Deserves better than it got! Great, Funny Sommer's Universal Monster Moovie!

Rating: 10/10 (25 April 2011)

I loathed and despised this film when it came out, but I still bought a copy of the DVD. Before I sold over a hundred DVDs to a pawn shop, I copied this one, cos I wanted to watch it one more time.
And now I am sorry I sold my copy! This is no serious horror movie... This is pure FUN! Universal must have decided to give Sommers the green light to handle ALL of the Universal monsters, and rather than doing it in several films, he wraps them all up in one great, complete package.
Sure these Universal stories could have been made each into singular films of their own, but only Sommers could have brought Van Helsing face to face with The Wolfman, Dracula, Frankenstein, and even Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
People expecting something else, totally forgot who directed this piece: Stephen Sommers, whose earlier treatment of The Mummy blew our minds- WHAT did they expect? Of course Sommers had to reach for the sky. It is not this film that was done badly, it was the public reaction to it, and if you reach back, Bush had just won a second term, so the public was in no good mood- Whereas the first Mummy was released during the height of an economy boom, and the second, just before housing balloon popped, in 2004, it was simply not the right time to release a film as light as this.
This film is not just over the top, it is WAY over the top... And because of that it is rather funny, perhaps there was too much humour in the film, The Mummies had several serious moments, this had few. I believe that because this film was dine as a period piece, people expected Sommers to stay within the realm of the technologies we knew existed in those times... But Sommers instead, transposed several modern ideas into the story, and uses them... Maybe people thought this was too unbelievable... But I think Sommer's idea was, since this was a secret society of evil vanquishers sponsored by the highly secretive Vatican, Van Helsing had access to things like Rapid Fire Arrows and the little "Volcano in a Bottle" gag. Since the Vatican are huge secret-hoarders, it is not too much of a limb to make yourself believe that Van Jackman had access to these things.
Jackman is what makes the film so enjoyable, Between Jackman and David Wenham, they had me in stitches for most of the film. Kate Beckinsale is absolutely beautiful, I have not seen her in any films for some time, but she is absolutely fabulous in this. And of course we have "Benny" from The Mummy, Kevin O'Conner, as Igor, and a great face, Shuler Hensley as Frankenstein's Monster.
The first time I saw this was mid 2005, now six years later, I can laugh at it, and enjoy it like Sommers wanted us all to do in the first place. Since this film, Sommers has produced a 3rd Mummy film, directed by Rob Cohen, but even with a different director, that film is flush with Sommer style gags.
If anything, this film was too ambitious, but even so, I hated it, but now I like it a lot.