Jason Scott Lee) having to very painfully burn the vampire infection out of himself in sunlight every morning. Presumably any other victim would have to do the same thing or turn into a vampire.

Obviously, at least one person wants to become a vampire in "Dracula II: Ascension" otherwise there wouldn't have been any need to steal Dracula's body from a morgue, chain it up under spotlights in a drained indoor swimming pool, or conduct cruel experiments on it. It isn't exactly "torture porn" by any stretch of the imagination though. If you've seen "Blade" then it isn't very original either. I'm tempted to throw in "Day of the Dead" as an influence too, but really any movie where a monster was captured and experimented on could have inspired this.

Usually I like to run through the cast at this point in a review and say what I thought of them, but I honestly didn't recognise any of the actors apart from Jason Scott Lee. I've probably seen them all in different things over the years, but I don't know their names without looking them up on the IMDb.

The disabled Professor (who is a big character in this) is played by Craig Sheffer. I thought he was channelling Gary Busey for most of his role so finding out that he wasn't a Busey was a surprise. John Light plays an English guy named Eric and there's nobody who was more shocked than me to find out that he was married to Neve Campbell.

As for the rest of the cast, who cares? The pretty girl, Diane Neal, who plays Elizabeth is very lovely and, of course, her wannabe boyfriend, Luke, I now know was played by Jason London. Are they famous on American TV or something? To me, they were unknowns.

It's only from the synopsis that I even knew that Dracula is played by Stephen Billington. At one point I thought he looked just like a younger version of Rutger Hauer. I only realised the irony of that thought after I'd watched "Dracula III: Legacy" later.

It doesn't matter if I'd never heard of any of the actors in this before anyway since they all do a really good job. I didn't notice any particularly weak links among them or even anything too horrible about the dialogue. There were a few smartass one-liners, but nothing stupidly comedic.

The effects are really good with lots of blood everywhere although only half a dozen moments could really be described as "gory". One of those involves a dead cat which I'd rather forget about, but I suppose it was necessary to that part of the story. As ever, I can't say that anything is scary in this unless you overthink it all.

I learned a couple of things about vampires from "Dracula II: Ascension" which I probably knew before but had forgotten. I'm not going to tell you what they were because I'm going to recommend that you watch this movie for yourself. You've probably already spotted that I've embedded the full movie from YouTube at the top of this review so you don't even have to go to Wal-mart or Kmart to grab a barebones copy from the $5 bargain DVD bins.

I enjoyed "Dracula II: Ascension" so much that I'm going to put it into "The Vault". It wasn't a new film, but it was new to me, and it was way above what I expected.

Dracula 2000 (2000)

"A group of thieves break into a chamber expecting to find paintings, but instead they release the count himself, who travels to New Orleans to find his nemesis' daughter, Mary Van Helsing."

One of the best things about having already reviewed a movie with a slightly different title in the UK is that I can review it all over again without messing up the way Blogger automatically assigns a URL to the post. An even greater thing is that, several years on from when I originally wrote that review, I now get the chance to write a better one which doesn't suck quite as much even if the movie itself still does.

Having rewatched "Dracula 2000", a movie directed by Patrick Lussier not Wes Craven (as the artwork on the Miramax DVD might fool you into thinking), I grudgingly have to admit that I sort of enjoyed it. It was still pretty bad, but maybe not quite as horrible as I may have led you to believe. It was certainly no worse than "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (1992) apart from all the blatant product placement for "Virgin", but it wasn't quite good enough to compete with "Blade" (1999). Let's face it, when it comes to vampire action-adventures, nothing can beat "Blade" anyway.

Dragging "Dracula" into the modern world has always been problematic for filmmakers. Although I love "Dracula A.D. 1972" and consider it to be the best of the Hammer "Dracula" movies , I'm the first to admit that it has a lot of flaws which would make it a "bomb" for the "real" movie critics. Similarly, "Blade: Trinity" (2004) was also quite a failure even though there wasn't a whole lot wrong with Dominic Purcell's updated character within the internal logic of the movie. In "Dracula 2000", Gerard Butler played Dracula very well indeed, but it was such a very different kind of Dracula that I don't think a lot of people were willing to accept it.

