Wednesday 16 September 2015

#45 Die Hard Dracula (1998) (Colin)


Cast: Bruce Glover, Denny Sachen, Kerry Dustin, Ernest M. Garcia, Chaba Hrotko, Tom McGowan
Director: Peter Horak
Genre: Comedy, Horror
Our next movie is based on a character which has appeared in COUNTless movies before; Dracula, (see what I did there?). 
There’s Bela Lugosi’s 1931 early Dracula, which is better than his role in Plan 9, (however, this is mainly because he’s not dead during filming), (click here for my Plan 9 blog)).  Or Christopher Lee’s superb Dracula in the Hammer Horror series, (this is the version which leaps to my mind when thinking about the caped nibbler). 
I even like Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, (1992), which admittedly did drag, but which I thought Oldman’s performance was brilliant.  And yes, like most kids in the 90’s, I did go out and buy myself a pair of blue shaded sunglasses.  Oldman looked cool, I looked a tit.
With so many Dracula movies already produced was there room for one more and is this modern interpretation something to sink your teeth into or did it just bite?
Steven, (Danny Sachen), is devastated when his girlfriend, Julia, (Kerry Dustin), drowns during a water skiing accident.  Being a Disney fan, he wishes upon a star that a recently drowned women will come back to life, (he then boards a big eared elephant and flies to Europe). 
The star misunderstands and brings Carla, (Kerry Dustin, again) back to life!  Confusingly she looks exactly like Julia, has also recently drowned and just so happens to live in the same Czech Republic village that Steven is on his way to…..
Steven has a car accident on his way to the village and wakes up in a pub owned by Carla’s dad.  Confused when he sees Julia’s doppelganger staring back at him, Steven realises that his wish must have brought her back to life, (well d’uh!).  He finds out that this is not Julia, but in fact Carla and promptly forgets all about his old squeeze and starts to fall in love with this new, alive version.
Meanwhile, Carla’s friend, Dana, (Nathalie Huot), disappears down by the lake with no trace except some blood stained clothes.  The men of the village believe that local resident and pain in the neck, Count Dracula, must be active again.  They waste no time and recruit Dracula’s greatest enemy, Van Helsing, (Bruce Glover).
Helsing and Steven set about trying to defeat Dracula by visiting his castle and trying different ways to succeed in their task.  Silver bullets do not work, a grenade is batted out of play by a violin wielding Dracula and stakes are of the menu, (sorry). 
The pair are ready to give up but are shaken back into action when Carla is kidnapped……
Will Steven and Helsing manage to rescue Carla before she is turned into a vampire?  Can they finally defeat Dracula?  Will the film makers actually spend any of the budget on the movie?
The answer to the last question is yes, but they managed to get change from a fiver. 
Die Hard Dracula looks cheap, feels cheap and sounds cheap.  No expense was paid in order to produce this movie.  I should have liked it but as I write this blog, I am still undecided.
The acting is bad, I mean really bad, stupendously bad, Madonna bad!  Sachen is not a strong enough actor for the lead role.  Also the character of Steven may have the sports body and good looks, but he is whiny throughout. This is not the trait you want from the guy you hope saves the day and you end up wanting his neck to have 2 puncture wounds by the end of the movie.
Dustin had 2 roles and both of them were quite poor.  Admittedly, Julia was not in the movie for long but her falling into the water and drowning was a worse dive than a Premiership footballer.  Carla’s character, on the other hand, could not decide where she was from and straddled between East European, East Coast USA and East Anglia.  2 bites of the acting cherry, 2 epic fails.
Bruce Glover is probably the most famous actor, (Mr. Wint from Diamonds are Forever, (1971)), but his Helsing is just a comic character and a far cry from the arch nemesis of Dracula and dark Vampire hunter usually portrayed on the silver screen.  Dracula need not fear this Helsing as he couldn’t defeat Sesame Street’s The Count, Count Duckula or Grandpa from the Munsters. 
As for Dracula?  Well he is played by 3 actors and there seems to be fat Dracula, old Dracula and not so old Dracula.  None are scary, none are noteworthy and none will work again. 
Two things puzzle me about this Dracula.  Firstly, why does he all of a sudden have the ability to fire lightning bolts like Count Dooku from Star Wars?  Did the writer and director Peter Horak get confused between the 2 Counts as I’ve not encountered this special ability before?  Is this like Superman IV, when a desperate director threw in a load of new superpowers in an attempt to make a character more interesting? (click here for my Superman IV blog)
Secondly, why is he over-dubbed throughout the movie?  This is just really weird and as this is not a foreign film being dubbed into English, I am at a lost as to why they have done this?  The sound is pretty lousy and is recorded in glorious chewed up cassette tape, so an over-dub was probably needed, but for the entire movie…..?
The soundtrack is just lifted from the aforementioned chewed up cassette tape and is just a compilation of music recorded from Classic FM.  The opening title music is ‘Dance of the Knights’, which in the UK is best known as the title music for the UK version of The Apprentice.  This immediately gives the start an unintentionally funny beginning as all I can think off throughout is Lord Sir Alan of Sugar grumpily shouting he’s ‘not a happy bunny’ at Dracula and to Steven, ‘You had one job, bump Dracula off and you made a right mess of it, you’re a bloody shambles, you’re fired!’.
So was this a movie to sink your teeth into or did it just bite?  The answer is, I can’t make my mind up.
The problem is Horak doesn’t seem to know if he is making a horror or comedy movie.  Ironically, the horror bits are funny and the comedy bits are unfunny.  I wish they had stuck to the horror genre as I think we could have had an unintentionally funny movie on our hands and it would have been considered so bad it’s good.
Throughout the movie, I was reminded of Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, (2003), (click here for my The Room blog), not in terms of story, but in the sense that when it takes itself too seriously that is when it is at it’s entertaining best as it becomes so funny. But the problem is the comedy bits appear and the movie falls flat again and you end up bored and uninterested.
So if you like horror, this film is not for you.  If you like comedy, this film is not for you.  If you like bad movies, this film might be for you.  Watch it and let me know what you think in our comments section below, because a bit like Die Hard Dracula, I’m a confused mess.

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