Attack of the boom mics

Rating: Null/10 (11 May 2004)

We went to see Van Helsing at the drive-in, as we felt this was the perfect venue for viewing such an epic. The costumes truly matched the period. The special effects were top-notch. The weapons and mechanical contrivances seemed well-suited to the tasks at hand. The story was another example of Stephen Sommer's penchant for combining genres into a single cohesive unit. Everything, in fact, was working well until, roughly, the second half of the movie. It was at this point that we noticed an "uncredited actor" making a surprise cameo appearance, and stealing multiple scenes thereafter. The first appearance was during the scene under the ruins of the windmill. The actors are conversing when suddenly, from above, we spotted THE BOOM MICROPHONE! It surprised us so much to think that a movie of this calibre (and all the money that was spent making it) would contain such a mistake! As it turns out, that was just the first of many appearances by the boom mic. Indoor scenes, Outdoor scenes- it got to be such a distraction that it became laughable. There were at least 10 such instances, and there might well have been more. These, in my opinion, took the movie from the status of "great" to "hilarious", which further endeared it to me- I began to see the instances as a tribute to "old, bad horror movies", an homage, if you will. I will have to see the movie in a regular theatre to see if this mics are as easily evident on an indoor screen. I would really like to hear from the production crew whether this was done on purpose, or if it was a gross oversight.