Van Helsing

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For other uses, see Van Helsing (disambiguation).
Van Helsing
Directed by Stephen Sommers
Produced by Stephen Sommers
Bob Ducsay
Written by Stephen Sommers
Starring Hugh Jackman
Kate Beckinsale
Richard Roxburgh
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date(s) May 7, 2004
Running time 132 min.
Language English
Budget $160 million
IMDb profile

Van Helsing is a 2004 American action / horror film about a vampire-hunter directed by Stephen Sommers. The film stars Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale.

Based on a version of the character of Abraham Van Helsing from Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, the film also incorporates characters from many other works into the narrative like the Wolf Man, and draws particularly on literary classics of the gothic horror canon such as Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein. The plot also pays homage to James Bond films.[verification needed]

Contents

[edit] Synopsis

Van Helsing is sent on a mission to Transylvania to help the last of the Valerious clan defeat Count Dracula and escape a curse on their family, aided by the friar Carl.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Transylvania, the late 19th century: Dr. Frankenstein works with Count Dracula to resurrect the dead, and creates Frankenstein's monster. When the doctor learns Dracula's plans for the creature, he backs out of the deal but is betrayed by his assistant Igor, and the Count murders him. The monster escapes to a windmill, where he meets his end as the villagers burn the building to rubble.

Hugh Jackman as Van Helsing.
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Hugh Jackman as Van Helsing.

A year later, after dispatching Mr. Hyde in Paris, Gabriel Van Helsing, a hunter of the Dark with no memory of his own past, is recalled to the Vatican by his divine Order, a secret society that fights supernatural evil. He must assist the last of the Valerious clan kill Dracula, thus protecting a covenant their ancestor made with God centuries ago, that his family and descendants will never enter Heaven until the vampire is destroyed. If the last of the clan dies without fulfilling the pact, nine generations will fall into Purgatory forever. He is given a parchment scrap with Latin writing, and a seal bearing the same symbol as the ring on his right hand, left to the Order by the same Valerious ancestor. The Order suggests that the similarity between the seal and ring might be a clue to his identity. Their resident 'tech guy' Friar Carl is sent along to assist him.

Meanwhile in Transylvania the last of the Valerious clan, Gypsy princess Anna and her brother Velkan hunt werewolves, but Velkan is bitten and lost. Van Helsing and Friar Carl arrive, and the suspicious villagers and Anna confront them. Dracula's three Brides arrive and attack in daylight, specifically targeting Van Helsing and Anna. Van Helsing slays one and the other two retreat. As Van Helsing is the first to have killed a vampire in over a century, Anna accepts him.

At far-off Dracula's castle the Count feels the loss of his bride and awakens. He comforts his remaining consorts and announces his intention to find a new bride, and to continue Dr. Frankenstein's experiments. He tells Igor to go to Frankenstein's castle to continue them.

Sculpture of Van Helsing, New York.
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Sculpture of Van Helsing, New York.

Anna and Van Helsing argue. He believes that with Dracula actively seeking to destroy her, she mustn't hunt alone, and knocks her out to prevent this. Later Anna awakens and comes face-to-face with a werewolf. It's Velkan, who tries to warn her about Dracula in a moment of half-transformation. Van Helsing arrives but Velkan flees. He pursues but Anna stops him from killing Velkan, and tells him about rumors of a cure for lycanthropy in Dracula's possession. He agrees to help her confront Dracula and find the cure.

At Frankenstein's castle they discover Velkan is a captive catalyst in Dracula's experiments, and why: the children of undead Dracula and his brides are stillborn, so the Count needed Frankenstein to bring them to life. Unfortunately, without the Monster (the 'key' to Frankenstein's discovery), the blood of every test subject has failed. Has Frankenstein taken the secret to life beyond death to his grave? Dracula hopes Velkan's now-lycanthropic blood with its healing powers will sustain his children.

Van Helsing and Anna can't stop the experiment, and Dracula's massive brood come alive and flock with their mothers to the village for their first feeding. Anna uses this distraction to look for Velkan. Van Helsing stabs the Count with a silver stake, but Dracula smiles in recognition and says "Hello, Gabriel". Van Helsing stabs again with a crucifix, to equal lack of effect. He is then unnerved as Dracula reveals intimate knowledge of his life and refers to the ancient battles that Van Helsing sees in horrific nightmares. Dracula offers to restore Van Helsing's memories, but Van Helsing follows Anna. She conquers the Dwerger (the Count's supernatural servants) on her tail but fails to free Velkan before the final stroke of midnight when he becomes a werewolf permanently, and completely controlled by Dracula. Velkan's blood is not stable enough for Dracula's children, who self-destruct. Dracula orders Velkan to kill the two hunters.