The thing is, I love vampire movies. It doesn't matter how lame and formulaic most of them may appear to be to other people, I'll usually still get something out of them. Vampires movies, unfortunately, are the least scary part of the horror genre and we can all count (no pun intended) the number of terrifying vampire moments which we've seen on the fingers of one hand. The fault lies in the source material since everyone goes back to Bram Stoker's novel for their inspiration even though it was more of an adventure than a truly horrific story even at the time he wrote it.

Thus, "Dracula 2000", as a re-working of the major elements in Bram Stoker's novel, suffered from being dated, clichéd, formulaic and, obviously, derivative of every other vampire movie which has ever been made. It wasn't as if everyone didn't already know this so, of course, it had a sense of fun about it and even some intentional comedy. I haven't watched the sequels yet to see if the same style continued (hopefully not), but the fact that it spawned two sequels means that somebody else liked it other than just Wes Craven himself.

My main reasons for liking "Dracula 2000" were as basic (or just base) as being very appreciative of the updated "bloofer" ladies. With Jennifer Esposito, Jeri Ryan and Colleen Fitzpatrick all fanged-up, how could anyone not enjoy this movie? They certainly made poor little Justine Waddell look plainer than one of Andrew Lloyd Webber's relatives in comparison. Trust me, now you have that image in your head, you will never be able to look at her the same way again.

As for the story itself, it was a bit silly, but what would you honestly expect from any Wes Craven produced movie which brings Dracula into the 21st century? How would you do it any better? I could happily lose the incongruously comic moments, but that's just my preference.

I hated the way Christopher Plummer pronounced "Dracula" as "Drah-coo-lee-ah" like a five-year-old child who misheard the name would, and I couldn't bear Jonny Lee Miller's fake London accent (he's from Surrey), but I can let those things pass since a Scotsman (who was yet to become a lot more famous) was playing Dracula.

The effects were good. There weren't enough of them, but, they worked. You don't need much more than a a load of fake teeth, some make-up and buckets of blood for a vampire movie anyway. The CGI, when it happened, was also okay.

I wasn't keen on some of the music. In particular, there was an awful rock band who appeared on a screen outside the Virgin Megastore. Dracula may have exclaimed, "Brilliant!" although, clearly, they weren't. There wasn't a lot else to the soundtrack other than crappy bands in the background so it was what it was.

There really isn't much more I can say about "Dracula 2000" since this is the second time that I've reviewed it. The mystery of Dracula's origins still seems very clever to me and I liked that, but, I'm still not going to change my rating much. "Dracula 2000" was a slightly below average movie when I first watched it, and it's still an entertaining yet slightly below average movie today.

The Miramax Wes Craven Series at Kmart

I had another "Big Day Out" earlier today which involved a trip to my favourite Chinese buffet and Kmart. I used to love Kmart almost as much as Rainman did, but, recently, because they seem to have given up on putting the DVDs out in any recognisable order, sifting through the DVD bins to see what turns up has been too much like hard work. I still did it though.

Although I've been tempted by the Echo Bridge distributions of Miramax titles many times, apart from "The Faculty" and "Phantoms" double-feature for $2.99, I've never bought one from Kmart before. I was hoping that the "Dracula 2000" 4 pack (really a 3 pack with an extra movie which I've never heard of) would turn up, but, until today, I'd only seen the "Dracula 2000" and "Cursed" double-feature.

Anyway, to make a short story even shorter, as you can see, I finally found and bought the 4 pack above. I'd already seen the first movie ages ago, which was called "Dracula 2001" in the UK, but I honestly didn't know there were two sequels to it until fairly recently.

