Dracula 3000 (2004)

Twenty minutes into watching this thing, I was kind of hoping for Sir Christopher Lee to make a cameo.

Halfway through, I was would have settled for a glimpse of Paul Naschy.

When it was all over, I would have much rather seen Count Chocula.

I'm not one who throws this title out to just any movie - and believe me, I've seen my fair share of movies. I can safely say, however, that Dracula 3000 is THE WORST vampire movie I have ever seen in my life.

This is worse than Al Adamson's take in 1970's Dracula Vs. Frankenstein, with the wonderfully-named and woefully-untalented Zandor Vorkoff as the Prince of Darkness. This is worse than David Niven camping it up as a bloodsucker in 1974's Old Dracula. Even Andy Warhol's Dracula was a step-up compared to this; Udo Kier or no Udo Kier.

You want to guarantee that your movie is going to be the worst ever? Just take a tried and true fictional character (Dracula, Frankenstein, Pinocchio, Jason Voorhees, Emmanuelle, Eddie Murphy) and then add the following sentence onto the end of the plot description:

"...And did I mention this all happens in outer space?"

Dracula 3000 not only takes place in outer space, but an outer space a whole millennium removed from where we are now. So great: outer space of the future! It works so well for Japanese movies and TV shows, why not apply it to everyone else's films?

Before you go thinking that we (meaning the U.S.) are responsible yet again for the stupidest idea in a film since plopping Pauly Shore in the lead of a Doodles Weaver biopic, I have yet another guarantee that this will fall flatter than a souffle under a steamroller. This beauty comes to us from the sunny shores of Sun City itself: South Africa.

Yes, President de Klerk - this is a little project which is not only directed by your fellow countryman Darrell Roodt but is also written by Roodt and professional boom mic operator/sound mixer Ivan Milborrow. Yes, these are the men to blame for what would most certainly rank right up there with Space Mutiny as the most ridiculous South African sci-fi film ever. I think they just added Dracula in the cast as insurance they would not have two Krugerrands to rub together after all was said and done.

I'm gonna hyperventilate if I don't calm down soon and give you the plot, so I hope you're sitting down for this one: It's the year 3000 (fitting, since the year's in the title and all), and deep space salvage ship Mother III (Alien reference, huh? Cute.) locates the long-derelict starship Demeter.

Demeter? ...why does that sound so familiar? Oh well.

Anyway, they locate the Demeter ship in the Carpathian System.

Uhh...Carpathian? Okay....

Captain Abraham Van Helsing (Casper Van Dien) and his....

Van Helsing? Alright, alright; I see what they're going for here. I'll play along.

Captain Van Helsing's crew, composed of blonde assistant Aurora Ash (Erika Eleniak); wheelchair-bound navigator Arthur "The Professor" Holmwood (Grant Swanby), a self-proclaimed genius; large hulking crew member Humvee (Tiny Lister); intern Mina Murry (Alexandra Kamp-Groeneveld); and the drug addicted 187 (Coolio), decide to claim possession of Demeter and its cargo.

While exploring the spacecraft, they see a fifty year-old recording of Captain Varna (Udo Kier)...

Wait. Varna? Oh yeah, right.

Anyway, Varna is shown sweating and explaining that he locked himself in his cabin for protection from his crew, all of whom began acting unusually after receiving a cargo of coffins from the Transylvania space station.

Transyl.... Ohh, never mind.

When 187 decides to search in the coffins for hidden drugs, he cuts his hand on a splinter of the wood and his blood awakens Count Orlock (Langley Kirkwood), the Dracula of the title. When Aurora discloses who Orlock/Dracula is, the survivors try to find a way to destroy the vampire.

The space vampire. In the future.

There are so many reasons that Dracula 3000 is stupid that I'm only going to go into a few of the reasons, or else I'll be requiring a nice strong sedative. With a chaser.

One point is when they discover the skeleton of Captain Varna, it looks less like a skeleton in a uniform than it does a dressed mannequin with a Day of the Dead papier mâché skull slapped on top of it. Great effect, special effects coordinator Cordell McQueen and company; just paint black "X"s over the eyes while you're at it.

Then when they come across the fake skeleton, they see he's holding a crucifix and Lister's character asks what the deal is with the "plus sign". Ooh, nice slam against Christianity, guys. Like you need to alienate yet another group from your movie.

Still another point comes along when someone turns into a vampire here (and most of the cast will either be vampires or snacks), they get the same set of plastic fangs and red contact lenses. There's never like a whole group of vampires; it's just one blood-sucker at a time - presumably because they only had one set of contacts and fangs. It's all in how you wear them, I guess, whether it makes you look ridiculous. Sir Christopher Lee pulled it off effortlessly.

Coolio, though?

Let's just get right to the acting, shall we? Can we agree that Van Dien had his day in Starship Troopers and be done with it? What has he been in since, besides this? Lots of SyFy Channel junk and not much else. Besides which, for a starship captain, his crew seems to pretty much do whatever they want to do anyway, whether he's giving them orders or not. Pretty ineffectual if you can't command the same respect you did as Johnny Rico. Of course, there's no giant bugs to kill here or a Catherine Oxenberg to lean on for support, so there you go.

