Latest / Camp Classics / Van Helsing (2004)

Transcript

Van Helsing (2004) · Camp Classics

• 0:00
  Get away from her, you bitch. Classic.
• 0:05
  He was in the Amazon cry along when she was researching spiders
• 0:09
  right before she died, no? Hannah, you.
• 0:16
  Thought you could go prostitute your dog at it?
• 0:18
  I used to love doggy chow. I used.
• 0:22
  To love doggy chow too. I forgot to come up with a line
• 0:25
  here. I'm Crystal.
• 0:28
  It's. Spooky season.
• 0:32
  I'm baby lame. See what I did there?
• 0:35
  It's like Halloween season on this.
• 0:37
  Yeah. Yeah, I get it, I get it.
• 0:39
  And welcome to Camp Classics. A thoughtful podcast about
• 0:42
  stupid movies. Every two weeks we're here
• 0:46
  discussing, rating, exploring some of the peaks, some of the
• 0:50
  valleys in the genre of camp, in the search for the campus of
• 0:54
  Camp Classics. Baby, you're back.
• 0:58
  I know it's so great to be here, to come from America to the UKI
• 1:03
  mean, they're just, you know, just picking which one's better
• 1:07
  at the moment, isn't it? It's really fun.
• 1:09
  And how was your stay at Miss Ford's house?
• 1:13
  Miss Ford. No, you know Betty her.
• 1:17
  Tragic boozy flaccid clown. No, I've found my chakra, I've
• 1:23
  opened myself up to new possibilities and yeah, I've
• 1:26
  opened now. I'm ready to do stuff.
• 1:32
  You've been wide open for years. You wish.
• 1:35
  We are also joined by our gorgeous friend Fraser.
• 1:38
  Hi, Fraser. Hello, I have a line.
• 1:41
  It's an iconic. An iconic line delivered in an
• 1:44
  iconic accent. I believe that has earned them a
• 1:47
  drink. I don't know what the fuck she's
• 1:50
  saying but girl, I am living. You believe it is what in your
• 1:53
  drink? I believe that has earned them a
• 1:56
  drink. Oh earned.
• 1:59
  Are you having trouble understanding my my pan pan
• 2:02
  Eastern European Transylvanian accent?
• 2:05
  How odd. That's going to be a running
• 2:07
  theme today, I think. Fraser, you're the host of
• 2:10
  podcast. You're Welcome, America.
• 2:12
  Sure thing. Speaking of America, America to
• 2:15
  the UK, Yeah. I host a podcast called You're
• 2:17
  Welcome America. It is a podcast that translates
• 2:20
  British pop culture for America and American pop culture for
• 2:22
  Britain. And I mean, that's kind of what
• 2:25
  we tried to do, but we end up really just talking about the
• 2:27
  Millennium and me going to university.
• 2:31
  It's really essentially what happens in every episode uni.
• 2:35
  And a lot of, yeah, obscure pop stars.
• 2:38
  I'd say yes. Yeah, we do a lot of deep dives
• 2:40
  into. The best deep dive we did is the
• 2:43
  Totally Scott Lee show. That's our favorite.
• 2:46
  And multiple Saturday's specials, which were really.
• 2:50
  How? How have you managed to do?
• 2:52
  Multiple Saturday my God. Because they have inexplicably
• 2:56
  like 3 different reality shows that got made at the same time
• 2:59
  and they are a Sir log. Those girls are lovely, but they
• 3:02
  are not made for reality shows. They've got nothing.
• 3:07
  It's hard to tell between us who's doing the more important
• 3:10
  journalistic work here, chronicling the Saturday's
• 3:13
  reality TV career, or us chronicling 2004.
• 3:17
  Is Van Helsing. Tough call.
• 3:20
  Feels kind of parallel to me. Yeah, yeah.
• 3:23
  I will say this does feel like a slightly edgy choice because
• 3:26
  we're sort of moving into the year 2000 and onwards.
• 3:29
  And that's, that's been a real thing that we don't normally get
• 3:32
  past, don't normally get past 1999 on this podcast.
• 3:35
  So right, glad that we're doing something current for our
• 3:38
  listeners. Yeah, pretty fresh.
• 3:42
  Fresh. Fresh, yeah, yeah, I mean, it
• 3:45
  stinks like it's fresh. We do also have a gay trion
• 3:50
  where you can get a bonus episode every month.
• 3:53
  It's only £4 a month and you get access to our growing back
• 3:58
  catalog and more importantly, you support us in making all of
• 4:01
  the three episodes too. Help me, I'm poor.
• 4:04
  Our latest gay Trion episode is on weapons.
• 4:06
  Speaking of current. That is actually current, yeah.
• 4:10
  Yeah, the new horror in cinemas now starring Baby Lame's drag
• 4:14
  daughter Gladys. Oh, you, that, you, that one
• 4:18
  you've had for a while, haven't you?
• 4:21
  I, I would like to have been in the room when you came up with
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  that and you're like, Oh yeah, tick, tick, tick.
• 4:26
  I actually saw a photo today of Danny Elfman for some reason.
• 4:30
  I think I was looking at the Mummy Wikipedia page or so.
• 4:33
  I don't know. But you know the composer, Danny
• 4:34
  Elfman. Yeah.
• 4:36
  Danny Elfman looks exactly like Gladys.
• 4:39
  Do you know what Danny Elfman looks like?
• 4:41
  He's a really, really famous composer.
• 4:45
  He does a lot of movies but obsessed.
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  He looks just like Gladys. Oh wow, he really does.
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  Yeah. Oh shit, if Mickey Rourke and
• 4:56
  Gladys had a child. Yeah.
• 4:58
  So he did all of the Tim Burton, all of the Tim Burton scores,
• 5:02
  Yeah. Anyway, no.
• 5:04
  That looks like Pandora box as well.
• 5:09
  Let's not get into Pandora Box. Oh, did you have sex with her?
• 5:14
  Let's just say I looked inside her box and it was full of
• 5:19
  misery. Wagon Wheel Watusi.
• 5:22
  We've got some new Gayatrion members to shout out.
• 5:25
  We've got Julie and Mallory. Welcome to the Gayatrion.
• 5:30
  Hi, Julie and Mallory. Thank you for being here and
• 5:33
  I've got some comments and reviews.
• 5:35
  Lots of people showing love for a Jawbreaker episode with Rose
• 5:38
  McGowan. The one that I actually wasn't
• 5:40
  part of. Great.
• 5:41
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, the the the reviews
• 5:44
  were flowing and people were just saying what a breath of
• 5:46
  fresh air. Suit gives a fuck is petition
• 5:49
  Sue be the new Co host. Yeah, I actually started the
• 5:53
  petition, so that's actually my campaign I'm working on.
• 5:56
  So there's always someone younger and hungrier coming down
• 6:01
  the stairs after you. We've had some comments too,
• 6:04
  Cara says. I like when Crystal says growing
• 6:07
  back catalog. It's my cellar door and you're
• 6:11
  my Drew Barrymore. Well, Cara, let's just say
• 6:16
  you're not the first person to say you like my growing back
• 6:18
  catalog. Hey, what does?
• 6:20
  It what does it mean? What does which bet?
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  The whole what the cellar do. Yeah, I don't.
• 6:26
  Get it? That's a That's a thing from
• 6:27
  Donnie Darko. Oh.
• 6:29
  OK, again, a film that I should probably know about if we were
• 6:32
  on a film podcast. I mean, do you that one?
• 6:36
  Yeah, Drew Barrymore says in it that cellar door is the most
• 6:41
  beautiful combination of words in the English language.
• 6:44
  Oh, OK. Yeah.
• 6:45
  Yeah, something like that. Anyway, sounds really fun.
• 6:48
  Catalog, Yeah. Basically, can you not come for
• 6:53
  our Gatrian reviewers? Oh, no, this is just a reviewer,
• 6:56
  actually. Yeah, you're fine.
• 6:57
  You're fine. Yeah, this is for.
• 6:59
  This is for Julio Mallory. I love that.
• 7:03
  Meredith says love the podcast. If you want to revisit some
• 7:07
  classic Sharon Stone, I'd recommend 1996's Diabolique, a
• 7:13
  remake of what may be a better movie from 1955 but I've never
• 7:16
  bothered to watch. I'm not familiar with
• 7:20
  Diabolique. No.
• 7:22
  But you had me at Sharon Stone and then adding devilishness.
• 7:26
  I mean, I'm sold. I mean it, you know, Sharon,
• 7:29
  Sharon Stone has already peaked on this podcast, but have.
• 7:35
  You ever done the racist Sharon Stone true throwback King
• 7:40
  Solomon's minds? Have you heard of that?
• 7:43
  It's the Indiana Jones RIP off based on the the like 1930s
• 7:46
  adventure books. Her and Richard Chamberlain.
• 7:48
  That old, that old queen, he's playing it.
• 7:50
  Have you not seen King Solomon's minds?
• 7:53
  No. Imagine the racism of Temple of
• 7:55
  Doom times it by 5000 and throw Sharon Stone in there.
• 7:59
  I mean. Oh well, I'm I'm hard.
• 8:01
  OK, I say I have a quick question about that is racism
• 8:04
  camp. I mean I recently watched
• 8:07
  Indiana Jones Temple of Doom and yes in that it is.
• 8:11
  I mean she sings anything goes in Mandarin.
• 8:13
  At the beginning it was racist and camp.
• 8:16
  Yeah, but Fraser's mixed race, so he's allowed to.
• 8:18
  Yeah. I don't think it's, I don't
• 8:19
  think it's camp if we watch it, but.
• 8:21
  That's true. It it should be known that I'm
• 8:23
  mixed race. And I mean, not that that's
• 8:25
  going to count for this episode 'cause I mean, this one's, this
• 8:30
  one's for you guys, I guess in half of me.
• 8:31
  Oh dear. One other suggested, we've had
• 8:35
  Electra's who suggest we do First Wives Club, which I think
• 8:38
  it's the first request for First Wives Club, but obviously it's
• 8:41
  already on the list and Troop Beverly Hills, which I think is
• 8:44
  our second request for Troop Beverly Hills.
• 8:46
  I mean, good suggestions. I mean, one day we might
• 8:48
  actually do films that are suggested on the list rather
• 8:51
  than some of the choices that we've been doing, AKA today's
• 8:54
  film. Well, this film was the
• 8:57
  suggestion. It just happened to be Fraser's.
• 8:59
  Did you choose this movie? I sure fucking did, and I'm
• 9:04
  ready to defend this movie for the full length of the runtime,
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  which is 7 hours long. Oh, I didn't know.
• 9:12
  I didn't know you were bringing this to the table.
• 9:14
  Oh, OK, sure. Yeah.
• 9:16
  So when did you come? So we are talking about 2004's
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  Van Helsing. How did this film come to you?
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  Well I saw this when I was at university at the Odeon on
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  Putney High Street. Me and my friend went and I've
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  I've always been really into horror and kind of especially
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  the like old universal horror monsters.
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  So when this came out, I was pumped.
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  So that's why I got into it, because I loved all the Dracula
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  and The Mummy and all that shit. And I saw it, sat in that cinema
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  for seven hours, came out and said that was a great movie and
• 9:48
  I'm ready to tell you why. Well, we'll get into that
• 9:53
  shortly. But baby, before we go any
• 9:54
  further, I think you should let the listeners know what makes a
• 9:57
  camp classic. OK, so a camp classic is
• 10:00
  something that unlocks queer joy.