Depending on how good they are, I might review these movies later this week or early next week. I already have a load of reviews which I'm working on at the moment so I didn't really need to complicate matters with another pack of older horrors. But since when has need ever had anything to do with greed?

For $5 though, it wasn't that greedy. I'm very glad that I didn't know about these movies to buy them individually at full price when they first came out. People who did must be furious with themselves now.

Scream 4 (2011)

(AKA "Scre4m")



"Ten years have passed, and Sidney Prescott, who has put herself back together thanks in part to her writing, is visited by the Ghostface Killer."

Even though I know that everybody else has been raving about going to see "Scream 4" for weeks, it doesn't really interest me so, at this present time, I'm just going to post links to other people's blogs who I know have done a great job of reviewing it already. As I see the reviews appear on my blogroll, I'm going to list them here.

Horror Movie A Day - Scream 4 (2011)
Super Marcey's Super Website - Scream 4
Black Sheep Reviews: A film review site - SCREAM 4
Horro's Gory Reviews: Reviews to die for!!!! - SCREAM 4 REVIEW
The Paradise of Horror - Review - Scream 4 (2011)
Zombies are Magic! - Scream 4: Meta Whateva
The Non-Review - N is For: Non-Review: Scream 4 - Shrunken Head Review
From Midnight, With Love - Scream 4
Obscure Movie Thoughts From An Obscure Movie Fan - REVIEW: Scream 4
Dinner With Max Jenke - Something To Scream 4
Things That Don't Suck - Scream 4
Freddy in Space - Scream 4: Just What I've Been Craven
Little Miss Zombie - MOVIE REVIEW: Scream 4
SLAUGHTER FILM - SCRE4M
Mendelson's Memos - Review: Scream 4 (2011)
Dead End Drive-in - Scream 4 (2011)
The Diary of an Indy Grrrl - Scream 4, A Relevant and Refreshing Sequel
cinebrooding - movie review: scream 4
The World of Disgruntled Monkey - Review - Scream 4 (2011)
Cannelton Critic - "Scre4m"
The Horror Club - Scream 4 (2011)
DARKMATTERS - The Mind Of Matt - Scream 4 Review and Promo
Thrill Fiction - Scream 4

This may seem like a bit of a cop out considering that I'm usually right up there with the other "zero day review" people but I just can't motivate myself enough to go and see the fourth instalment of a franchise that, in my opinion, really should have died with "Scream 3" (2000).

I didn't like "Scream 3" and I've never really been all that enamoured by Wes Craven as a director. Yes, I liked "The Hills Have Eyes" (1977) and "Deadly Friend" (1986) but I've never been a big Freddy Krueger fan and the "Scream" series was more a miss than a hit to me as well.

I have no idea how a one-time "trendy teen horror" is supposed to work again with the main characters being far from trendy teenagers now but, maybe one day, I'll watch "Scream 4" on DVD and find out.

If you've seen "Scream 4" and have a review that you think I should add to my list, please feel free to post it as a comment below.

Red Eye (2005)

I just watched Wes Craven's "Red Eye" and loved it so much that I am going to throw all my horror films away and worship it as the finest example of filmmaking ever created. Nothing could ever compete with this masterpiece so I might as well not bother watching any more ever again.

No, I'm lying.

It was crap!

What the hell happened to Wes Craven? I remember when he used to be a pretty serious contender in the horror film business. Of course then he started to ruin it all for himself with things like "Scream" but even that had some merits compared to the purile load of excrement that I just suffered through.

From the IMDb: "A woman is kidnapped by a stranger on a routine flight. Threatened by the potential murder of her father, she is pulled into a plot to assist her captor in offing a politician."

Yes, that's it. That's all that it's about. Some rough looking hotel receptionist is threatened while on a plane that if she doesn't make a phone call to swap some politician's room over to facilitate an assassination then the bad guys who have staked out her father's house will kill him instead.

