Van Helsing Blu-ray
Now the monster mash comes in high definition
Tags: Van Helsing Categories: DVD/TV Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Sep 29th, 2009
Stephen Sommers was fresh off of The Mummy and The Mummy Returns when, as with all of Universal’s classic monster franchises, success bred an inflated sense of worth. In the 40’s and 50’s this was House of Frankenstein or House of Dracula. Today, it is Van Helsing.
If The Mummy was Stephen Sommers homage to the great original horror film, Van Helsing is his homage to the B-movies that those series degenerated into. Instead of bringing the Mummy back for a third time, Sommers instead opts to visit Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, Dr. Jekyll/ Mr. Hyde, and The Wolf Man.
Van Helsing is a B-movie, though its budget makes it look like it is trying very hard to be more than it should. The script is simply there to serve as a platform for the action, whether it be human versus monster or the ever popular monster on monster variety.
Hugh Jackman plays the title character with the appropriate level of seriousness. That’s where the film succeeds, everybody knows that this is not a great cinematic achievement, but simply entertainment, and take their jobs and roles seriously. Nobody goes “camp” thankfully.
This film is just a silly fun monster film. You can’t expect more from it. Yes, it is a bit long and overly convoluted, but all of the latter entries in the classic Universal monster films were so watered down that the combining of them was necessary to keep the franchises going. This created a new genre which is what this film pays tribute to, and not only does it do that with the content, but by being an over-stuffed bag of monsters itself, is a perfect recreation of the type of film.
Previously released with a whole mess of special features, we now the film released on Blu-ray. All of the previous special features are presented here (minus the Xbox game demo) but it’s all in standard definition. Do I need to list all of the special features? Do I need to go into detail about the two audio commentaries? There isn’t anything really new here (yes, I know the picture in picture track is “new” but it’s not full of new and insightful content) so essentially this isn’t a heck of a large upgrade from the previous DVD release. It is, however, a decent upgrade from the original single disc DVD release that doesn’t have all the special features – which, admittedly, aren’t that great to begin with, but hey, if you’re going to be paying for something, at least pay for and get as much as you can. We get featurettes on the music, a view of the set, creating the monsters, etc. If you’re a fan of the film, it’s all decent enough to watch once or twice.
The best word to describe Van Helsing is that it is a “romp” – and the film succeeds in being that. I don’t know that we needed a double-dip release though.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ It's a redone Monster Mash like the old days + Fun brain-dead romp |
7.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- No, really, it is brain dead - Overly convoluted - Special features in standard definition |
|
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| It's not the greatest upgrade, but it's decent enough. | |
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Tags: Van Helsing
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Sep 29th, 2009 and is filed under DVD/TV Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
