Monster Movie Memories - Van Helsing
After the financial successes of 1999's The Mummy and its 2001 follow-up, The Mummy Returns; Stephen Sommers was given the reigns to adapt another one of Universal Studio's famous monster characters in hopes of capturing the same creative and financially successful lightning that worked in their collaboration with Sommers in the movies mentioned above. The result of this partnership was 2004's Van Helsing starring everyone's favorite claw-slashing mutant, Hugh Jackman, and the queen of the Underworld movies, Kate Beckinsale.
I remember hearing about this movie on a website called UpcomingHorrorMovies.com (clever title), and a title appeared for a film called Van Helsing, details were scarce, but it was revealed that the movie was going to be directed by Stephen Sommers. Being a massive fan of both of his Mummy movies and watching behind-the-scenes documentaries about the classic monsters as a kid made me very ecstatic; a guy was going to make a Van Helsing movie who was a true fan of these movies who grew up watching them the same way as I. Over the next year or so, I kept tabs on this movie to see if there were any updates; slowly, they came in, and every time there was a new update, I became more and more excited; this movie was going to be an action-packed monster-romp, I was ready. In the months and weeks leading up to the release of Van Helsing, Universal Studios rolled out their promo wagon and released the classic monsters on DVD, but this wasn't just any DVD release; this was the Legacy Collection.
The Legacy Collection originally released three DVD sets that focused on Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolfman due to them being the three monsters featured in Van Helsing and would eventually release Legacy Collection's for The Mummy, The Invisible Man, The Phantom of the Opera, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. The central selling point for the Legacy Collection was that it was the first time that all of the movies in their respective monster franchises were released in a complete set at one price; this was the first time I saw many films such as House of Frankenstein, Son of Dracula, Son of Frankenstein, or Werewolf of London. These unique DVD sets also included documentaries about the monsters, interviews with Stephen Sommers, the comedy Boo! A Short Film and other special feature goodies from the days of DVD; they were a classic monster fan's dream come true and a great way to help fuel theVan Helsing hype train.
Finally, on May 7th, 2004, Universal Studios released Van Helsing to the world; I distinctly remember going to see the movie on opening day with my Grandmother because I knew she would probably enjoy the film as well since she introduced me to the classic monsters, and honestly the film wasn't bad. It was everything I was expecting it to be after watching the previous Mummy movies from both Sommers and Universal Studios; it was funny, had fun action, had a coherent story, and was obviously made by a fan of the old monsters. If I had to nitpick, I'd say that I got too much of what I wanted to the point of being predictable and left me wanting a little more in the end, but I was ultimately satisfied because I got to see a cool monster mash on the big screen by the company that made them cinematically immortal.
In recent years, Van Helsing has been viewed as a "bad movie"; it really is no better than The Mummy from 1999, and people look at that movie more fondly. It's not a piece of timeless cinema that influenced the horror genre like the original Dracula or Frankenstein; Van Helsing is more akin to the "monster mash" movies of the 1940’s, where the appeal that brought audiences into the theater was from seeing all of the monsters in the same film, though it can be argued that the plot of Van Helsing is much more cohesive than that of House of Frankenstein. It's a movie that is meant to be fun and a fan service. I feel the same thing happened ten years later with the release of Dracula: Untold, another film that I felt wasn't as bad as everyone said it was but still left me wanting a bit more for the scale of the story and the fact that it was meant to kick off a cinematic universe of monsters.
I say give this movie a re-watch and try not to be so critical of the plot or nitpick elements just for nitpicking; as stated earlier, Van Helsing is meant to be a fun monster mash that leans heavily into the thrills and not so much into the chills. Though the creatures used in the film are more commonly associated with horror movies, this movie is an action-adventure romp set in Transylvania, and the goal is to stop Dracula from taking over the world, and that's not a bad thing. Finally, it does feel like a Universal Studios monster flick and has that Universal "glow" that many of their best horror and horror-related movies are noted for; it's definitely worth the time to sit back with a bowl of popcorn and enjoy.
