Dracula 2001 (2000)

Elevator Pitch: Matthew Van Helsing lives in a large house in central London. He has a secretary, Solina and an assistant Simon. Late one night Solina lets her boyfriend Marcus, with his gang into the property and they break into an armoured vault finding, not treasures, but a single silver coffin which they attempt to open resulting in one of the gang being killed by a booby trap. Unable to prise the lid off they escape with it by plane but before they reach their destination the lid is opened and a spectral man appears, killing everybody and causing the plane to crash into a bayou close to New Orleans. While a female reporter is being filmed at the site the character, a vampire appears and bites her. Meanwhile Van Helsing with a strange gun is on the trail and so is Simon. In A New Orleans record shop a young woman is having strange hallucinations involving the vampire.

Content:  The young women respond erotically to the vampire but there is no actual nudity, apart from some explicit shadows on a screen outside a strip club. We see Van Helsing injecting himself with blood and once the robbery has taken place he is seen with his strange weapons later to be used against the undead. We see the action in the plane when the coffin is opened and we get our first view of Dracula. Then it is party time in New Orleans and Dracula is intent on finding Mary, who turns out to be Van Helsing’s daughter. He finds her flat but she is not there, however her flatmate is bitten making a trio of female vampires, Dracula’s brides. 

A View: This film cost a lot and did not cover its production costs. It appeared to be an advert for Virgin. It could have been an ironic inclusion, had the film been more erotic. For good reasons no-one liked this outing, it was not frightening or Gothic or clever. I never got why the thieves had decided to take the coffin to New Orleans and it is impossible to say more without giving the  whole plot away. But suffice it to say it is not worth watching it for an hour and a half to find out.

Bram Stoker’s fictional character has spawned a whole range of vampire films, some actually featuring Dracula reviewed on this site include: Dracula Untold, Dracula and possibly the best, Bram Stoker’s Dracula from 1992.