• 10:03
  We want a wetty. Not just any old kind of wetty,
• 10:07
  though. A big sloppy, moist wetty from.
• 10:14
  Getting all of that. No, you're not cutting it,
• 10:17
  because I'm just going to keep on saying wetty throughout this
• 10:19
  podcast. Yeah, it needs to be
• 10:21
  pleasurable. It needs to have an ongoing
• 10:23
  legacy and inform queer pop culture.
• 10:25
  Ideally, it should be stupid because intelligent films don't
• 10:28
  tend to be camp, and we're looking for flaccid energy.
• 10:32
  That's right, we're looking for underdog flop vibes, something
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  that's been reclaimed by the quiz and brought back to life.
• 10:38
  And as you said, we're covering 2004 is Van Helsing baby?
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  What about you? What's your history with this
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  movie? I have no history with it.
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  Yeah, until being made to watch it.
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  And I'm not sure I'm ever going to have any more history with it
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  again. No, this has never been on my
• 10:55
  radar. I'm.
• 10:57
  I don't know why I like horror films, but I just don't think
• 11:01
  I've ever seen a Kate Beckinsale film all the way through before.
• 11:07
  I, I truly, truly don't because I remember like when this is
• 11:10
  Force he came out and like being like in my early 30s and being
• 11:14
  like a bit triggered by the idea of that.
• 11:17
  And then like, I've never watched like Underworld.
• 11:19
  And what else has she been in? What else has she done?
• 11:21
  The Total Recall remake. Colin Farrell.
• 11:25
  Again, I haven't seen that. I I genuinely don't think I've
• 11:29
  been able to see a Cape back himself all the way through
• 11:32
  before. Serendipity.
• 11:33
  Nope. Shooting fish.
• 11:37
  Why are these movies coming to my head?
• 11:39
  I'm not even looking at anything.
• 11:40
  I I listen. I love Kate Beckinsale.
• 11:43
  I have very little opinion and I'm, I'm hoping we can get to
• 11:46
  the bottom of her today because I don't really understand, you
• 11:50
  know, well, I don't know. I don't know what she is or or
• 11:53
  where she fits. A big part of her as an actor is
• 11:56
  her hair, and in Total Recall especially, it's where it
• 12:00
  reaches its full powers. She's wearing maybe I think, 17
• 12:04
  wigs in Total Recall, all stacked on top of each other.
• 12:07
  It gets bigger as the movie goes on.
• 12:08
  It's really good. I haven't seen the the total
• 12:12
  recall that that version. Is it fun?
• 12:16
  No, she's really fun in it. She's the only one that
• 12:18
  understands that she's in Total Recall.
• 12:20
  Everyone else is taking it way too seriously.
• 12:22
  Oh. My God that is a lot of hair
• 12:25
  right? Wow, it looks great though.
• 12:28
  Yeah, she's amazing in it. It's like, yeah, Eastern
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  European Eurovision entrant level of hair, well speaking.
• 12:36
  Of. Yeah, OK, so about this movie.
• 12:41
  Some context for everyone. Universal Pictures wanted to
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  reinvent their iconic movie monsters and they wanted to
• 12:51
  replicate the formula that had worked for The Mummy and The
• 12:54
  Mummy Returns. So they were like, let's do like
• 12:56
  an action adventure based on one of these properties.
• 12:59
  They brought in the same director slash writer from The
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  Mummy, Steven Summers, and he did Van Helsing, which was
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  incorporating all of the Universal Monsters.
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  Sure was. Sure was.
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  The film was intended to start a series of Van Helsing adventure
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  movies. That's ambitious.
• 13:20
  Fucking hell. Yeah, but yeah, the reviews were
• 13:23
  real bad and the box office wasn't great, and all the plans
• 13:28
  for a sequel were scrapped within a few days of the film's
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  opening. Well they also did about 7
• 13:34
  movies in one anyway, so they really really shot their ward
• 13:37
  with how many things they included in this.
• 13:40
  Where in the Hugh Jackman are we in this movie?
• 13:44
  He was filming X-Men 2 at this time.
• 13:47
  OK, so still on the rise, but not like.
• 13:51
  Yeah, like very, very on the up he was potentially it was like,
• 13:55
  will he become leading man I guess was this was the a testing
• 13:59
  moment for him, would you say? Yeah, that sounds right.
• 14:03
  He looks good. When does?
• 14:04
  What? Yeah, he does.
• 14:05
  When did Swordfish happen? 2000 1.
• 14:12
  Yeah, like around around this time, too.
• 14:14
  I remember watching him in Swordfish, and he gets like a
• 14:17
  problematic blowjob in it. But it's it was really hot.
• 14:21
  I remember that. And so I was when when this
• 14:24
  movie came out, I was like, well, I'm obsessed with Hugh
• 14:25
  Jackman and I will go and see him and anything.
• 14:29
  Yeah. So this movie had a budget of
• 14:30
  $160 million, which is so enormous.
• 14:34
  Wow, wigs. Wig.
• 14:36
  Did you just say wig? Yeah, wigs, Wigs.
• 14:38
  Wig. What is Wig?
• 14:40
  No, it's not your life language, it's just for us.
• 14:42
  Kate Beckinsale is wearing a Smithies wig.
• 14:46
  Pirates of the Caribbean curled Smithies wig.
• 14:50
  That That is not a double stack. That is a hard front Smiffy's
• 14:55
  wig. I want, I want to discuss wigs
• 14:57
  in great detail. Sorry, we have to come back to
• 15:00
  it. I know Wig, I feel that already.
• 15:03
  And the movie made 300 million worldwide, which sounds like a
• 15:07
  lot of money, and it is a lot of money, but it was a
• 15:09
  disappointment. And basically it barely made
• 15:11
  back its budget. It's also, yeah, critically
• 15:15
  panned. It's got 24% on Rotten Tomatoes.
• 15:18
  And critic James Berardinelli said sitting through this movie
• 15:23
  requires a capacity for self torture.
• 15:29
  Sadly, it wasn't nominated for any Razzies though.
• 15:32
  But it was snubbed by the Razzies.
• 15:36
  But it was nominated for four Stinkers at the Stinkers Bad
• 15:39
  Movie Awards. Stinkers.
• 15:42
  That's the first time you've ever mentioned that.
• 15:44
  They don't exist anymore. Can I, sorry, talk about
• 15:46
  stinkers? Can I just say something?
• 15:47
  But it doesn't link to anything. If I'm giving like stank face,
• 15:51
  it's because my dogs with me and I think his anal glands are
• 15:54
  leaking. So I've got that like fishy
• 15:56
  smell in the air. Oh.
• 15:58
  Disgusting. Does anybody ever pop dogs anal
• 16:02
  glands? Because I I've read about it and
• 16:04
  I just can't bring myself to do it.
• 16:06
  I can't. Express them aren't.
• 16:08
  Yeah, I just don't think I can bring myself to do it though.
• 16:10
  So I'm just, I'm sat in a room of of anal gland aroma at the
• 16:13
  moment, so. Feels right.
• 16:16
  Yeah. Oh, I remember having a foster
• 16:19
  dog and yeah, he did that on my genes.
• 16:23
  While I was on the bus. I was going to meet friends for
• 16:25
  drinks. I was like, I can't go anymore.
• 16:27
  I stink of fish. Are you a better person than I
• 16:30
  am? That wouldn't.
• 16:32
  Disgusting. So should we get into the plot
• 16:34
  of this movie? This is going to be a real yadda
• 16:36
  yadda yadda special. So it's 1887, we're in
• 16:41
  Transylvania. It's a black and white sequence
• 16:44
  and. Wait a second, is 18?
• 16:46
  What year is it? 1887.
• 16:49
  Yet they are styled completely in the year 2004, aren't they?
• 16:53
  Oh my God, and. The dialogue is is patchy at
• 16:57
  best if we're trying to stick to 18 whatever or Eastern Europe.
• 17:03
  I mean at several points. Hugh Jackman is Australian,
• 17:05
  American and English. Yeah, he doesn't.
• 17:09
  He also says very little. Yeah, yeah, he actually.
• 17:12
  Doesn't really do anything considering he is like Van
• 17:15
  Helsing. Yeah, the title character.
• 17:18
  Anyway, we've got Doctor Frankenstein, his assistant
• 17:21
  Igor, and his patron Count Dracula, and they're making a
• 17:26
  monster. I mean, you know the one.
• 17:29
  Igor betrays Dr. Frankenstein, Dracula kills the doctor and a
• 17:35
  mob storms the castle. The monster escapes and is
• 17:38
  killed by the mob. Or is he?
• 17:40
  And don't forget that whole sequence is in black and white.
• 17:43
  That whole sequence is in black and white.
• 17:45
  I loved. Me too.
• 17:46
  Actually I I thought this was cute.
• 17:48
  It really did feel like one of those old black and white
• 17:51
  monster movies. Like a Hammer Hammer Horror.
• 17:53
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The way the townsfolk mob with
• 17:56
  their torches looked, I was like, oh, this looks like an
• 17:59
  actual old movie. It's quite fun.
• 18:00
  Led by one of my low key favorite characters of this
• 18:03
  movie, that man that runs the cemetery in the Transylvania
• 18:07
  town. You want to talk about his wig?
• 18:10
  He's. I forgot about him.
• 18:13
  He's wearing a kind of a wet look wig for the whole movie.
• 18:16
  I love the idea of them spritzing that wig every like
• 18:18
  kind of 20 minutes on set to make him look like that.
• 18:22
  He was great. His character appears to be He
• 18:24
  works in the cemetery and he's obsessed with death.
• 18:26
  Do. You know what, your attitude is
• 18:28
  wonderful for this because you're making everything seem
• 18:30
  way more enjoyable than I remember it being.
• 18:32
  I'm like, carry on speaking. No, but go for the sound because
• 18:36
  I'm like yes, that's interesting.
• 18:38
  I. Love, I love this movie.
• 18:40
  I want to know I have. I have several questions about
• 18:42
  the opening. Why was there so much absent in
• 18:44
  that windmill? Did you see how many bottles of
• 18:46
  absent there were in that windmill?
• 18:47
  No, when Frankenstein's monster is carrying Doctor Frankenstein
• 18:51
  away from the castle, he they go into a windmill and because the
• 18:54
  windmill, because the windmill has to go up in flames for like
• 18:57
  the beginning of the movie to happen, they focused on he's
• 19:00
  like kicking over like several bottles of absinthe and there's
• 19:03
  like they're falling over, they're smashing.
• 19:05
  So is it like a absinthe windmill next to Frankenstein's
• 19:08
  Doctor Frankenstein's castle? Who runs the windmill?
• 19:11
  Is absinthe famously flammable? It's.
• 19:15
  I guess it's the most flammable. Is absinthe Eastern European
• 19:19
  Transylvanian? Many questions.
• 19:24
  Yeah, one of two movies I can think of the feature absent.
• 19:26
  And I guess Moulin Rouge is probably happening right around
• 19:28
  now, too. Yeah, it's also a windmill.
• 19:30
  Maybe it's a Moulin Rouge reference?
• 19:32
  I would also argue that the first time you hear
• 19:35
  Frankenstein's monster speak, he is camp.
• 19:38
  You cannot deny that that monster is camp.
• 19:41
  He is. He is doing like theatre,
• 19:45
  regional theatre, kind of Shakespearean acting in this.
• 19:49
  That is like fucking wild. I love it.
• 19:51
  And it's aesthetically, he looks like he's come straight from
• 19:54
  like a Halloween at Disneyland, you know what I mean?
