Guilty Pleasures: Van Helsing

October 12, 2010 Features, Movies 7

I admit it. I went to see Van Helsing because Hugh Jackman is sexy and I was deep in the throes of my initial, Wolverine-based crush on him. It’s also directed by Stephen Sommers, who directed The Mummy, AKA one of my favorite movies of all time. So I went in with two expectations: 1) Hugh would be hot, and 2) It would have the same tongue-in-cheek, silly humor as The Mummy.

Okay, so it’s definitely not the best movie ever. The acting is cheesy, the writing is cheesy, and the ending is laugh-out-loud bad. But I can’t help but love it, and not just because Hugh rocks the long hair and leather trench coat. Van Helsing takes the goofy, loving tribute to 1930s horror films that first surfaced in The Mummy and cranked it up to 11. The sexy vampire-hunting Gypsy, played with a roaringly bad accent by Kate Beckinsale, gets to purr ridiculous lines like, “I think if you’re going to kill somebody, kill them! Don’t stand around talking about it!” At least she looks great with her perm and her fantastic costume (seriously, where can I get that corset?).

Van Helsing and his friar assistant Carl, played by David Wenham with the worst haircut ever, are equally entertaining. VH is the pretty standard monster-hunter in this sort of movie, but Carl is absolutely awesome. He’s sort of like the Catholic, Victorian version of Q from the James Bond movies; he invents crazy things like a sunlight grenade and a fully automatic, stake-launching crossbow, and he gets to tag along with Van Helsing and spout some of the best lines in the movie.

Cleavage ahoy!

Not the best lines, though. Those are reserved for Dracula, played with scenery-chewing aplomb by Richard Roxburgh. I probably wouldn’t love this movie as much as I do if it weren’t for this character. Most Draculas are quiet and mysterious. They brood and seduce, lurk in dark corners and croak when they’re staked. Not this Dracula. He’s like the rock star version of Bram Stoker’s immortal character. He looks dashing in his dark suits, he (apparently) has awesome orgies with his sexy, cheesy-accented brides, and he steals every single scene in which he appears in the movie. And is it just me, or does he look a little bit like Bono circa Achtung Baby and the ZooTV tour?

I’ll be the first to admit that Van Helsing isn’t the best movie, but I’ll also be the first to argue that most of the movie-goers who hated it probably went into the theatre with the wrong expectations. The movie was advertised as being a horror-action film, so I think a lot of people expected… well, a horror-action film. Van Helsing is more of a parodic throwback to old-school monster movies, and if you watch it expecting cornball dialogue, campy villains, and fun homages to horror films of decades past, you just might enjoy it the way I do.