Dumb mishmash

Rating: 1/10 (6 May 2004)

Stephen Sommers latest is an attempt to profit in the line previously taken by "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" but, of course, with a twist. (I may mention a couple of **spoilers** but this movie is spoiled on origin).
Van Helsing (the mythical vampire killer of Bram Stoker´s Dracula) is sort of an immortal slayer searching for monsters (in the first minutes he does Mr. Hyde) to kill with weaponry a la James Bond for the nineteen century. He is cleverly sidekicked with a comic-relief frail to feed him with clever weapons for every season).
He meets Beckingsale, a sort of Rumanian warrior part of a clan fighting Dracula for centuries (which V.H. is sent to help to avoid 9 generations of her family skipping Heaven-as dumb as it sounds). Full of CGI and a plot so contrived that keeps the audience laughing where it attempts to thrill, this idiotic mishmash is a definite must avoid for anyone with enough braincells to read the title.
Dracula and his women have caves full of "eggs" (suspiciously looking like ALIEN cocoons) and are looking for the way for them to live, so they all can dominate the earth (it's never clear why they just don't simply bite a few thousand peasants to populate the region with vampires), and they somehow understand that by using Dr.Frankenstein's machine with a werewolf they can canalize electricity into the ugly cocoons to spawn a few thousand little green demons (that look like suspiciously like the gargoiles from the Hunchback of Notre Dame). The mummy was bad, but was popcorn-watchable-if-you-don't-have-anything-else-to-do, he has gone beyond: this is his worst yet, but we must wonder if his next: Van Helsing II: the mummy of the Louvre, won't go further down.