• 19:56
  It's like, I'm not just really a spooky Frankenstein.
• 20:00
  I'm kind of just like, like the monsters or something.
• 20:03
  ATV reboot. It's like fucking hell.
• 20:06
  We also meet the brides of Dracula in the scene.
• 20:10
  Just do some great a shrieking in this opening scene.
• 20:13
  Shrieking, wailing, gnashing of teeth.
• 20:15
  Yeah, we don't get a really good look at the brides until a
• 20:18
  little later. And again, much like Smithies, I
• 20:20
  want to discuss those costumes once we really get to them,
• 20:24
  those wonderful pieces. OK, so then it's a year later
• 20:28
  and we meet Van Helsing, played by Hugh Jackman.
• 20:32
  He is a Monster Hunter who works for the Knights of the Holy
• 20:35
  Order and he's basically Victorian James Bond and he
• 20:40
  works for Victorian MI 6. And he's also Victorian Batman.
• 20:46
  You're right, you're right. And he's Victorian Wolverine.
• 20:49
  Because he has no memory. It sure doesn't.
• 20:53
  This and then he he's also stuck in what I would describe as a
• 20:56
  CGI prison in this scene. The CGI I would call.
• 20:59
  The film ACGI Prison personally. Well, how dare you.
• 21:03
  I argue that some of those Eastern European scenes look
• 21:05
  like they were like beautiful matte paintings in the
• 21:07
  background, which I thought were actually really cool.
• 21:09
  But the, the, this, this scene at the, what's it called?
• 21:13
  Notre Dame is a CGI prison. Yeah, he fights and kills Doctor
• 21:18
  Jekyll slash Mr. Hyde, and yeah, this is where we learned he's
• 21:22
  got no memory and oh, he's he's a troubled man with a mysterious
• 21:25
  past. Then he goes to Vatican City, I
• 21:28
  guess, and he's given the job to find and destroy Dracula and to
• 21:35
  protect Anna and Velkan Valerius, the last of an ancient
• 21:40
  Romanian family. We've got a sketch of Anna, who
• 21:44
  is played by Kate Beckinsale and truly like I I don't think I've
• 21:48
  ever seen anyone look quite so naughties in a in a period
• 21:52
  piece. Don't and don't, don't, don't go
• 21:55
  past the fact that that we're in the Vatican, kind of we're in
• 21:58
  Vatican Q's lair at this point. Vatican Q Who was called Carl
• 22:03
  Carl Carl Carl Carl Carl 18 something Carl.
• 22:12
  Carl, Father. Father Carl.
• 22:15
  Oh, he's not a father. He's a fire, famously.
• 22:19
  And you. Yeah, don't, don't gloss over
• 22:21
  the fact that Carl is showing in the Vatican, kind of cue layer
• 22:25
  is showing on a 18 something style projector is showing the
• 22:29
  images of Dracula and Kate Beckinsale's character.
• 22:32
  Yeah, and she looks, she looks great.
• 22:35
  Now, can we talk about that wig in full detail?
• 22:38
  You're right, it's, it's a hard front.
• 22:39
  And it you're right, it is. We're looking at Smithy's
• 22:43
  quality, which is, which is odd because I do think some of the
• 22:45
  other wigs in this are quite fun and interesting, but hers is
• 22:50
  what's happening there. The amount of times Crystal was
• 22:53
  talking about her sperm like eyebrows as well.
• 22:55
  I mean repeatedly Crystal was was saying it.
• 22:59
  I don't know how I wish I was cutting up.
• 23:01
  How many times you mentioned you're like sure those eyebrows
• 23:03
  can't be real. You were like going in on them.
• 23:05
  But honestly, you can't put someone in 1887 and then give
• 23:09
  them that. Like tadpole eyebrow.
• 23:12
  Fill out the brow, draw them in. Eyebrow pencils existed at this
• 23:17
  time. What?
• 23:18
  Year were tweezers invented? Surely they can't be back in 18
• 23:22
  something. It was an ancient Transylvanian
• 23:24
  technique. She's also, I mean we haven't
• 23:29
  seen her in full yet, but she is full steampunk corset.
• 23:33
  Oh, it is so steampunk. It's the.
• 23:37
  Corset has more buckles than you can possibly imagine.
• 23:41
  As you say, Kate is basically giving the cover of a Smithies
• 23:44
  package where it's like Victorian wench costume.
• 23:51
  Generic Victorian. Wench with the hair and makeup
• 23:53
  of Like a lads mag. Yeah.
• 23:55
  Shoot like it's very that. Kind of zoo?
• 23:59
  A zoo mag meets Transylvanian wench, Yes.
• 24:05
  I mean, again, I'm failing to see any of the problems with
• 24:07
  this. The more we're talking about no
• 24:08
  problems, the better it sounds to me.
• 24:10
  No. Problems here.
• 24:11
  That's this part I'm fully on board for.
• 24:13
  It wouldn't change a thing. OK, so Van Helsing has to save
• 24:17
  Anna because otherwise, if she doesn't kill Dracula, she'll
• 24:23
  spend eternity in Purgatory. Or something.
• 24:26
  Come on now. What's happening here is that
• 24:30
  Dracula's sole mission in life is to take out Anna's family
• 24:34
  bloodline because they hold the key to something.
• 24:39
  Now this does start to fall apart quite quickly when we get
• 24:43
  to it, but don't worry about that.
• 24:44
  Just know at this stage he's trying to wipe out her family
• 24:47
  bloodline and there's only two of them left and her dad went
• 24:51
  missing a long time ago and it's just her and her very hot
• 24:54
  brother. Left.
• 24:55
  So then we're in Transylvania. Shora and Anna and Vulcan are
• 25:00
  attempting to kill a werewolf that is controlled by Dracula.
• 25:04
  Question mark. So my question for you at this
• 25:08
  at this moment is, do you think that because her family are
• 25:11
  meant to be very special in some way, they do seem to be lightly
• 25:16
  kind of neo esque in the terms of doing that they're doing.
• 25:20
  Her and her brother are doing kind of like wire work,
• 25:22
  gymnastics and like kind of stunt work, but they don't
• 25:26
  appear to be supernatural or have any kind of like Buffy like
• 25:30
  abilities. They just seem to be hot and
• 25:32
  kind of flexible. No, I think we're just in the
• 25:35
  era of movies where everyone's, everyone can like really take a
• 25:38
  punch and get kicked through a wall.
• 25:40
  Like think Charlie's Angels, those women had flying powers,
• 25:44
  but it was never we're just in that period of time where movies
• 25:47
  just wanted people to to float well.
• 25:51
  And she, you know, she is basically channelling the cheeky
• 25:55
  girls as well in with the accent.
• 25:58
  And as someone I hate to name drop right now, but Crystal and
• 26:00
  I have collaborated with the cheeky girls.
• 26:02
  We have actually performed with them on stage and done the
• 26:05
  choreography. So we we know them quite
• 26:07
  personally. But it really is giving touch my
• 26:11
  bum. This is like life levels of
• 26:12
  accent, isn't? It so you guys know
• 26:15
  Transylvania? Oh yeah, it's like, so actually
• 26:18
  she's pretty authentic with that accent, so.
• 26:22
  What did you what did you guys think of?
• 26:24
  Because I think that the CG in this movie is really bad in some
• 26:30
  respects and genuinely not that bad and pretty good.
• 26:33
  I think the werewolf CG is pretty good and I thought
• 26:37
  actually quite scary. Yeah, I think considering also
• 26:42
  the time we were in and like, if you think about some of the the
• 26:45
  other movies from this period where it looked real bad, this
• 26:49
  is Yeah, I I I think it did hold up surprisingly well.
• 26:53
  It's obviously overused. Like it's like a hammer in the
• 26:57
  face of CGI, this movie. Yeah.
• 27:00
  But when it's good, it's it's I agree with you.
• 27:02
  It's decent. Yeah, I felt like especially in
• 27:03
  this scene, because it was just the wolf by itself as the only
• 27:06
  CG character, it was really scary.
• 27:09
  And then obviously later on it becomes like Transformers where
• 27:11
  you can't tell what's real and what isn't.
• 27:14
  But yeah, so they're fighting a fighting this werewolf.
• 27:16
  Vulcan shoots the werewolf with the silver bullet, but he gets
• 27:20
  bitten and they fall into a gorge.
• 27:25
  Sorry. Fell into a gorge.
• 27:28
  Come on, everyone. We've got it.
• 27:29
  We've got to pick it up. We've got to pick it up.
• 27:31
  This movie is fun. I've got so much more to say.
• 27:33
  Come on now. Crazy to do the plot.
• 27:39
  So then we've got Van Helsing and Friar Carl.
• 27:43
  Carl. Carl.
• 27:44
  Yeah. They arrive at the village and
• 27:47
  the village is attacked by Dracula's brides.
• 27:51
  Verona, Mariska and Alira are these Queens.
• 27:56
  Love the brides. Now these women are fucking
• 28:00
  playing to the final row of like every theatre that has ever been
• 28:03
  built. These women, they, these
• 28:06
  bitches, they knew what they were doing.
• 28:08
  They saw their they saw their terrible costumes, they saw
• 28:11
  their lines and they were like, well, I guess we should really
• 28:14
  just go. For it, I also feel like they've
• 28:16
  been styled by Tina Knowles. They're giving like Destiny's
• 28:21
  Child, Destiny's the Field with their kind of like Grecian
• 28:24
  outfits. It's very like House of Darien.
• 28:27
  It's a bit House of Darien. It's a bit Bratz doll.
• 28:30
  Kind of I dream of Jeannie. It felt like that was some,
• 28:33
  especially the the blonde, the blonde one that gets killed in
• 28:37
  this scene. She's really, she's got so many
• 28:39
  kind of arm drapes on her outfit and she's wearing a crop top.
• 28:43
  I thought she was really cool. Well, they're all so different,
• 28:46
  aren't they? Because you've got the blonde 1,
• 28:48
  the redhead one and the dark haired 1.
• 28:51
  Well, and don't forget the dark haired 1 is wearing kind of a
• 28:54
  structured neck collar piece that I think is very chic.
• 28:57
  I was watching like the making of of like one of them and they
• 29:00
  were sort of talking about like the making of female characters
• 29:02
  in this and they were trying to say that each of those wives had
• 29:06
  different personality tribes. And I was like, what the fuck?
• 29:10
  Like 1's more innocent and one's more like kind of go with the
• 29:13
  flow. Like 1's the leader.
• 29:15
  And I was like. No, no.
• 29:18
  With the flow? Which one?
• 29:19
  Was going with the flow. I think they were like Mariska
• 29:21
  is like the kind of the calmer one I wrote down.
• 29:24
  But yeah, literally, I was just like, they were basically, they
• 29:26
  were trying to, like, pad out their choice of working with
• 29:29
  these people while also showing sort of bits of their audition
• 29:32
  footage, which was them in bikinis.
• 29:35
  And they're just sort of trying to say that they're really
• 29:37
  physical, really spectacular actors and, you know, just bring
• 29:40
  so much to the role. And it was like, Nah, they're
• 29:43
  just fit. Well, again, I'm going to push
• 29:46
  back and say there's some great work being done here.
• 29:49
  And I think that especially from like a camp factor when they are
• 29:54
  in their CG form, I think they're incredibly camp because
• 29:57
  they look like kind of CG bats, which is really fun.
• 30:00
  But them in their kind of human vampire form, they couldn't be
• 30:06
  camper. They all every one of them
• 30:08
  chooses to stop in different places, pose, deliver lines.
