As a lover of old-school vampire films, especially the brilliant series from Hammer that extended from the 1950s-1970s, I look with interest and possibly a little trepidation to the release of Dario Argento’s Dracula 3D. We have the first trailer for you today, and there’s no doubt of at least one thing: it’s going to be campy.
Thomas Kretschmann and Rutger Hauer star in this version of the Count and his nemesis Van Helsing. The plot is as usual: young man heads to Transylvania to meet with a mysterious nobleman. Said nobleman has a thing for blood and pretty young women, ultimately going after the young man’s wife. Enter Van Helsing, who knows how to defeat legions of the undead. Asia Argento is on hand as an eager young lady who totally digs dudes with fangs.
The trailer trades on blood, sex and fangs, with some pretty terrible CGI tossed in for good measure. It’s brightly lit and terribly acted. A certain campy earnestness comes from the actors, implying either that they’re not taking this seriously at all, or are taking it way too seriously; I cannot decide which. There’s going to be blood, heaving bodices and weird sexuality. It is a vampire flick, after all.
Dracula 3D bills itself as a return to the old movie monsters; by ‘old,’ I presume they mean pre-1970, because this has very few shades of Bela Lugosi’s turn as the titular Count. It does look like a rejection of the oh-so-serious and oh-so-tortured vampires of Twilight and True Blood, which I fully support. Dracula is going after your wives, your daughters and your sons too, and he’s going to love every minute of it.
Argento has had his share of failures recently, so I’m hoping that Dracula 3D will bring back some of the Grand Guignol blood and mayhem we usually associate with his brand.
You can check out the trailer for Dracula 3D below, along with a curiously Hammer-style poster; then see the movie in theatres and on iTunes October 4.