Now, I ask you, why did she even bother to try and save the politician? This was the most incredulous thing I have ever seen. Given the choice, "It's your father or the politician?", it's a no-brainer really. You'd be grabbing that phone quicker than George Bush could say... well... anything coherent at all. Let's face it, you'd have a fantastic excuse when the police finally caught up with you too.

So the plot was stupid, really stupid, and, worse, it was full of holes and predictable too. The acting was alright but nothing exceptional even if the Irish bloke from "28 Days Later" did do quite a passable American accent. The action scenes were also ok too near the end even if they were without any adult realism.

BUT, where was the tension? I didn't feel the slightest bit of tension or suspense watching this at all. Is this what is now laughingly referred to as a "Thriller"? Well, it didn't thrill me. It was just a terribly slow and formulaic "kiddy friendly" film that was obviously meant for people who have the same number for their IQ as their age.

I'll give it 2 out of 10. I didn't like it, but it was amusing to see the guy who played the boss cop in "CHiPs" make a brief appearance as an annoying customer in the hotel scenes.

Dracula 2001 (2000)

(AKA Dracula 2000)



It's nine years old now so you've probably seen it anyway, but, as it's now doing the rounds on TV, I thought I'd write this to spare some people who may have missed the DVD release first time around. Also having two different titles may confuse people into thinking there is a sequel but the date change was due to a late release in the UK.

It started off really well...

Plot outline from the IMDb: "A group of thieves break into a chamber expecting to find paintings, but instead they release the count himself, who travels to New Orleans to find his nemesis' daughter, Mary Van Helsing."

There are some slickly shot impalings with blood everywhere and it had the potential to all be very sexy...

But then we see Mary Van Helsing and realise that she truly is no oil painting! Poor Justine Waddell is just not up to the part of playing a leading "heroine". She hasn't really got the acting ability or the looks for it. She really needed longer hair and a bra. Plus she's South African so her fake British accent is annoying to say the least.

Similarly, Jonny Lee Miller is so annoyingly "chippy" that all he needs to do is say, "Cheers Mate!" and he would be the chaviest Mockney ever!

The whole thing feels like two movies in one struggling against each other (a bit like Justine's droopy boobs). I'll try and write my review in that way and see what happens... actually maybe not.

On the one hand, you have yet another Dracula story complete with amusingly rearranged quotes from the novel and even three "bloofer ladies". Then, on the other, you have here an action adventure similar to "Blade" mixed with the "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen".

Time for a change of tense before I end up writing a synopsis.

Nathan Fillion turned up at one point playing a priest which amused me too considering that his most famous horror role so far (outside of "Slither") has been Caleb who dressed as a priest in "Buffy". Talk about being typecast!

Dracula was played quite well but not very scarily by Gerard Butler. In fact, none of it was very scary at all which is a major problem for a "horror" movie! Dracula just isn't frightening anymore. Vampires are so "comic book" now that I think the chances of there ever being a really scary vampire film ever again are quite slim ...so it wasn't all the director's fault!

Incidentally, in spite of the longer title of the film, the director wasn't Wes Craven but Patrick Lussier (who I think is more famous for Canadian TV than movie making).

My favourite vampire in the film was Jennifer Esposito who can bite me anytime! She really did the sexy vampiress thing perfectly so it's no wonder that she's gone on to much better things since.

It's not that this is a bad movie. Far from it. It's entertaining enough to keep you interested all the way to the end, but it's all far from perfect. Characters are not much more than caricatures, and everything zips along at a very quick pace with huge amounts of product placement for the "Virgin Megastore" throughout.

There's also a "surprise" Biblical ending to Dracula's origins slapped incongruously over the top of everything. Dracula, it appears, is really Judas Iscariot doomed to walk the earth for all time as a vampire. Well, that's hardly a new story (since it comes from old folk superstitions anyway), but it has nothing to do with the Bram Stoker novel which made Dracula first and foremost the anti-christ in all but name.

So, the bottom line is that it all tried too hard and failed. I therefore rate it as a 4.5 out of 10. The half mark was for Jennifer Esposito of course.