• 30:12
  And like, I also think that they do their CG like human to
• 30:17
  vampire transformations in a really fun way.
• 30:19
  There's so many shots of them, their human faces and then being
• 30:22
  like, and then they kind of teeth come out, which I think I
• 30:27
  think they are the genuinely campus part of this movie.
• 30:31
  Oh, for. Sure.
• 30:31
  Oh like they are incredible. They like.
• 30:33
  There was no debating though. The first time you see them
• 30:36
  transform from vampire into human and you see that they're
• 30:40
  in these like boho Sienna Miller, they're just, it's like
• 30:44
  3 Sienna Millers have just landed from the sky.
• 30:46
  You're like, well that would be fucking terrifying.
• 30:50
  And also all they do, you're right, they do, they go, they go
• 30:53
  in and out of CGI so much and go to different poses and say
• 30:56
  stuff, but they're not actually really doing something for
• 30:59
  people. There were so many more times
• 31:00
  they could have like easily just killed people.
• 31:03
  Do you know what I mean? Whereas they're just like, I've
• 31:05
  got you. And then I'm just going to toes
• 31:08
  around you a bit, bite them. Or when they pick people up,
• 31:12
  drop the bastards. Like you're flying at such a
• 31:15
  great height. When you've got Kate Beckinsale,
• 31:16
  that height, drop her. She's going to die.
• 31:20
  Well, I mean, when your sole mission is to kill Kate
• 31:22
  Beckinsale, I think it is better to keep doing kind of magician
• 31:26
  jump scares where she's in that house and just keep appearing
• 31:29
  behind different doors and being like, hello, my pretty.
• 31:32
  And I really like when that woman, whichever one she is, is
• 31:35
  drinking blood out of a wine glass.
• 31:37
  At what point did she squeeze put that blood into a wine
• 31:39
  glass? Because she's in that house for
• 31:40
  like 2 minutes. It's just like 30 years old,
• 31:44
  basically aged. I'm like that.
• 31:46
  I'm like that. If you're like, I, my mission is
• 31:49
  to kill this woman. You're like, do you know what?
• 31:50
  I'm going to have a little fun. I guess that one does have that
• 31:53
  personality. Yeah.
• 31:54
  OK. So we we do have character.
• 31:57
  Yeah, she's yeah, she's fun. She's there to stop and smell
• 32:00
  the roses. Yeah, the others might want to.
• 32:03
  They might want to follow their mission.
• 32:04
  Yeah, but she's like, you know what?
• 32:06
  We've got the power, we've got the time.
• 32:08
  I'm going to start a couple of things and have some fun with
• 32:10
  Anna. Yeah, they've read their script.
• 32:12
  They know that not much else is going to be happening, so why
• 32:14
  not just like have a bit more fun in the scene?
• 32:16
  There's no, you know, nothing's going to else is going to
• 32:18
  happen, so might as well use the time and just go with it.
• 32:22
  I love it when one of them instructs them go kill the
• 32:25
  strangers and she just goes love too and.
• 32:31
  What is Anna's role in this village?
• 32:33
  Is she the queen of the village because she seems to be in
• 32:35
  charge? What?
• 32:37
  Like what? What's the hierarchy here?
• 32:39
  Is there a mayor are we doing? What kind of system are we?
• 32:42
  Working with Well, it seems like the other person in charge is
• 32:45
  the is your gravedigger man, right?
• 32:48
  So is he, is he like Vice Mayor? And she's the marress of of
• 32:52
  Transylvania to live. In the shadow of Dracula's
• 32:55
  castle, it's just like whoever has the most buckles on their
• 32:58
  corset, they're like, we'll do what she says.
• 33:00
  I don't. Want to be a pedant?
• 33:01
  But I do believe that that is Doctor Frankenstein's castle.
• 33:04
  Oh, you're right. OK, Where are we in this?
• 33:07
  Well, this is where this is plot.
• 33:09
  This is where they yeah, the villages.
• 33:11
  So they saved the village essentially because Van Helsing
• 33:14
  uses his Let's not gloss over the fact that Van Helsing has
• 33:17
  kind of a machine gun crossbow and he uses it to kill the
• 33:21
  blonde vampire and the others the others that stops them
• 33:25
  killing. Oh no, because they both are
• 33:27
  able to bite her. But instead it choose that
• 33:29
  moment to go like. Do some real good gnashing and
• 33:34
  whaling, yeah. Which they do a lot in this
• 33:36
  movie. So much whaling.
• 33:38
  Yeah. So they fly off, and then it's
• 33:39
  revealed that the villagers are actually angry at Van Helsing
• 33:43
  for killing her because they say that the vampires just take one
• 33:46
  or two a month, and now you've pissed them off.
• 33:49
  And the casual way goes. Let's just take one or two a
• 33:51
  month. What?
• 33:53
  OK. I don't believe in the
• 33:54
  glorification of murder. I do believe in the empowerment
• 33:59
  of women. Oh, you see, I was OK with that.
• 34:01
  I was like, yeah, that that sounds like completely fire
• 34:03
  enough. It's.
• 34:04
  Kind of like the tax if you. Can like yeah if you can
• 34:07
  nominate like the annoying ones. Leave them out overnight,
• 34:11
  whoever was the worst that month.
• 34:13
  And and how does that system work?
• 34:15
  The the count, the the undertaker and Kate decide each
• 34:18
  each month who the 2 are that are going to be sacrificed.
• 34:21
  That's a great movie, I'd watch that.
• 34:25
  OK, so next Van Helsing and Anna pursue now werewolf Vulcan to
• 34:34
  Frankenstein's castle. I'd like to take this moment in
• 34:37
  my wig odyssey of this movie to discuss Dracula's hair.
• 34:41
  But we haven't talked about Dracula yet.
• 34:44
  Dracula's hair has gone through many looks throughout time,
• 34:47
  including the the Bram Stoker Gary Oldman kind of Buffon
• 34:50
  Dracula, which is one of my favourites.
• 34:52
  But this Dracula is rocking what can only be described as a low
• 34:55
  pony with those 2000s. Two loose tendrils at the front.
• 35:01
  I love it. Yeah, he's giving St.
• 35:03
  Magician. I'd say Busker.
• 35:05
  He's giving, I've gone to a look alike agency asking for Colin
• 35:08
  Farrell and that's what they've got in my Essex or something.
• 35:12
  He is like one of the like least sexually powerful Draculas I
• 35:16
  think I've ever witnessed in my life.
• 35:19
  Isn't Dracula like meant to be like the ultimate like seductive
• 35:23
  evil force? And he's just they're like, hiya
• 35:27
  I. I would also say that Gary
• 35:29
  Oldman in Bram Stoker's Dracula, they really try and sell him as
• 35:33
  a sex object and it also doesn't work.
• 35:36
  But it works. It works more than this Dracula.
• 35:39
  It works more and, and like he's got a real sense of menace and
• 35:42
  that movie's tone is so serious that like, it rewards the the
• 35:47
  happiness of the acting that Gary Oldman does.
• 35:49
  This movie's Dracula, he is also being incredibly hammy and he
• 35:55
  thinks he's in R.E.M. Stoker's Dracula.
• 35:57
  He thinks he's in a high budget, highbrow production and no one
• 36:03
  has told him what movie he's actually in.
• 36:05
  And he must have been very upset when he saw his costume.
• 36:08
  I, I think that he is terrible as everyone is in this movie,
• 36:12
  but I do think him and Frankenstein's monster and the
• 36:14
  Brides are like shooting for the fucking moon with their acting
• 36:18
  in it makes it. It certainly carries some of the
• 36:22
  dead weight of this movie, which I believe is slightly more kind
• 36:25
  of Kate Beckinsale and Hugh Jackman, who have so much less
• 36:28
  to do. But like, as all the villains of
• 36:30
  this movie, I do think they're all trying extremely hard.
• 36:33
  Especially, Yeah, yeah, he's trying.
• 36:35
  He's trying very hard, of course.
• 36:37
  He's trying hard. Who the fuck is he?
• 36:39
  What has he done? He should be just grateful he's
• 36:41
  there, but it's like they've just got a stand in to do.
• 36:45
  Like the shots, you know, the behind shots of with the wig on
• 36:47
  and then they've gone. Oh, you know what, We might as
• 36:49
  well use him now. What has he actually done?
• 36:52
  He's the one. He's the Duke in Moulin Rouge.
• 36:54
  He's the he's the crossover with Moulin.
• 36:56
  Rouge. Yeah.
• 36:57
  He he also this year before played the villain in The League
• 37:02
  of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which it's basically like a
• 37:05
  companion piece to this movie, another steampunk CGI mess.
• 37:09
  Yeah, that one, that one features less camp in my
• 37:12
  opinion. And there's there's no women in
• 37:14
  that one. There is a lady vampire who's
• 37:17
  great. Yes, yes.
• 37:19
  Just her, though. Well, there's also a lot of
• 37:22
  questions I have to do with sex in this movie, with the
• 37:24
  vampires. But I guess we'll get to that
• 37:26
  when we get to Dracula's motivation for this whole film,
• 37:30
  this whole piece, because I've got a lot of questions about
• 37:33
  vampire seamen. Well, yeah, so we're about to
• 37:35
  get there. So Van Helsing and Anna have
• 37:37
  arrived at Frankenstein's castle, and they stumble upon
• 37:40
  Dracula's plan to duplicate Doctor Frankenstein's
• 37:44
  experiments by giving life to thousands of his undead
• 37:48
  children. Which are hanging in goopy egg
• 37:51
  sacks in the like alien egg sacks in the the the basement of
• 37:55
  his of Frankenstein's castle I. Love the egg sacks.
• 38:00
  I love the egg sacks. I think they're fab.
• 38:03
  I love a big goopy prop. Low hanging testicle.
• 38:09
  Yeah, yeah. And.
• 38:10
  Someone in the props department was having a lovely time.
• 38:13
  Yeah, they made a real point to have a quite a long, very quiet
• 38:17
  scene of those two walking through the egg sacks of them
• 38:20
  being like, which was really good.
• 38:24
  Now how do those egg sacks? What are we talking here?
• 38:27
  So. The Are they the eggs?
• 38:30
  Are they vampire eggs from the Brides that have been fertilized
• 38:33
  by the vampire sperm of Dracula? Does that mean he's like they
• 38:37
  get laid and then he goes around and fucks the eggs?
• 38:39
  Yeah, I think it's, it's, is it like fish so that the the the
• 38:43
  brides are doing more of like a spawn and then he's going and
• 38:45
  choosing on all over the spawn, all down in the castle for like
• 38:49
  a day or two. And do do the eggs start out
• 38:51
  that big or do they grow? So is that what they're
• 38:54
  producing? Does that come out of there?
• 38:57
  Yeah, 'cause they are like each egg is about half the size of a
• 39:00
  person. The central tenet of this movie
• 39:03
  is that Dracula and his brides want to have their own children
• 39:06
  and are having to use kind of IVF, Transylvanian IVF to have
• 39:11
  it. So actually, are they the are
• 39:13
  they the heroes of this film 'cause they're just trying to
• 39:14
  extend their family and live in like multiple?
• 39:17
  And their legacy and just like not be controlled by the state,
• 39:21
  yeah. It's like, who gets to say
• 39:23
  whether they have more children or not?
• 39:24
  And he's got enough money to spend that money on
• 39:26
  Transylvanian IVF, so why can't he?
• 39:29
  Those honey witches, their body, their choice.
