Jarv’s Schlock Vault: Dracula 3000

Did I ever tell you how many times I’d see you and want to ejaculate all over your bazonkas… All the times I stayed up late, high as a kite, in the non-gravitational atmosphere, while I stroked my anaconda, and dreamed about your snow-white ass

Jarv’s Rating: Half a Chang- complete and utter shit. Crap vampire, crap action, waste of a good schlock cast, crap script, and a fucking terrible ending.

Fuck me. I can’t say I wasn’t warned, because that would be lying, but really this is just inexcusably bad. I wasn’t going to go anywhere near it, on the basis that even resident monkey said that it was terrible, and if he thinks it’s bad then we know it really is truly awful. However, I made the mistake of looking up the cast and blow me down: Casper Van Dien, Erika Eleniak, Coolio, and Tiny fucking Lister! How could this possibly be a sack of refuse? It can’t possibly be worse than Twilight, can it?

Of course it can’t. That’s a ridiculous supposition. Twilight is both terrible and actively evil propaganda/ creepy manual for wife-beating, whereas Dracula 3000 is merely terrible on every conceivable level. It has to be said, though, that the fairly generic poster gives away one of the biggest problems with the film- it desperately wants to be Alien crossed with vampires, whereas it’s actually a similar cross to those in West Virginia that occur as the consequence of generations of inbreeding. If Dracula 3000 was a person, then it’s the mongoloid kid in Deliverance banging out a rousing version of Duelling Banjos.

"Think these suspicious coffin-shaped objects are full of space dope, Tiny?"

Casper Van Dien (and we all love Casper) plays Captain Van Helsing. Captain Van Helsing leads a rag-tag group of tools including Humvee (Tiny Lister), robot Ash, played by Erika Eleniak (yes, you did read that right), some English twat in a wheelchair, and Coolio’s inexplicable “187”, who was apparently a genius until he discovered space weed. This group of rocket scientists discover a spaceship loaded up with coffins and no sooner than you can say “spliff” than Coolio is all over them thinking that they’re smuggling weed.

Intergalactically smuggling weed.

Yes you did read that correctly, but just in case, I’m going to repeat it.

Coolio believes the coffins are full of narcotics because he thinks that they have blundered onto a space ship used for the illegal transportation of astro-pot across the galaxy.

Fuck me that is stupid.

Next thing we know, Coolio has become a space vampire at the hands of utterly crap Roxburgh knock off Count Orlock (played by Langley Kirkwood). Casper buys the farm, Eleniak keeps her top on and her and Tiny Lister pilot the spaceship into twin suns.

What a load of horseshit.

Count Coolio. Oh dear.

Actually, to be fair, the acting isn’t too bad. I do like Coolio’s “educated voice” which he frequently forgets, slipping back into his normal patois. Casper is stoic in adversity, and Tiny Lister is, well, Tiny Lister. Only Kirkwood sucks, but that’s not a surprise, because for some inexplicable reason in a film set in the year 3000 he’s dressed up in Bela Lugosi’s hand me downs. He’s ludicrously out-of-place, and judging by the performance I think he knows it. Eleniak, to be honest is a complete waste of time in this film, although to be fair she has the worst dialogue of the lot- shining lines that include “before I was a narc I was a pleasure bot”. It’s not really fair on someone who basically only exists on camera to take her top off.

Having been rude about it, I do have to say that it is actually kind of entertaining for the most part in a really dumb way. Listening to Space Vampire Coolio argue with Tiny using accents and dialogue that wouldn’t be overly conspicuous in Boyz N The Hood. Coolio smoking a space bong is automatically funny, and Casper’s ridiculous stoicism is frankly hilarious. Ordinarily, as a result of this, I’d rate the film with at least 1.5 Changs, but this is an exception, and I’m going to explain why.

"Wait, you were looking for Dracula? Sorry, I'm Orlock, Dracula lives next door"

This isn’t just a bad film, it’s also an annoying film. First of all, there’s a load of shit that just is intrinsically irritating- take Casper’s death, for example. He just kind of blunders up to Orlock who bitches him out for being a Van Helsing, then it cuts away to Ash and Tiny (she’s trying to convince him to take her clothes off, and contrary to all the rules of schlock he keeps turning her down, which is maddening), then Van Helsing comes back in and woah! he’s Space Vampire Van Helsing. This requires Eleniak and Tiny to stake the motherfucker, and in one fell swoop eliminate reason-for-finishing the film number 1.

Secondly, there are all the ridiculously crap attempts to link the film to Alien, Eleniak’s character is a fucking robot called Aurora Ash. Where the fuck have I heard that before? Can’t possibly think, although to be fair Eleniak is far more attractive than Ian Holm. These many, many attempts to reference Alien really started to get on my tits after a while- simply because there were so many of them and they were so unsubtle. The sum effect of this overkill was that I actually wanted to turn the film off and watch Ridley Scott’s masterpiece.

Casper is horrified to discover his Starship Troopers 4 audition includes ass play

Finally, the end of this fucking film is terrible. Tiny Lister and Ash are the only two left standing and they realise that they’re heading towards the twin suns. However, neither of them can steer the fucking ship, so they’re going to have to die. This, for no good reason, is when Aurora Ash announces that she used to be a pleasure bot, and would Tiny like a go before they crash into the stars? Tiny slings her over his shoulder and….

Film ends.

That’s it. What a fucking gip.

Just in case it isn’t obvious, Dracula 3000 is a shit film. However, I’m not 0 Changing it, or even going anywhere near the Orangutan of Doom. There’s a very easy reason for this, and this is because there are, spread few and far between, moments of sheer genius. In particular, if you hang around over the credits (and I only discovered this by accident) you see Tiny walk towards the camera with Erika over his shoulder and he FUCKING SLAPS HER ON THE ASS! Awesome. If there was more of this kind of nonsense and less aggravation then it would have got a much higher rating.

YOU GO TINY!

Overall, this is a deeply annoying film, and also a shit one. From that the vampire is dressed like Dracula but not called Dracula, through the aggravatingly shitty references, to the anti-climactic and wank ending this is a terrible piece of cinema. Still, though, I’d rather watch it than Twilight.

Until next time,

Jarv