Eleniak's character isn't only a tough-as-nails member of the crew but also reveals herself to be a robot. Ooh, Terminator reference! Kinda...since she doesn't really do anything Terminator-esque, like lift anyone over her head or smash them into a wall or mutter "I'll be back" - she just speaks softly and carries a big gun, which she actually gets to fire every so often, too. And despite her glaring eyes, clenched teeth and buxom figure, this isn't exactly her most shining hour since "Baywatch". But hey, if David Hasselhoff had StarCrash in his closet, Erika might as well have a similar albatross.

You remember Kamp-Groeneveld, right? Don't you? Come on, of course you do! Remember; she was Dr. Uschi Künstler in 2001: A Space Travesty! Yeah! That one! Is it a coincidence that she is featured in two bad space movies and serves the same purpose in both - to take up space?

(Hee-hee, see what I did there? "Space"? Hee-hee...)

The wheel-chaired Professor guy; all I can say about Swanby's performance in this movie is that, while he at least has the British accent down there's two things that worry me about his character. For one thing, he wears glasses. In the year 3000, wouldn't science have found a way around eyeglasses - I mean, what about contacts or lasik surgery or something? And a wheelchair? What about hover-chairs or robotic add-ons to his own legs or some kind of imaginative set-up like that? Come on, Cordell McQueen; you and your crew are slacking again.

Now, about the casting of Tiny Lister and Coolio. I guess I have to admit that by the sole virtue of their being Tiny Lister and Coolio they have the best and most interesting performances in this thing as, respectively, a big dumb strong guy and a stoner. And while I don't want to open up a can of metaphysical worms here, isn't it interesting that theirs are the two best performances - in a South African movie?

Understand, when I say that their performances are the best, that's like saying of all the junker cars in the scrap heap, theirs are the ones with the least rust. What I mean is that they at least do amusing things in the movie. Lister plays his patented big dumb character as he did in No Holds Barred, Barb Wire and the Friday movies. True, he was also our president in The Fifth Element and played a subtle part therein, but would you want to see a subtle President smack Erika Eleniak's robotic butt? No, you wouldn't.

As far as Coolio goes...he's a rapper. Period. Seems that's the most he brings to a project where he's supposed to smoke dope, act stoned and then, once he's Drac-ulated, act the same...save for eyes and teeth. Of course, he doesn't even submit any rap songs to the soundtrack - guess Roodt and company had to keep the costs low somehow; why make songs for a soundtrack that no one is going to buy to begin with?

Speaking of costs, I have to hand it to Cordell McQueen on one point: at least she bested Space Mutiny in the respect that there were no factory basements and bricks in this particular spaceship. It at least looks as realistic an outer space setting as your average episode of "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century".

Now, as far as the script goes...Roodt and Milborrow have more than enough references to the original Dracula mythos as they can jam into the ship and planet and star system names without making it look too forced...okay, it looks plenty forced. I mean, come on: The Transylvania space station?? Carpathian system?? Captain Van Helsing??

Oh! And when the big reveal of Count Orlock happens finally, what do we get? Something scary like the vampire in "Salem's Lot"? Something gruesome like the soul-stealing Vorvon in that "Buck Rogers" TV episode? A hip-looking embodiment like the teens in The Lost Boys? A classic interpretation like Gary Oldman's in Francis Ford Coppola's take on the classic Dracula storyline?

No. We get a pale white guy with slicked-back hair, a pointy-collared black cape and white turtleneck. In space. In the future.

And you know how long he appears in this 86-minute movie? Two, maybe three, minutes tops. And that's being generous.

Seeing that we have a Prince of Darkness who looks like he should be hosting a celebrity haunted house or the latest episode of "The Price is Bite", it's probably a good thing that we get as little of him as we do.

I swear, though, that in Roodt's defense he did actually direct some pretty darned good movies that actually helped cement relations between South Africa and their oppressed masses. Titles like Sarafina!, Cry The Beloved Country and the 2011 biopic of Winnie Mandela at least helped people forget about such titles as this and the Ice Cube vehicle Dangerous Ground. But it wouldn't take long for people to remember Coolio verbally propositioning Eleniak's character while referring to anacondas and certain parts of her body. It's just one of those things.

And the ending? Everyone dies except Lister, Eleniak and Orlock. Lister and Eleniak slam Orlock's arm in a door and snap it off, leaving him to scream and cry in place as they steer the ship into a pair of nearby suns. Eleniak offers herself (being a re-conditioned "pleasure-bot") to Lister, who cries, thanks God, picks her up over his shoulder and walks away, just as the ship explodes. The end.

Yep. That's it.

Again, Dracula 3000 is the worst vampire movie ever made. I don't care if they played it for laughs or not - it's stupid. I don't care if everyone involved were in this for a quick paycheck, a couple of days' shooting and were out the door before post-production started - it's a lousy effort for all involved. And I certainly don't care if everyone involved forgot for a minute that the whole "In Space" concept did not work for any other franchise - it would be bad even if they had convinced Warwick Davis to don his Leprechaun rigging and make a cameo.

To tell the truth, I don't know if Dracula 3000 even made back its budget when all was said and done. I have my suspicions, though, that someone is owing someone else big time for some unpaid bills of some sort for this thing. When you make something so cheap that it not only begs comparison to Space Mutiny but makes you long for the involvement of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" in the proceedings, what you have is a product that will make every single part of your body ache - from your head to your heels.

I got my copy of this movie for $8 from a previously-viewed sale at Movie Gallery. Because I now feel robbed of at least seven dollars and 99 1/2 cents, I feel that Darrell Roodt owes me some yard work. Anyone got his number?