• 39:32
  Yeah. It's this plot point is one of
• 39:38
  many big bizarre swings that this movie takes.
• 39:42
  They're like, yeah, I know you know about vampires and
• 39:46
  everything you need to know about them, but what if also
• 39:49
  this new thing, Yeah, that I've never heard of before?
• 39:52
  What if 2 characters teamed up from the monster universe like
• 39:55
  Dracula, Frankenstein and instead of them teaming up on
• 39:58
  like say a vampire monster version of Frankenstein's
• 40:01
  monster. How about Frankenstein's monster
• 40:03
  is also the key to powering some egg sacks that we have
• 40:06
  fertilized in the basement of the castle and also something to
• 40:10
  do with the bloodline of a Transylvanian gypsy using an
• 40:13
  inverted commas family because they have something to do with
• 40:17
  it and also lightning the Archangel Gabriel.
• 40:22
  We're not there yet. Don't worry about the the Angel
• 40:26
  of devil part of it. We're still just in
• 40:28
  Transylvanian fertility issues at the moment.
• 40:33
  Also, one thing I like to imagine and I think would have
• 40:37
  improved this movie, obviously the vampires can all shapeshift
• 40:40
  and they're turning into different forms and we see
• 40:41
  Dracula later turn into a much bigger vampire version of
• 40:44
  himself. What if the brides get really
• 40:47
  big and then they lay eggs that are proportionate to their size?
• 40:51
  Oh, of course. And also, they're kind of like
• 40:52
  bats. How do bats How do bats have
• 40:55
  babies? I think they just have mammals.
• 40:58
  Oh shit, OK, they just have mammals.
• 41:01
  Yeah, they just give birth. Yeah, that's a factual point
• 41:05
  there, but. Wouldn't it have been fun if
• 41:07
  we'd seen, like, if we'd gone into a room and we just saw one
• 41:09
  of those brides just like 20 feet tall, just like busting out
• 41:13
  eggs? Popping them out, Yeah, yeah.
• 41:15
  Well, it would have been nice to have just seen some sort of
• 41:18
  development for them in the film, but essentially they are
• 41:20
  just repeating that opening scene where they're fighting the
• 41:23
  villages in. And whaling.
• 41:25
  Yeah, it's basic people to say. And then it's like I I got very
• 41:29
  confused by the castle because again, it's like, oh, we're
• 41:32
  launching the the kids off again in a different castle now.
• 41:35
  It's just it was, it was a lot of deja vu going on there with
• 41:38
  just the film in general, Yeah. Yeah, I optimistically felt when
• 41:42
  they got to this castle and they found the exact, I was like, oh,
• 41:44
  we're at the final act of the movie already.
• 41:46
  That's quite fast. Yeah, I thought that as well.
• 41:48
  And then I was like, oh, it's over.
• 41:51
  Kind of it kind of if you stopped the film at this point
• 41:54
  where the where Dracula's first lot of kids get born and kind of
• 41:59
  terrorized that village. It's a very fun sequence.
• 42:02
  So they, they kind of they. So at this point he uses,
• 42:07
  because there's also lightning involved and blood bloodline and
• 42:10
  the werewolf. Yeah.
• 42:12
  So he's using Kate Beckinsale's werewolf brother in the place of
• 42:16
  Frankenstein's monster in the kind of lightning experiment,
• 42:19
  which I think is to bring things to life, which is what
• 42:21
  Frankenstein's monster did. But I don't know why they need
• 42:24
  someone in that, because they didn't have someone in that
• 42:27
  device to make Frankenstein's monster.
• 42:29
  So anyway, don't don't wow, don't don't don't track.
• 42:33
  Gosh, you know it really all falls apart when.
• 42:35
  You look too close. Between that and the fact that
• 42:37
  bat bats give birth to mammals, I think we've maybe now I now I
• 42:41
  don't like the movie, but yeah, so that at this point they they
• 42:47
  charge all the egg sax and then they release vampire babies,
• 42:50
  which are not baby humans. They're little baby bats, which
• 42:53
  I guess maybe at some point they'll turn into little humans.
• 42:56
  Maybe we'd never find out. They're kind of cute as well.
• 42:59
  That was a weird choice, wasn't it?
• 43:01
  They're kind of like, oh, they're kind of like, he's like
• 43:03
  naughty, naughty. I don't really get a sense.
• 43:05
  Do we see them kill anyone or bite anyone?
• 43:08
  Yeah, I think they yes. That because Dracula tells his
• 43:11
  brides that they have to go with them to the village and teach
• 43:14
  them how to feed. But do they?
• 43:17
  But do they kill anyone? Yeah, I think they like, yes,
• 43:20
  swarm a couple of villagers and like, tear them to pieces.
• 43:22
  OK, good. OK, good.
• 43:24
  Never forget they almost kill the gorgeous villager wench
• 43:30
  woman who doesn't have a name that Carl saves and she much
• 43:33
  like how Kate Beckett sells character has access to
• 43:35
  Transylvanian tweezers. This random villager has had
• 43:38
  kind of Transylvanian like face work done and she looks hot as
• 43:42
  fug she's had and. Does she right?
• 43:45
  Have I made this up now? Does she reward him by saving
• 43:47
  her? By going to have sex with him?
• 43:49
  Yeah, yeah. And it's OK because he's not a
• 43:52
  monk, he's a Friar. So again, you're trying to find
• 43:55
  plot holes in this movie. But they've thought about it.
• 43:57
  Carl is a Friar. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Friars can
• 44:00
  fuck yeah. Damn right, damn right they can.
• 44:06
  So yeah, it kind of it all comes to like a big head here and
• 44:09
  you're like, wow, what a quick movie.
• 44:11
  I guess they knew that they were on to a something troublesome so
• 44:13
  they thought get in, get out. Yeah, we'll do a snappy, you
• 44:17
  know, one hour 10, great. But no, unfortunately you still
• 44:21
  have a full hour to go. Unfortunately.
• 44:25
  So this is where I was going to just basically yadda, yadda,
• 44:28
  yadda. I'll tell you where I'm going to
• 44:30
  yadda, yadda, yadda to. If I've missed anything that you
• 44:32
  think is important, Fraser, feel free to double back.
• 44:34
  Of course we've got more vampires, more fighting, more
• 44:38
  explosions, and then it's. And yet that makes it sound
• 44:41
  really exciting. It's not.
• 44:45
  Well, it stays at like a fever pitch, doesn't it?
• 44:47
  It never relents, but I think that's a real problem because
• 44:52
  you never, you're like, what? What now?
• 44:54
  We're Anyway, it's finally the big showdown.
• 44:57
  Van Helsing has been bitten by a werewolf.
• 45:00
  They're at Dracula's castle, which they've entered through an
• 45:03
  ice painting. Wow, you have yadda yadda to the
• 45:08
  point of true insanity. But yes, they have entered to
• 45:12
  Dracula's true castle through the ice painting.
• 45:14
  So it is his, it's actually his third property because you're,
• 45:17
  you've completely skipped over his summer, his summer residence
• 45:19
  that we visit for the fucking masquerade ball that you don't
• 45:22
  want to talk about. We can talk about the masquerade
• 45:25
  ball. Apparently Kate had a lot of
• 45:28
  ballroom dance training for this scene.
• 45:30
  Oh, for the, for the. Read it on IMDb, it must be
• 45:36
  true. Good.
• 45:37
  It shows and it was needed for that scene.
• 45:40
  It's a gorgeous scene. I'm going to just touch on a
• 45:42
  couple of things You yarded yarded over.
• 45:44
  First of all, you've yarded over the fact that they find
• 45:46
  Frankenstein's monster underneath the absinthe
• 45:48
  windmill, which also they drink absinthe at that windmill and
• 45:52
  fall into the absinthe windmill hole where Frankenstein's
• 45:55
  monster lives and discover that he's actually nice because he's
• 45:58
  like, you want to help me? And they become kind of the kind
• 46:03
  of kind of friends and allies at that point.
• 46:05
  So they found him. So Van Helsing and Carl have to
• 46:09
  go to Dracula summer residence and he's inexplicably holding a
• 46:13
  masquerade ball, which you find out is full of vampires.
• 46:15
  Great reveal in the mirror. No, no one feeling anything for
• 46:18
  that reveal. I liked that reveal.
• 46:21
  I was also a bit drunk at this point.
• 46:24
  That this, this masquerade ball features, I'd say 90% too much
• 46:29
  acrobatics. Like there's trapeze artists so
• 46:32
  high up in this palace that even if you were a vampire who flew
• 46:35
  up to the rafters, that's how you'd have to enjoy that.
• 46:38
  The kind of trapeze work. It feels like a lot of gilding
• 46:41
  the Lily at this point from Dracula.
• 46:44
  But you can. It's one of those things we're
• 46:45
  like, well, they needed to spend that 160 million somewhere.
• 46:49
  They're going to have 1000 extras.
• 46:51
  They also imply in this scene that Dracula inexplicably also
• 46:55
  has mind control because he's mind controlled Anna to like, be
• 46:59
  dancing with him and kind of pretending to enjoy it, which is
• 47:02
  very dark. But I guess kind of him being
• 47:05
  our word adjacent is actually kind of a real Dracula thing,
• 47:07
  isn't it? Rapey.
• 47:09
  I wasn't sure if I was able to say that.
• 47:10
  Oh, but. I just was like, what?
• 47:12
  What our word are we talking about?
• 47:13
  Yeah, yeah, no, that's Dracula's MO for.
• 47:16
  Sure thing. Yeah, definitely.
• 47:18
  Yeah, he's super rapey. Yeah.
• 47:20
  And and then I'm going to just just give a little more context
• 47:23
  to the yada yada of the ice painting, what that actually is.
• 47:27
  Is is a reference to the Spice Girls goodbye video?
• 47:31
  Yes, exactly. There we go.
• 47:32
  Yeah. Yeah, that is a they needed to
• 47:35
  find Dracula's real lair because at this point they've been in
• 47:38
  Frankenstein's castle, which he's kind of Co opted and is now
• 47:41
  what like the the new owner of and then his summer palace,
• 47:45
  which he does own. So he does have two pieces of
• 47:46
  real estate or housing, and then they find that his his actual
• 47:51
  layer is accessible through a tapestry, which Van Helsing
• 47:54
  inexplicably has the final part of the incantation for which
• 47:58
  they then recite and enter through the ice painting into
• 48:00
  Dracula's real castle, where, what does he have?
• 48:03
  Hundreds more IVF Transylvanian babies ready to get juiced up by
• 48:09
  the lightning blood of Frankenstein's monster.
• 48:12
  Who is the key? And we don't understand why.
• 48:14
  Pew, I'm really glad you explained all of that.
• 48:16
  Actually, it makes sense now. Oh, and very important plot
• 48:20
  point is that Dracula inexplicably has the antidote
• 48:24
  for being turned into a werewolf in a random ice Chamber of his
• 48:28
  castle in a Beauty and the Beast style kind of glass or.
• 48:33
  Yes, because Dracula has the cure to werewolf stuff.
• 48:38
  Because only a werewolf can kill him.
• 48:41
  Yes, famously Bram Stoker is somewhere rolling around in his
• 48:47
  grave at all of the liberties Steven Summers has taken with
• 48:50
  his quite strong lore. Dracula's got things that are
• 48:55
  his things and Steven Summers was like Nah, he can only be
• 48:59
  killed by a werewolf and he loves IVF.
