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Asia Argento stars in horror legend Dario Argento’s sexy spin on the classic tale about the sharp-toothed count who craves human blood.
As an independent film director, very few horror filmmakers have had an effect on me but Dario Argento is right up there. Along with John Carpenter, Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper. As a kid growing up in Dublin, Ireland in the 70s and the 80s, watching horror movies every weekend with my friends was a tradition. Movies like “The Exorcist”, “The Evil Dead” and “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” were required viewing but none of them scared me. One day, while browsing the local video store, I came across a movie called “Creepers” (“Phenomena” in some countries) which starred a young Jennifer Connelly who is able to communicate with insects and was directed by Mr. Argento.
The movie had a profound effect on me with its macabre images and unabashed story-telling and to this day, I still remember the opening scene of a young girl near a waterfall being beheaded by garden shears. We see her head plunge into the cascading water but we only see it from a distance. Mr. Argento was renowned as a horror filmmaker with such films as “Deep Red”, “Suspiria”, “Inferno” and the aforementioned “Creepers.” He had a stylistic flair for creating, sometimes, almost unbearable tension, just watch any of his earlier movies and you’ll see what I mean. As the eighties wore on and we entered the nineties, Mr. Argento continued to make movies but with little of the panache he brought to his earlier movies.
They seemed like he was simply going through the motions. For most of the fans, they remembered him as the acclaimed filmmaker of the seventies and the eighties. I have to admit, when I recently saw the trailer for “Dracula 3D” I got excited. Could this be his comeback? Could this be the movie that would introduce him to a new generation of fans and aspiring filmmakers? Sadly, no. “Dracula 3D” is a soap opera on celluloid. The 3D is the only performance that comes off the screen and makes any sort of impact. Even with seasoned pros Rutger Hauer and Mr. Argento’s own daughter, Asia, doing somewhat credible jobs, we are left with a movie that is just screaming out to be parodied on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
The whole point in making a horror movie is to make it scary. Some scenes that are supposed to take place at night are so well lit that they could almost pass for daylight. Cinematographer Luciano Tovoli does a solid job with the look of the film but the music score is downright laughable and sounds like it was taken right out of a 1950’s B movie. Deep down, I was hoping that “Dracula 3D” would be the movie that would resurrect him and his career but instead, it elects to flounder in its own laziness. Actor Thomas Kretschmann, who plays the titular character, is so wooden, he makes Chuck Norris look like an Oscar contender. At times, he speaks so low it’s almost impossible to hear what he’s saying but at that point in the movie, I didn’t want to rewind it and turn up the volume, I simply wanted to fast forward to the very end.
In stores January 28th