Near the windmill ruins, Anna chides Van Helsing for his conventional vampire-killing methods, stating that her clan has already tried everything. They settle their differences with a drink of absinthe, then suddenly fall into an underground cavern, unconscious until morning.

Back at the manor, Friar Carl stumbles upon a painting that comes to life after he reads an inscription written beside it. The painting depicts two knights engaged in combat under the full moon that throw down their armor and arms and transform into a werewolf and a demonic winged creature, respectively, before engaging in combat again.

Beneath the ruins, Anna and Van Helsing awake to a presence in the cavern. Anna recognizes Frankenstein's Monster and asks what it wants. It replies that it simply wants to exist. Van Helsing tranquillizes it. Anna wants to kill it but Van Helsing stops her because the creature is not evil. The monster, however, prefers death to becoming the successful catalyst to bring Dracula's brood to life, the number of which is more vast than Anna or Van Helsing know. Meantime Velkan discovers them and the creature. Van Helsing convinces Anna to bring the creature to Rome for safekeeping. They leave the village with the monster and Carl.

Van Helsing's carriage makes a daring leap.
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Van Helsing's carriage makes a daring leap.

On route to Italy Dracula's remaining brides attack, hell-bent to regain the monster. Van Helsing manages to kill another bride with one booby-trapped carriage. Velkan attacks the remaining carriage and causes a fire. In the melee Van Helsing fatally wounds Velkan. Next morning Anna discovers the now-human, dying Velkan. She rails against Van Helsing for her brother's death but discovers that Velkan bit him, giving Van Helsing the werewolf curse. Anna is then blindsided by the last of Dracula's brides and kidnapped.

Arriving later that day in Budapest, Van Helsing and his party are confronted by the bride again, who relays a trade offer from Dracula himself: the Monster for Anna. Van Helsing agrees, but only if the trade takes place in a public area. The bride accepts the terms, setting the place of the exchange at a local All Hallow's Eve masquerade ball. The Monster is furious at Van Helsing over this, but relents after he realizes that the hunter has been bitten, and goes into temporary hiding.

Dracula dances with an enchanted Anna (Richard Roxburgh and Kate Beckinsale).
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Dracula dances with an enchanted Anna (Richard Roxburgh and Kate Beckinsale).

That night at the ball, the Count dances with a bewitched Anna, compelled by the vampire's whim. Dracula kisses her and boasts he will make her his newest bride and that he never intended to go through with the trade, nor did he expect it of Van Helsing. Van Helsing and Friar Carl rescue Anna from the Count's clutches. However, the Count reveals that not only have his fellow undead reacquired the Monster for him, but that the palace hosting the ball is his summer home, and all the masked guests are his coven. Faced with an entire building full of bloodsuckers, Anna, Van Helsing, and Carl flee, but Carl detonates an impromptu flash bang grenade that destroys the vampire coven.

Dracula and Igor escape with the Monster by boat. Van Helsing and his companions give chase but are blocked. Van Helsing swears to the Monster that he'll set it free, but Carl reveals that the Order won't allow it: after receiving his report, the Order told Carl that although the Monster isn't evil, they don't recognize it as human, and in order to prevent it from being used for evil, they are to destroy it as well as Dracula. Van Helsing questions whether Carl recommended killing him too, given he's infected with the werewolf curse, but Carl replies that he left that out of his report. They try to pick up the trail back at Frankenstein's castle, but discover Dracula and his entourage gone along with the lab machinery, probably to Dracula's castle, location unknown.

At the manor, the three review everything they know about Dracula. Originally the son of Anna's ancestor killed by the 'left hand of God', Anna's ancestor sealed Dracula away in a realm accessed only by a one-way door. Dracula escaped by making a deal with the Devil for his undead status, and wings for himself and his kind. The location of this door, however has been lost, although Anna's father had been studying a wall mural of a map in the manor for clues. Van Helsing intuits that the mural is the door. Carl finds the map's edge torn off at the bottom corner. Van Helsing tries the parchment scrap left to the Order by Anna's ancestor. The piece fits, and the mural crystallizes into a mirror. Anna mentions that Dracula and his brood have no reflections in mirrors, and Carl theorizes that to Dracula, they aren't mirrors at all, but portals back to his prison realm. Van Helsing moves his hand through the mirror and finds a cold and snowy environment beyond that matches the description of Dracula's prison realm. Bracing themselves, the trio step through the mirror, and journey to Dracula's castle.