• 49:03
  Print it, send send to cinema. His sole purpose in life is to
• 49:08
  be a father. I think that's such a very
• 49:09
  progressive way to to portray Dracula actually, that he, yes,
• 49:13
  he's in a slightly abusive marriage, but he's also really
• 49:16
  wanting to provide these these wives with several pieces of
• 49:19
  real estate and multiple thousands of children anyway.
• 49:23
  OK, so Van Helsing, yes, he's been bitten, he's been bit by
• 49:27
  werewolf. And so he transforms into a
• 49:29
  werewolf and Van Helsing and Dracula have this big CGI
• 49:34
  monster fight showdown where they're both like hulking,
• 49:38
  punching, biting, blah, blah, blah.
• 49:42
  And this is where we find out via Dracula that Van Helsing is
• 49:46
  the reincarnation of the Archangel Gabriel.
• 49:50
  Question mark. Yeah, which it is also something
• 49:57
  to do with Destiny and killing him.
• 49:59
  Yeah, and. Because that's Dracula's, you
• 50:01
  know, Well, everyone knows it says in the Bible that the
• 50:05
  Gabriel will be reincarnated, bitten, turned into a wolf so
• 50:08
  that he can kill Dracula and prevent him from hatching all of
• 50:12
  his undead babies. Yeah, I think that.
• 50:14
  I think that's, yeah, somewhere near the end of the Bible.
• 50:17
  Thou shalt be wearing Thy's hat at jaunty angle, Gabriel.
• 50:22
  How does he keep that hat on at such a jaunty angle?
• 50:25
  I think he's got ancient Transylvanian like hair grips
• 50:28
  holding that hat up, which I love the idea of thinking of Van
• 50:30
  Helsing doing that every morning.
• 50:33
  It's like Carl, grip my hair to my hat.
• 50:36
  Please Carl, could. I might.
• 50:39
  This is my accent for today. I'm actually American.
• 50:42
  What? You're right.
• 50:42
  And actually now I think about it is kind of like a, it is a
• 50:45
  kind of Crocodile Dundee style hat actually.
• 50:48
  It's sort of mixed with a hipster going to the Joshua Tree
• 50:51
  as well, that kind of vibe. What's What's our girl Kate
• 50:54
  doing in this seen? Phoning it in.
• 50:57
  Yeah, she doesn't get a lot to do, does she?
• 51:02
  Well, she does get to put a button on something that we
• 51:06
  mentioned, which is that the the brides like to do a lot of
• 51:10
  talking and not a lot of killing.
• 51:12
  So she has a kind of final showdown with the final bride
• 51:16
  that is alive and the bride is like, I'm going to enjoy killing
• 51:21
  you. I have something to tell you.
• 51:23
  And then Kate Beckett cell just like stakes her and she's like,
• 51:26
  you know what, you talk too much.
• 51:28
  Next time you want to kill someone, just get it over with.
• 51:31
  And I was like, okay, so that's self aware.
• 51:34
  This this movie is also a incredibly wonderful kind of
• 51:38
  meta look at itself. It's not the snappiest like quip
• 51:43
  to deliver after you kill someone though is it?
• 51:45
  It's like a full 2 sentences she has to get well while speaking
• 51:48
  about. Brevity.
• 51:49
  She's got to stick with the the theme of this movie, which is
• 51:51
  bloating. So Anna kills the final bride
• 51:57
  and then there's like some acrobatics.
• 52:00
  She has to swing down a rope and.
• 52:02
  Oh, there's so much. Gore.
• 52:04
  There's so much chasm swinging in this scene.
• 52:06
  I think Frankenstein's monster is also chasm swinging quite a
• 52:09
  lot. In there, Yeah.
• 52:11
  There's also Oompa Loompas everywhere.
• 52:14
  There's all of these little men in masks.
• 52:17
  Yeah. Dracula has like a yeah, kind of
• 52:20
  yeah. Did you notice that one of them,
• 52:22
  their sole job in the in like Dracula's slash Frankenstein's
• 52:26
  lab was there was a rope across the lab and he had like a hand
• 52:32
  bicycle like device. And multiple times there was
• 52:35
  just one of those kind of Ewok characters just biking across
• 52:38
  the screen. And I thought, what's his job in
• 52:40
  the lab And why is she? I mean, I get I get why I was
• 52:44
  looking at it because it was amazing and made the movie
• 52:46
  amazing. But what's she doing in the lab
• 52:48
  everyday that requires her to hand bike her way across the
• 52:51
  lab? I wonder how the Ewok Oompa
• 52:55
  Loompa minions feel about the hatching and if they're worried
• 53:00
  they're going to get replaced you.
• 53:01
  Know yeah and like what's their kind of work structure and kind
• 53:04
  of office life like because they really are just serving the IVF
• 53:08
  process and yeah. Maybe they have to like
• 53:11
  distribute the sperm anyway, I bet.
• 53:13
  I think they should unionize. I also want to say that Speaking
• 53:17
  of weapons and modern horror, I do think that long legs took its
• 53:22
  inspiration from Igor's makeup for the Nicolas Cage character.
• 53:26
  And Long Legs, he looks very long legs.
• 53:28
  Esk, Igor. Yeah, yeah, I can see that.
• 53:31
  That's actually a very good shout.
• 53:34
  That's one thing I can remember about this one.
• 53:35
  She was saying all of this. I can't fucking remember any of
• 53:38
  this. I'm literally like you.
• 53:40
  Don't remember I. Think I just I just was in a
• 53:42
  trance like state staring at a screen and I don't not sure I
• 53:45
  took much of it. I I totally agree.
• 53:49
  There's a a good 45 minutes in the middle somewhere where I
• 53:53
  think I just disassociated and I was watching it and I was
• 53:56
  staring at the screen but my mind had gone completely blank
• 53:59
  and numb. That would be Dracula with his
• 54:01
  mind games. Yeah, see, The thing is I'm from
• 54:05
  a great family line of slow word redacted traveller blood.
• 54:10
  So obviously I'm immune to his charms.
• 54:12
  So I was very I was very present for this whole movie.
• 54:15
  Because one thing, one thing we haven't discussed is that they
• 54:18
  very lightly hint at their theme of mummification in this movie.
• 54:22
  But they don't have the Hammer Horror Mummy.
• 54:25
  It's the one monster that doesn't feature in this movie.
• 54:27
  But I do believe that implying that mummies come out of the
• 54:31
  graves and capture Frankenstein's monster.
• 54:33
  Because do you remember there's that one shot which neither of
• 54:35
  you are going to remember of. There's a bit where a gravestone
• 54:39
  like the lifts off and you see some like mummification fingers
• 54:41
  coming out. So I think there's a whole side
• 54:43
  plot that got cut, which includes mummies.
• 54:47
  Because this is exactly what this film needs is a side plot.
• 54:50
  I could have, I could have done with maybe a 25 minute kind of
• 54:53
  bloated sequence of maybe some mummies who are acting to the
• 54:56
  fucking rafters and being like like that would have been really
• 55:01
  good. Yeah, they should have made
• 55:02
  Dracula's minions. Maybe mini mummies?
• 55:04
  Yeah, and also what's the there's, there's another horror
• 55:08
  Hammer Horror Thing is the Creature from the Black Lagoon
• 55:10
  Hammer Horror as well. I do feel like they they really
• 55:13
  missed a trick not having the Creature from the Black Lagoon
• 55:15
  feature in a way that doesn't make sense for it's character.
• 55:18
  No they did. They went with Jekyll and Hyde
• 55:21
  instead for some reason. Who is not a hammer whore guy?
• 55:25
  No, and also he's his character seemed to be that he was
• 55:27
  murdering women like Jack the Ripper in but in Paris, which I
• 55:31
  don't think was Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
• 55:33
  'S no. Well, and he was and he was in
• 55:35
  London. This is why I think Steven
• 55:40
  Summers is a fucking genius. Why do something that everyone
• 55:42
  knows when you can confound people?
• 55:45
  She just doesn't have the vernacular that she thinks she
• 55:47
  possesses. Somebody lied to her several
• 55:50
  times. But very strangely, in League of
• 55:53
  Extraordinary Gentlemen from a year before, they also fight
• 55:56
  Jekyll and Hyde in Paris. Well, very weird.
• 55:59
  Monsieur Jekyll. Something was in the air.
• 56:04
  OK, so the fight ends. Van Helsing kills Dracula.
• 56:08
  Anna runs to inject Van Helsing with the werewolf antidote, but
• 56:13
  he kills her in the process. Now I laughed at this bit.
• 56:17
  I found this bit funny. He transforms back into a human
• 56:24
  and he's very sad. Apparently they added a a
• 56:27
  loincloth on him in post. He was nude in this scene
• 56:30
  originally. He looked great, but.
• 56:31
  They thought it was too distracting.
• 56:33
  Yeah, it's true. It would have been.
• 56:35
  He looks really good because he's kind of like not reached
• 56:38
  that like slightly terrifying steroid level of Wolverine.
• 56:42
  As he gets like later on in the in the process, he still just
• 56:44
  looks like a very fit kind of man in it.
• 56:47
  And his little, his loincloth and his little wig, that shaggy
• 56:51
  wig. His wig is not the most exciting
• 56:53
  of the movie. It's nowhere near as good as the
• 56:55
  Brides and or or Dracula's in my opinion.
• 56:57
  Apparently it's extensions. Now, I'm sorry, but the idea of
• 57:03
  thinking of Hugh Jackman sitting there getting them those, like,
• 57:05
  bonded into his hair is very funny.
• 57:07
  Yeah, really Great. So he just went home and had
• 57:10
  that hair, like, extended into his head.
• 57:13
  Yeah. That's so funny.
• 57:18
  That's so good. I know way.
• 57:21
  Van Helsing and our Carl cremate Anna's body on a Cliff
• 57:26
  overlooking the sea. Because she'd never seen the
• 57:28
  sea. Remember that?
• 57:30
  Oh, I did. It was a feature of her
• 57:31
  character. And I, I looked up and it turns
• 57:36
  out in that in that country they do have a coastline.
• 57:39
  So she could have just travelled and looked at the ocean, but I
• 57:41
  guess the Black Sea. Sorry, not the ocean, I've been
• 57:44
  in America too long. But yeah, they give her like a
• 57:47
  Viking funeral. And then also Dragon Stein's
• 57:50
  monster is on a raft heading I guess from the Black Sea to to
• 57:55
  where? Hard to say.
• 57:57
  Where can you head to from there?
• 57:59
  Like Afghanistan? I think he's maybe heading like
• 58:04
  over to like, Egypt, maybe. What's he going to do, though?
• 58:07
  Yeah, Morocco. He just always wanted to go to
• 58:11
  Marrakech. Yeah.
• 58:15
  See, I wish they'd made those movies so that I could have
• 58:17
  watched Frankenstein's Monster in Marrakech.
• 58:20
  Now that's a great follow up movie.
• 58:21
  That sounds like the sequel. That sounds like Sex and the
• 58:23
  City 2. Oh my God, the.
• 58:28
  Lawrence of my labia. The idea of Frankenstein's
• 58:31
  monster walking slowly over the the dudes.
• 58:33
  In the dudes dinner in the Louis Vuitton turban.
• 58:38
  They'd have to bring the brides back for that one, I think
• 58:40
  somehow. Yeah.
• 58:42
  Imagine a follow up with just the villains from this.
• 58:45
  I would have watched that. That would be fun.
• 58:47
  Sure, sure, sure, sure. I mean, I think you could tell
• 58:52
  me anything at this point, to be honest.
