Golden protest (7/2/04))
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Van Helsing. [Stephen Sommers, 2004.]
Frankenstein meets the Wolfman. Lightning meets the castle battlements. The Mob meets The Burning Windmill. The laboratory of the alchemist meets the ghost of Kenneth Strickfaden. Dracula meets a gaggle of evil goggled munchkins. The freelance ogre-hunter meets the Hunchback of Notre Dame meets the old sawing-through-the-floor routine from
Horsefeathers. Heckel and Jeckel meet Mister Hyde. Universal meets Warner Brothers: cartoon Gothic. Leslie Nielsen meets the Ayatollah. [No, that was
The Naked Gun.] The Wandering Jew meets the international Jesuit conspiracy. Spy movie exposition meets the magic lantern meets the metaphorical interpretation of photography as vampirism. Bond meets Q [meets R, meets S, ... .] The crossbow meets the Gatling gun. The Foundling whose Strange Ring must provide some Clue to the Mystery of his Origins meets the Comedy Sidekick. The fog machine meets an inexhaustible supply of full moons. Transylvania meets the Hindu Kush. A long leather jacket and a floppy hat meets a really severe corset and a pair of boots with very impractical heels. Vampires meet harpie bombshells whose clothing keeps falling off. Murnau’s shadows meet the entire cobweb production of a small Asian country. The invasion of the body snatchers meets
Alien meets a plague of little bat monsters. The left hand of God meets the right hand of the torturer; the human storage battery meets Count Rugen’s Machine. The metaphor of ripping his skin off to reveal the beast within meets [nay, collides with] the realization that all this bullshit psychology might as well be a glimpse into the tormented soul of Bugs Bunny.
Stagecoach meets
Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Through the Looking Glass [meets
The Matrix meets
Stargate meets...] meets Dracula meets the Wolfman. Frankenstein meets the Tin Woodman meets the Scarecrow meets the Wicked Witch of the West meets the realization that this isn’t Kansas meets the magic red shoes meets the yellow brick road meets an inexhaustible flow of cliche. The
Tomb Raider version of Angkor Wat meets the lair of the white worm. Garlic meets breath mints. Absinthe meets the pocket flask. Revolver meets silver bullets. Arrows meet holy water. The Magic Syringe meets the clock that takes forever to strike midnight. The Rock meets Triple H for the Transylvanian title. Kevin O’Connor meets the role he was born to play. And, guess what, only the monk gets laid.
Questions: why didn’t Sommers just turn this into a musical? Hugh Jackman can sing and dance. — Is this ghost-riders-in-the-sky bullshit the dumbest ending since
The Birth of a Nation? — Will Sommers give up finally on trying to top that rotting-Mummy effect? the monster is pretty cool, but the effort that it cost him is all too obvious. — The last time you plunged off the edge of a cliff into a bottomless abyss, did you keep bouncing off cables conveniently strung all over the place on your way down? this isn’t even a Tarzan movie, it’s a fucking Roadrunner cartoon, you keep expecting people to step out over empty space, hang in the air for a moment while they do a doubletake and look at the camera, and then get sucked out of the bottom of the frame with an audible whoosh. — Isn’t it interesting how a vampire’s image doesn’t show in the mirror? it suggests that a soulless creature which subsists parasitically on the vital forces of the living has no real identity. — Not unlike the vacant scenario of this soulless movie, come to think of it. But, forget it, enough is enough.
____________Rock around the clock (10/24/03)
