Dracula 2000 (2000) & 'Cursed' (2005) Not to worry, we're not about to start waxing nostalgic about the long gone toxic reign of Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob (who ran Dimension Films, the brothers' designated label for faux-grindhouse movies)
But in the spirit of Halloween, we thought it might tickle us to take quick deep dive into the horror quickies pumped out during the glory days of Dimension.
We'll say this much in their favor......neither of these movies look cheap or slapdash. For low budget horrors, they benefit from slick, technically professional filmmaking.......and they're populated by casts of mostly young actors on the rise and at least one top-of-the-line A-List veteran.
"Dracula 2000" features no less than Christopher Plummer as that eternal vampire nemesis Van Helsing......and we do mean eternal, since he's found a way to hang around a century or two, right up to the year 2000.
Plummer had the original Dracula (a young Gerard Butler, giving good glower) all sealed up until a team of thieves inadvertently sprung him out of the coffin, much to their woe and violent doom.
And so off the two forever foes go to New Orleans....(well, why not? Mardi Gras!), where Drac longs to put the bite on his long time crush, Van Helsing's daughter Mary. (Justine Waddell)
We've not much to complain about here.......the movie zips right along, splashing R-rated gouts of gore and severed heads in every direction. Amid the mayhem, red-blooded males (heh, heh) can enjoy the expected trio of vampire babes, played with proper hissing and fang-bearing by Jennifer Esposito, Jeri Ryan and Coleen Fitzpatrick (a.k.a. the pop singer Vitamin C).
And to our amused surprise, the movie unleashes a startling twist to Dracula's backstory, an off-the-rails idea that probably a lot of other screenwriters wish they'd thought of first......(for anyone who hates spoilers, we'll not reveal it here, since it's the film's one and only surprise)
Minor league stuff, to be sure, but it kept us continuously entertained and that's more than we can say for a thousand other vampire movies and TV shows we've suffered through. 3 stars (***)
"Cursed" (2005), directed by horror maestro Wes Craven became notorious for the unprecedented amount of meddling, tinkering and re-shooting it was subjected to by Harvey and Bob, the Weinstein gruesome twosome.
For some reason no one could ever quite figure out,(including Craven and his cast) the brothers went ballistic on this simple-simon little werewolf tale, ordering up enough re-writes, re-castings and re-shoots that forced the movie to literally start all over again with a different cast.
Why? Beats us. It's not like the film was offering some incredibly new take on all the standard werewolf crapola........(other than the fun fact that virtually every major character in the cast is either a full fledged werewolf or well on the way to joining the furry club.....)
Unlike the blood soaked "Dracula 2000", 'Cursed' was designed to function as a PG-13 more teen friendly romp, with an appealing, up-and-coming young cast in their demographic wheelhouse (Christina Ricci, Jesse Jesse Eisenberg, Joshua Jackson, Milo Ventimiglia).
Nothing much new appears here, though we think it may be one of the first teen movies in which the brazenly herterosexual school bully is outed out of the closet.......(and pre-Spider-Man, bully-boy's also physically humiliated in the gym by a lovable nerd just realizing his superpowers.)
Craven keeps this flimsy little story tearing along, but we couldn't help wondering why the Weinsteins spent so much time, money and effort on revamping such an inconsequential film.......(maybe they had fever dreams about it winning the grand prize at Cannes, or being hung in the Louvre.......)
They ended up with a just okay Halloween B-minus movie that's suitable mainly for teen girl slumber parties......or anyone else who might want to re-live or re-watch the rambunctious, lively junk left over in the Dimension catalog.....even if its two producers are best forgotten. 2 stars (**)
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