• 58:54
  I'm buying it. The last shot is Van Helsing
• 58:58
  seeing Anna's spirit in the sky, reuniting with her family in
• 59:03
  heaven. Shout out to Gareth Gates's
• 59:05
  cover of Spirit in the Sky what she did for Comic Relief from
• 59:09
  one of those things. And yeah, you're just left with
• 59:11
  that lasting idea that Kate Beckinsale has those eyebrows
• 59:14
  for eternity. And she's happy though, because
• 59:16
  she's smiling back, isn't she? Basically now she's going to go
• 59:19
  and fuck her hot brother because the incest is real.
• 59:23
  And that's Van Helsing. What a great way to end it.
• 59:26
  The incest is real. Oh my gosh.
• 59:31
  OK, so don't have anything they haven't haven't covered as we
• 59:35
  went, as we made our way through.
• 59:36
  I'm I'm honestly surprised we've managed to get this much mileage
• 59:39
  out of this movie. Well, I don't think we've
• 59:41
  managed to do that. I think our wonderful guest, I'm
• 59:44
  so glad you're here to give this.
• 59:47
  My passion, my passion for this, this film.
• 59:49
  My biggest take away from this movie is that Kate Beckinsale
• 59:54
  can't run. That is literally.
• 59:55
  My big thing, she literally is the worst.
• 59:58
  Yeah. She's just.
• 1:00:00
  Like every time she tries to run it's just like what the fuck are
• 1:00:03
  you doing? She doesn't have a Sprint in her
• 1:00:05
  blesser. Maybe she's got, maybe she's in
• 1:00:07
  really impractical boots. Yeah, or maybe maybe like the
• 1:00:09
  way they filmed it, there just wasn't enough space for her to
• 1:00:11
  run. So she's having to do that like
• 1:00:14
  fake out, like non running on the spot.
• 1:00:16
  She's not good at that. Or the corset was too tight,
• 1:00:19
  potentially. She apparently she hated wearing
• 1:00:21
  the corset. It was very uncomfortable, she
• 1:00:23
  says. Oh, she burned it apparently
• 1:00:25
  off, Yeah. She burned it after.
• 1:00:27
  Film Well, it's interesting because she you know, I saw her
• 1:00:29
  do a press junket where she was talking about the role and like
• 1:00:32
  what interested her about it. She's really channelling English
• 1:00:37
  Rose, but also trying to be like sexy and seductive and like very
• 1:00:40
  breathy in the way she taught. So she just is very like, oh,
• 1:00:43
  the thing that, you know, attracted me to the role was it
• 1:00:45
  was just very femme and female and you know, I'm not interested
• 1:00:49
  in playing a robot guy type thing.
• 1:00:51
  You know, she has mood swings, she gets tearful, she has a fair
• 1:00:55
  energy, which I think is really cool.
• 1:00:57
  It feels reductive. Yeah, that's a really like, mind
• 1:01:01
  blowing way to have a female character in an action field.
• 1:01:04
  She's talking like this is a really different type of
• 1:01:06
  portrayal of female character. It's like basically get your
• 1:01:09
  tits out, you're going to kiss someone.
• 1:01:12
  Reductive. I'd say she really failed at
• 1:01:14
  portraying mood swings as well. I'd say we stayed at a pretty
• 1:01:18
  consistent energy from start to finish.
• 1:01:20
  No. I think what my feeling after
• 1:01:23
  watching this movie was that there were zero characters, like
• 1:01:26
  there was nothing. But maybe you can correct me on
• 1:01:28
  this phraser because clearly you've watched this movie in a
• 1:01:31
  different way to me. But no one.
• 1:01:34
  Had a personality, Well, yes, you, I do have a different
• 1:01:40
  opinion. I think that as hammy as they
• 1:01:42
  were, I think that Frankenstein's monster, the
• 1:01:46
  brides especially, and then Dracula to a certain extent,
• 1:01:49
  they had as much character as the limited project allowed them
• 1:01:53
  to have. Also, you guys are really
• 1:01:56
  glossing over how funny Carl was.
• 1:01:59
  Every scene with Carl was a inside splitter.
• 1:02:04
  No, I, I'm, I'm genuinely not going to be in support of Carl
• 1:02:08
  as the the comedy comedic relief.
• 1:02:09
  God, he was really ghastly. Also, what was going on with his
• 1:02:13
  hair? I mean, I know he was meant to
• 1:02:14
  be a Friar, but it was very strange.
• 1:02:17
  He looked like a lot of like boys that I went to university
• 1:02:19
  with, had that kind of hair. He was in that actor's in Lord
• 1:02:23
  of the Rings playing Faramir, right?
• 1:02:25
  And he's hot in those movies. It's very confusing to see him
• 1:02:30
  in this role. I guess what you're saying then
• 1:02:32
  is he's a really good actor in this movie because he made you
• 1:02:34
  feel physically sick and he's hot.
• 1:02:38
  Good work, good work. And I have.
• 1:02:40
  But you're right, Carl has a character.
• 1:02:42
  And I have one more kind of overarching thing to say, which
• 1:02:45
  is that the Mummy movies are really fun.
• 1:02:49
  Like the Brendan Fraser, yeah, Mummy movies are really fun.
• 1:02:52
  But like, again, they're kind of diminishing returns.
• 1:02:55
  I do think that because they remember they tried to reboot
• 1:02:58
  the Mummy with Tom Cruise and it was meant to be the start of a
• 1:03:00
  whole new dark universe with all of those things and it flopped
• 1:03:04
  so badly. The I the one thing I will give
• 1:03:08
  this film is that yes, it flopped really badly, but at
• 1:03:11
  least they put every single monster into this movie.
• 1:03:14
  They threw absolutely everything at the wall.
• 1:03:16
  And so at least in terms of like bang for your your buck, as they
• 1:03:20
  say, you really do get to see everything.
• 1:03:22
  Now are those people doing things that don't make any sense
• 1:03:26
  at all? Absolutely.
• 1:03:27
  But I enjoyed seeing all of them together in like one thing
• 1:03:31
  because I do love the Hammer horror monsters and I feel like
• 1:03:34
  they don't get the respect that they ever deserve and they they
• 1:03:37
  still did it in this but I love it.
• 1:03:40
  Yeah, you're so right that they put literally everything into
• 1:03:44
  this movie and you, you have to give it that.
• 1:03:46
  And then they in fact invented all new mythologies and lores in
• 1:03:50
  order to add extra bits. You'd think they had enough
• 1:03:54
  mythology with the, you know, everything else they already had
• 1:03:57
  going on, but no, they they thought, let's, let's add some
• 1:03:59
  more. It makes it a really, really,
• 1:04:02
  really bad movie. But yeah, you you are never
• 1:04:06
  bored. Really.
• 1:04:09
  Really. Well, OK, yeah.
• 1:04:11
  No, but this is what I don't understand because like you, you
• 1:04:14
  analyzing it and breaking it down.
• 1:04:15
  I'm like listening. If I was listening to you now
• 1:04:18
  and like, which I am, but if I was listening to this podcast,
• 1:04:20
  I'd be like, Oh my God, I need to to watch this.
• 1:04:23
  This sounds fucking great. Why was I so bored?
• 1:04:27
  It's because I literally have done stop the level of.
• 1:04:30
  Boredom for me was just like next level.
• 1:04:33
  And it's like it's, I normally love people that can't act and
• 1:04:35
  like honestly, like you breaking it down, it sounds like fun to
• 1:04:38
  me, but I'm like, you're fun. Like I want to watch you do a
• 1:04:41
  commentary over the film, like a director's commentary.
• 1:04:44
  Then I think I'm fully in. Why was I so bored?
• 1:04:49
  Like I couldn't, couldn't watch. It because it's because the pace
• 1:04:52
  never changes, right? So you you because it.
• 1:04:55
  Stays at 100. Yeah, you don't get a second to
• 1:04:57
  breathe. And but it's also just yeah, it
• 1:05:01
  it restarts like 3 separate times and it is so confusing.
• 1:05:05
  And I find that because I love this film and think it's so shit
• 1:05:08
  in a way that I love. I love how confusing it is and
• 1:05:11
  how relentless it is. And I love the dumb how they
• 1:05:14
  fucked with the Hammer Horror law in the way that because I
• 1:05:17
  just think that's funny. And I think in my opinion, the
• 1:05:20
  definition of camp is something where you can, the fact that I
• 1:05:24
  can say Transylvanian IVF in relation to this movie, to me
• 1:05:28
  makes it very camp. I know and I fully agree with
• 1:05:32
  you. I just think I'm like, I'm at
• 1:05:33
  this like crossroads in my life where it's like what's happened
• 1:05:37
  to me. Have I spoken about too many
• 1:05:40
  camp classics now that I can't identify what camp is?
• 1:05:42
  I just so like, you know, this is coming from someone who
• 1:05:46
  really, really loves Megan Fox's film Subservience.
• 1:05:49
  I, like, literally think that is an incredible film.
• 1:05:52
  But like, am I? Am I suddenly, am I becoming
• 1:05:55
  like a proper film critic now? Can I not enjoy these things?
• 1:05:58
  I don't know. I'm genuinely at a loss for
• 1:05:59
  words because I just got no joy from watching this other than
• 1:06:04
  the other than the witches. Are they?
• 1:06:06
  They can have it from me. They were fucking hilarious.
• 1:06:08
  But yeah. I mean, they were brides, not
• 1:06:11
  witches. Yeah.
• 1:06:12
  Well, whatever. I think.
• 1:06:14
  I think the big key is that I loved watching this when I saw
• 1:06:18
  it in my like, what, early 20s, whatever that was.
• 1:06:20
  So then I kept that. I do think a big thing to do
• 1:06:22
  with camp movies is to do with when you watched it and having
• 1:06:26
  that weird association with it. So I do think I also give this
• 1:06:29
  film way too much grace for some of the stuff and to watch it
• 1:06:32
  cold. It is like you're you're not
• 1:06:34
  wrong, like you're completely right.
• 1:06:36
  My one my one final thing then I guess that I like about this is
• 1:06:39
  and again, it's reinvention of the oh, not reinvention of the
• 1:06:42
  law, but I like that they imply in this that turning into a
• 1:06:46
  werewolf, you're you're like a Russian nesting doll.
• 1:06:48
  So they they RIP, they RIP open their skin to become the wolf
• 1:06:53
  and then they RIP open the wolf skin to become human again.
• 1:06:55
  I think that's really fun. And I thought the CG of them
• 1:06:59
  turning into the werewolf was also really like, not that bad.
• 1:07:03
  Oh yeah. And that and my love of some of
• 1:07:06
  the backgrounds, which I think some of the Transylvania
• 1:07:08
  backgrounds looked really beautiful.
• 1:07:09
  Like I genuinely think they were like painted matte paintings
• 1:07:11
  rather than CG. There we.
• 1:07:14
  Go. I liked yeah.
• 1:07:15
  And I'll, I'll echo that and say I really enjoyed some of the
• 1:07:19
  sets, like when you weren't in CGI hellscape, when you were in
• 1:07:22
  like a real set, it just had like that fun kind of movie
• 1:07:26
  quality. It reminded me a lot of Batman
• 1:07:29
  and Robin. Just like, just like big stupid
• 1:07:32
  sets with lots of people running around in stupid costumes, lots
• 1:07:36
  of money splashing around. Yeah.