Carl, Van Helsing, and Anna in Dracula's Castle (David Wenham, Hugh Jackman, and Kate Beckinsale).
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Carl, Van Helsing, and Anna in Dracula's Castle (David Wenham, Hugh Jackman, and Kate Beckinsale).

Once inside, the trio corner Igor. They see the captive Monster being hauled up to the rebuilt lab, who confirms that Dracula does have a cure for lycanthropy, and urges them to forget about him and find it instead. Suspicious why Dracula would possess such a cure given his use of werewolves as minions for centuries, Van Helsing threatens Igor for the answers. Carl, however, guesses why: as indicated by the painting, only the bite of a werewolf can kill Dracula, and since the Count can't assert full control over the creatures until they fully succumb to the curse, he needs some way of protecting himself from new-forming werewolves. Van Helsing decides to go after Dracula and try to free the Monster and thwart the experiment, while Carl and Anna take Igor to find the cure. If Anna and Carl are too late to administer the antidote to him before the final stroke of midnight, Anna is to run away as fast as she can, while Carl is to stake him in the heart.

Van Helsing locates the Monster too late to stop the experiment that successfully revitalizes Dracula's brood. The Monster is flung off the pedestal he was shackled to by a lightning bolt. Carl and Anna find the syringe filled with the cure, hidden inside a container of acid, but are double-crossed by Igor, who locks them in the room with the antidote. They are then attacked by Dracula's last bride. Anna uses some of the acid to melt the gate that blocks their escape, allowing Carl to escape with the syringe, but she's surprised by the bride. Carl takes the cure to Van Helsing but is impeded by both vicious weather and Igor, who harasses him.

Meanwhile, Van Helsing confronts Dracula, realizing that with the Count's vampire children now alive, the Count must die before they gain in strength. As the first stroke of midnight hits, Van Helsing finally gives into the beast within and lets the curse consume him, shocking then delighting Dracula as he 'wolfs out'. Dracula tries to convince him that they should work together instead of being enemies, but Van Helsing is out for blood.

Back on the bridge, Carl is saved from Igor by the Monster. As Igor plummets to his death, Carl saves the Monster who swings into the room that held the cure, just in time to save Anna from being drained by the bride. Carl throws Anna the syringe, and then as the bride breaks free and goes for Anna again, he tosses her the silver stake Van Helsing gave him to slay him. Anna impales the bride and gives the stake back to Carl.

In the lab, Dracula reveals that Van Helsing was the one who murdered him (Dracula) when he was human, and the ring on Van Helsing's finger was originally also his. Dracula again appeals to Van Helsing's desire to know himself, offering to restore his memories, but Van Helsing again refuses, stating that some things are best left forgotten. He shifts back into werewolf mode and tears out the Count's throat, killing him and his children once and for all.

Then Anna arrives, sees werewolf Van Helsing finishing off Dracula and, knowing he has little time left, runs at him with the cure syringe. He ferociously attacks her. Carl arrives, stake in hand, and runs at him, only to be caught one-handed by Van Helsing. Anna's attempt to inject the cure was successful. Unfortunately, the attack killed her, leaving the now un-cursed Van Helsing to mourn.

As the Monster leaves on a make-shift raft, Van Helsing and Carl pay their last respects to Anna, and place her funeral pyre on a cliff overlooking the sea. As the pyre burns, Van Helsing sees a vision of Anna and her entire family finally finding peace. Comforted by the fact that although he lost her, he has saved her and entire generations of her family from Purgatory, Van Helsing and Carl ride off into the sunset and back to Rome.

[edit] Characters

[edit] Notes

Note: Nearly all of the information below can be found on the DVD commentary track.

