Gimme a break! Gimme a break! Break me off a piece of that ...

Rating: Null/10 (4 June 2004)

I was invited to the premiere of this film last May by my good friend Kevin J. O'Connor, who plays Igor in the film. I didn't exactly get to walk the red carpet, but I did get the inside track on a seat in the Chinese Theater and I got to rub a few elbows with the stars. Rub elbows is what the experience is like in a very literal sense of the word. Something about a premiere brings the weirdest talking cockroaches out of the woodwork and in addition to spying stars like Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale I also saw a few has-beens like Eric Roberts and David Heavener trying to sneak into the wings.
Perhaps the highlight of the event was bumping into Arnold Vosloo, who had been in Sommers' two MUMMY pictures and was hanging around for moral support. Arnold is a funny guy, and I quizzed him about how a few years earlier he'd talked to local sports guy Vic The Brick Jackobs and offered to remove the Mummy's curse off of LA so the Dodgers could win a few games. I guess Arnold is so cool because he hasn't reached Brad Pitt status yet and doesn't have a thousand dewy-eyed fans hanging around.
So what to say of VAN HELSING? Save your money and rent the original horror movies. This movie is busy, like the shower scene in PSYCHO being looped over and over and sped up to about 100 fps. It gave me a headache. Definitely not my kind of movie. Oh, but you were born after 1981 you might like it.