• 1:07:40
  But so I'll I'll give it that. Also a side note, and I don't
• 1:07:43
  know if other listeners like can relate to this, I think I had an
• 1:07:46
  issue watching it on your TV Crystal because it's like you
• 1:07:50
  have it like super HD and I think it's like, did you not
• 1:07:54
  notice that? What's it called when you do the
• 1:07:56
  frames quicker? Because I think it didn't have
• 1:07:58
  that kind of like late 90s, early naughties like grading to
• 1:08:02
  it. For me, it felt like it felt
• 1:08:04
  very exposing watching it on your Ultra HGTV.
• 1:08:08
  Yeah. Like the motion smoothing like.
• 1:08:10
  Yeah, too. Real.
• 1:08:11
  Yeah, like. Yeah, that takes me out of it
• 1:08:14
  maybe. Yeah, I could see that when I
• 1:08:17
  watched this movie for the first time in cinemas.
• 1:08:19
  The only thing I could remember before we watched it again last
• 1:08:22
  week was that I could see a boom mic the entire movie there.
• 1:08:27
  Something had gone on with the cut they sent to cinemas, or
• 1:08:31
  maybe just like my janky cinema in my hometown in Canada.
• 1:08:33
  But there was a boom mic visible in.
• 1:08:35
  Yeah, like half the shots. That's amazing.
• 1:08:37
  It was incredible. Yeah.
• 1:08:39
  It like it. It really, it was a real early
• 1:08:42
  camp moment for me. Like just remembering that and
• 1:08:44
  being like, this is fantastic. OK, I think the time's come for
• 1:08:49
  us to give this movie a rating on our patent campometer.
• 1:08:53
  We need to give it one to 10 Merrells for the quality and one
• 1:08:57
  to 10 Elizas for the camp factor.
• 1:09:02
  OK, so Merrells, who wants to start the quality of this movie?
• 1:09:07
  0 000 I can't, I'm sorry. I can't.
• 1:09:15
  Like yeah, CGI prison. I can't.
• 1:09:17
  I I gave it 55 out of 10 and. No, but tell us why.
• 1:09:20
  Because I feel like you are like the voice that I need to listen
• 1:09:23
  to in this. I don't want to listen to my
• 1:09:25
  marketing of this film. So the five out of 10 is
• 1:09:28
  because, you know, as much as I'm joking about how much I love
• 1:09:30
  this film, there's, you know, from a quality perspective,
• 1:09:33
  there's a lot lacking. So it's never going to be but
• 1:09:37
  for a camp movie, for me, it's never quality wise going to be
• 1:09:39
  super high. But I felt like, like I said
• 1:09:42
  that some of the like CGI think is really good.
• 1:09:44
  I think that yeah, some of the backgrounds, like the matte
• 1:09:47
  painting backgrounds are really good.
• 1:09:48
  I genuinely think that even if it's working or not working, the
• 1:09:52
  acting quality of the like hamminess of the the villains in
• 1:09:56
  this made it feel more quality to me than say the main
• 1:10:00
  characters, which were dragging down the whole quality of it.
• 1:10:03
  And especially Carl, who I really have an issue with.
• 1:10:06
  But yeah, so so my thing is mainly the the villains combined
• 1:10:09
  with some of the visual stuff before it turns into CGI hell.
• 1:10:12
  I think is and like you said Crystal, the some of the like
• 1:10:16
  physical sets have a very fun like Universal Park feel to them
• 1:10:20
  which I really like. Wow.
• 1:10:22
  OK, I'm going to give it a two then for that reason, because
• 1:10:25
  like, yeah, like valid there is. And I guess at the time this was
• 1:10:28
  pretty cutting edge techniques with a lot of the CGI stuff.
• 1:10:31
  So yeah, I'll give it a 2. Yeah, I think if you look at
• 1:10:37
  this movie as a whole, like it's a fucking mess and it doesn't
• 1:10:41
  work when you drill into like some little bits and pieces of
• 1:10:45
  it and you like focus on the set here or like the performance
• 1:10:50
  there or the big swing they took here or yeah, the CGI, you can
• 1:10:54
  find redeeming qualities. I still think it, yeah.
• 1:10:57
  I can't get anywhere near A5, but I think I think I'll, I
• 1:11:00
  think I'll go too as well. It's that.
• 1:11:02
  Ground breaking. But how about Lies is where this
• 1:11:05
  movie can really shine. So how camp is this movie,
• 1:11:12
  Fraser, Why don't you kick us off?
• 1:11:13
  Make your. Case so I gave this a 7 out of
• 1:11:17
  10 so I still I'm still. You're going to be like a 10 on
• 1:11:20
  this. No, I, I, I wanted to show a bit
• 1:11:23
  of restraint because I do, I do think that as much as there is a
• 1:11:28
  ton of campery in this, it does get bogged down by how kind of
• 1:11:33
  belabored it. It's like the running time is.
• 1:11:35
  So it kind of starts to lose some camp steam, but I'm giving
• 1:11:38
  it 7 out of 10. And that is for Transylvanian,
• 1:11:41
  IVFIVF, everyone's wigs, the masquerade ball in Budapest, the
• 1:11:48
  Undertaker character, And also something that we haven't
• 1:11:53
  mentioned, which is I love all of the bubbling tubes of things
• 1:11:57
  in Frankenstein's Lair. And also in Trance in Vatican MI
• 1:12:02
  5. There was just inexplicable
• 1:12:03
  bubbling because everywhere. But I have to say that if I
• 1:12:07
  don't, I'll be remiss. I'm just going to give us some
• 1:12:11
  context. Madam Webb scored an 8.
• 1:12:13
  OK, on the Lizers. Catwoman's got a six.
• 1:12:16
  Yeah, now this is kind of. Similar vibe properties.
• 1:12:20
  As soon as you say to me, Catwoman, you know, it makes me
• 1:12:23
  angry. Like that really, really gets me
• 1:12:26
  angry that that's a six. Because that's not so that alone
• 1:12:29
  I can't go near 6. I would be literally, I would
• 1:12:34
  like to give you phrase at a 10 for your analysis because it has
• 1:12:37
  been absolutely spectacular and you are a camp classic in this
• 1:12:43
  context. The fact is like it didn't give
• 1:12:47
  me queer joy even though there was so much stupidity in there.
• 1:12:50
  There was something that is not clicking for me and I'm going to
• 1:12:53
  have to go for, well, if it's six, it's going to have to be a
• 1:12:58
  four for me. I would never watch this film
• 1:13:01
  ever again in my life and I hated it.
• 1:13:08
  I'm going to put that at the top of the episode, OK?
• 1:13:16
  I think I'm going to split the difference, and I'm going to
• 1:13:18
  give it a 5. You know, it had moments of
• 1:13:22
  queer joy when the movie was starting, when the brides were
• 1:13:25
  there. That first fight scene in the
• 1:13:27
  village, I was like, OK, yes, I'm excited, let's do this.
• 1:13:31
  And then, yeah, the IT rolled along and I glazed over.
• 1:13:35
  And the queer joy just ebbed out.
• 1:13:37
  Yeah, as the runtime tecton. Leeched out as though I was
• 1:13:41
  having to fertilize thousands of vampire eggs.
• 1:13:44
  Also, this might actually say a lot about you as a person,
• 1:13:47
  Fraser. This is what you know you get
• 1:13:49
  your rocks off on then. Yeah, I'm.
• 1:13:52
  I'm ready to. I'm ready to look deep inside
• 1:13:54
  and analyze why I love this movie.
• 1:13:56
  But yeah, I guess. I mean, this is our most
• 1:13:58
  divisive film that we've done so far.
• 1:14:00
  Crystal, would you? Say I'm no, I can't.
• 1:14:04
  I was gonna say you always you, always you always this combative
• 1:14:07
  with your guests about their opinion.
• 1:14:12
  You're wrong. No, it was a delight hearing you
• 1:14:15
  talk about this. And frankly, yeah, as Baby said,
• 1:14:18
  we needed you. You.
• 1:14:19
  Saved this episode. I do also believe there is such
• 1:14:23
  a thing of my childhood through to teenage, through to early 20s
• 1:14:27
  of movies I was forced to watch with my older brother.
• 1:14:30
  And a lot of them were like adventurey kind of these kind of
• 1:14:32
  movies. And this also fits into that
• 1:14:34
  category of like that's why I mentioned that Sharon Stone
• 1:14:36
  movie. I was also forced to watch that
• 1:14:38
  a lot as a child, I think. I think my straight older
• 1:14:40
  brother had a hand in my opinion on Van Helsing.
• 1:14:43
  Well, that was a thing I was just about to say, but I didn't
• 1:14:46
  want to because I thought it would be offensive.
• 1:14:50
  But I was like, this movie is just, it's too heterosexual, I
• 1:14:54
  think, to give me any queer joy. And like, once you get the like
• 1:15:00
  reveal of the brides, it's just, it's just it's het mess.
• 1:15:02
  It's het mess. So the fact that this is related
• 1:15:05
  to your heterosexual older older brother makes a lot of sense to
• 1:15:08
  me actually. OK so I'll I'll give you his
• 1:15:12
  contact info and you can berate him for me making you watch
• 1:15:16
  this. Well, there you have it.
• 1:15:18
  That's Van Helsing Fraser. Tell people where they can find
• 1:15:22
  you in your podcast. The podcast is called You're
• 1:15:24
  Welcome America. It's spelled you are and Welcome
• 1:15:27
  America. And yeah, we're on all the say,
• 1:15:29
  all the favorite places for podcasts, and we're on Instagram
• 1:15:31
  at You're Welcome America I. Think that's.
• 1:15:34
  Thanks and thank you so much for being here.
• 1:15:37
  It was really, really fun. Yeah, please come back and do
• 1:15:39
  another episode back. Thank you.
• 1:15:41
  Wait to see what film you bring. Thank.
• 1:15:43
  You for having me I I genuinely have a follow up idea that kind
• 1:15:46
  of feels related to this that does feature vampires so I kind.
• 1:15:50
  Of go and throw out the name. Throw out the name.
• 1:15:52
  Dracula, 2000. Oh, I'm desperate to see that.
• 1:15:56
  I weirdly ended up talking about Dracula 2000 this weekend
• 1:15:59
  because we were talking about sexy Draculas and that's a very
• 1:16:03
  early Gerard Butler and it also features a prominent Virgin
• 1:16:07
  Megastore 90s year 2000 kind of plot point, so it feels right.
• 1:16:12
  And Jennifer? Esposito, am I right that they
• 1:16:15
  do the the Demeter ship? But it's a plane.
• 1:16:19
  Yeah, fabulous idea. Johnny Lee Miller.
• 1:16:22
  Concept, yeah. Oh, this is getting too straight
• 1:16:25
  geeky now. Don't like it.
• 1:16:26
  Can we can we go back to we need to do a Bette Midler film or
• 1:16:29
  something next, please. I can't do it.
• 1:16:31
  I can't do it anymore. Yeah.
• 1:16:33
  I'll come back in a year's time for Dracula 2000, when you've
• 1:16:36
  managed to watch some of that, some of that gay shit.
• 1:16:39
  Sounds great. Well, we'll be back in two more
• 1:16:41
  weeks with another Camp classic. Goodbye.
• 1:16:46
  Goodbye. Goodbye, Get.
• 1:16:49
  Away from her, you bitch. Classic.
• 1:16:54
  He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders
• 1:16:57
  right before she died. No, Hannah thought.
• 1:17:05
  You become a prostitute or a dog at it.
• 1:17:07
  I used to love doggy chow. I used to love doggy chow too.
• 1:17:12
  No, I don't use that as well.