The Wolf Man.
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The Wolf Man.
  • Richard Roxburgh (Dracula) and his on screen bride Silvia Colloca (Verona) got engaged after meeting on the set. [citation needed]
  • A cardinal rule is broken by referring to Frankenstein's monster directly by the name "Frankenstein", although in the context of this film, the Monster clearly considers himself to be Frankenstein's son. This difference is further borne out in an additional scene in the film's tie-in novel, in which the Monster specifically tells Van Helsing to call him Frankenstein. [citation needed]
  • In Bram Stoker's original novel, Dracula, and many subsequent films based on it, it is Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, an elderly anthropology professor from the Netherlands who does the vampire hunting, although the studio changed the name to Gabriel so that they could copyright their own marketable version of the character (who is in the public domain). However, according to Sommers, he chose not to use the name "Abraham" as he did not like the name, and would not name his lead character Abraham. His viewpoint was that Gabriel was Abraham's younger brother.[1]
  • When Dracula talks to Van Helsing at the climax of the film he refers to himself as Count Vladislauss Draculea as opposed to the normal Dracula. This is in fact the correct form of the original Romanian meaning "son of", referring to Vlad the Impaler as the "Son of the Dragon", his father Vlad "Dracul" from his involvement in the Christian Order of the Dragon. [citation needed]
  • The actors who played the Dwerger, Dracula's servants in the movie, reportedly fared rather poorly physically during production. Their costumes, which was coated with a thick black waterproof substance to stand the many rainy scenes, proved to be extremely flammable, and many Dwergi were caught on fire by accident by the sparks in both laboratory sequences (though three were lit on fire on purpose near the end). Because of this, crewmen were constantly at the ready with fire extinguishers to put out the actors when they caught fire and got off screen. Also, during the first laboratory sequence, when Anna pulls off a Dwerger on the rope that she's climbing, you can see that the Dwerger lands on the very rim of the tub down below. This was a goof; the Dwerger was supposed to land in the tub along with the other two that Anna cuts from the rope below her, but the actor fell incorrectly, and was seriously injured, because of it. [citation needed]
  • According to director Stephen Sommers, Van Helsing's hat was one of a kind, and was for some reason unable to be reproduced, even during production. So, understandably, the crew took great pains to keep it from being damaged or destroyed, even going so far as to be at the ready with hair dryers to dry off the hat after each take of any rainy or otherwise water-involved scene. [citation needed]
  • The Dwergi weren't "invented" until it was realized that bodies were needed to move the laboratory from Castle Frankenstein to Castle Dracula. [citation needed]
  • Both Jackman and Beckinsale did most of their own stunts in the movie, including those that, in retrospect, would be considered too dangerous to perform (for instance, that was really Hugh Jackman being dragged beside the carriage straddling the back wheel during the chase through the forest to Rome. He was subsequently applauded for his dedication by the stuntmen, apparently not ever hearing of any actor performing such a dangerous stunt by themselves). [citation needed]
  • When Stephen Sommers was casting the movie, he had considered Kate Beckinsale for the role of Anna, but since she had just been in the movie, Underworld, in which Kate had played a vampire, he doubted she would want to be in another movie about vampires. He later heard from Kate's agent, who said that Kate was interested in the role and wanted to know why Stephen hadn't approached her about the role. [citation needed]

[edit] Other media

Sommers expanded the story of Van Helsing in two direct spin-offs. The animated prequel titled Van Helsing: The London Assignment takes place before the main events of the film, focusing on Van Helsing's first mission to try to end a Jack the Ripper-style murderer, who turns out to be Mr. Hyde, from terrorizing London. There was also a one-issue comic book titled Van Helsing: From Beneath the Rue Morgue, that follows Van Helsing on a self-contained adventure that occurs during the events of the film, just after the death of Jekyll / Hyde in Paris but before Van Helsing returns to Rome. In the adventure, Van Helsing deals with Doctor Moreau and his hybrid mutants.

A spin-off television series, titled Transylvania, was also going to be produced, using the film's village sets, but due to poor US box-office, critical panning and a considerable budget for each episode, the series' status is currently unknown. The series was to be set in the same period as the film, and was reportedly to focus on the story of a Texas cowboy who becomes sheriff in a Transylvanian village, where he must keep the peace between two warring familes with some "monstrous genes". Sommers wrote the pilot and supervised six episode scripts.

Vivendi Universal Games also published a Van Helsing video game for PlayStation 2, Xbox and Game Boy Advance. The game follows a similar plot to the movie, has gameplay similar to Devil May Cry and the PS2 and Xbox versions feature the voice talent of many of the actors including Hugh Jackman and Richard Roxburgh.

Fans of the CastleVania franchise have attempted to draw parallels between this movie and the popular videogame series. The "Van Helsing" videogame even includes a reference to the Transylvanian Belmont family, from which most "CastleVanian" protagonists originate.


[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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