If you thought space was free from vampires, just remember – there is no daylight in space! Also, there aren’t any serious vampire movies up there either.
Plot: A salvage crew composed of clichés finds a floating spaceship drifting towards Earth. The estimated 15 million credits that the vessel is worth is too much to pass up, so the crew of Mother III, decide to take the spaceship back to earth. The crew soon encounters Count Orlock and their fates are sealed soon afterwards.
My first thought upon starting this movie was that the person who did the title sequence was probably a person somewhat familiar with powerpoint but didn’t actually know the title of the movie. While the movie is actually called Dracula 3000, the title screen suggests that the movie is actually Dracula 3000: Infinite Darkness. However, this didn’t bother me for long as I was soon distracted by the shock that Coolio was in this movie.
So Coolio is in this movie. Waiting to see if that makes it marginally better. #dracula3000
— Peter F. Black™ (@peterfblack) May 8, 2013
It did not.
As the film opens, we find out the captain is named Abraham Van Helsing and his crew is composed of a pig-tailed intern named Mina Murry, a Bill Gates look-alike computer guy named Prof. Holmwood, a tough guy named Humvee, a hot navigator/pilot named Aurora Ash and a “cargo specialist” named 187 (Coolio). It’s not long before Coolio falls victim to Count Orlock and begins wrecking havoc on the crew.
After watching these shenanigans (crew running around, trying to kill the vampires, figuring out that a stake through the heart actually does it) for a bit, we learn that the hot navigator is a robot who has been undercover, recording evidence to use against the crew. Conveniently, this means that Count Orlock doesn’t want her blood. Also, the Count is the last of his kind from the planet Transylvania, a planet of vampires.
Random Note: There was a weirdly high amount of Soviet paraphernalia randomly placed throughout the movie that was never explained. Not that much was…but still.
Some of the writing inconsistencies were kind of amusing. For example, in this movie, marijuana was made legal and religion, specifically God, was outlawed decades ago. Normally, I would ponder if this was supposed to make the phrase “sweet jesus”, as spoken by Captain Van Helsing, that much more powerful, but in this case, I think it was more likely an accidental oversight. Also, if the Count needs blood, how did it work on Planet Transylvania where there were only vampires? We may never know…
Captain Abraham van Helsing just said “make it so”. Maybe that’s just a starship captain thing to say. #dracula3000 #StarTrekTNG
— Peter F. Black™ (@peterfblack) May 8, 2013
It has been previously mentioned that the writing in this movie, wasn’t of the highest quality:
– “Dracula 3000″ is a shining example of complete filmmaking ineptitude. You can look all you want and you won’t find even the slightest hint of intelligence on any level. … It sucks. ~ Mitchell Hattaway of DVD Verdict
– “Dracula 3000” is a monumental achievement in cinematic stupidity. … I suspect it is going to be a long time before I come across a new movie that is as bad as this was. ~ Scott Foy of foywonder.com
– There are bad movies, and then there is Dracula 3000 ~ Beyond Hollywood
– To call this film shit is an insult to fragrant brown logs everywhere. ~ David Oliver of CHUD.com
That all being said, I knew what I was getting into when I turned this one on.
The movie ends the with the hot [robot] navigator mentioning to Humvee that she used to be a “pleasure bot” before she was upgraded to cop bot and would be happy to “relax” him on the way back to Earth. I’m unsure if the ship exploding at the end was meant to be metaphor, but after learning that the actress who played Aurora Ash (Erika Eleniak) used to be Playboy Playmate, it’s possible. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt there.
This was a pretty terrible movie, no doubt about it. The acting was marginal with Coolio being the most convincing, which I think says something. The writing was probably done while high with no editing whatsoever. That being said, if you’re looking for something that is enjoyable to poke fun at, or put on as background noise for a hipster party, I highly recommend it for that. I give this movie 2 out of 3 C’s.
To read more about the rating system, please check out the “Ratings” page.
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