Dracula 3000

Dracula 3000 (2004)

Runtime: 86 interminable minutes

Directed by: Darrell Roodt

Starring: Casper Van Dien, Erika Eleniak, Coolio (RIP), Alexandra Kemp, Grant Swansby

From: Various companies that I hope were embarrassed they released such sludge

RIP Coolio. I realize this isn’t the most respectful way to pay tribute to someone-noting an infamously terrible motion picture they had a prominent role in. However, hopefully he was able to laugh at some of the ludicrous things they had him say and do (hopefully not some of the extreme sexist material… more on that later); no matter his acting skills, he had some popular rap songs in the 90’s. The memories of how popular Gangsta’s Paradise was for a bit in ’95 have only barely faded from my memory banks. Most of the movies he acted in were of poor quality (at least as far as I reckon) but this may be the worst one-I’d rather not experience ones even more terrible than this.

It's the standard Bram Stoker tale transposed to the year 3000 on a spaceship; the names are familiar-Van Helsing, Demeter, Mina, Carpathian, etc.-yet what this movie does is rather putrid. A crew of a salvage ship (little was changed to mask another huge inspiration) stumbles upon a ship that was full of vampire corpses; Dracula is accidentally awaked and… not a lot of havoc occurs. Drac is hardly ever shown until the final minutes, which is probably for the best as he comes off as such an assclown! He does have a meme-worthy reaction to a major injury, but that only reinforces how pitiful the character was.

The God-awful script, the putrid plot, the performances in general, the befuddling ending… if that wasn’t enough demerits, the bad is only buttressed by a few things we can all agree are bad: racism and sexism. The crew of the ship is only a half-dozen and two are women. I don’t even want to repeat the demeaning comments and mansplaining directed their way, let alone the incredibly vulgar dialogue they are subjected to that’s directed their way. I don’t want to read too much into this, but it doesn’t smell great that Tiny Lister, Jr.’s character is described as “all brawn, no brains” or that Coolio’s character is named “187” & he’s addicted to weed.

It's those ugly elements which make it feel warranted to give this the lowest-possible rating. That is rarely handed out by me but it felt right on this occasion. Not even Coolio’s bizarre performance once he’s a vampire (sorry for the spoiler) or seeing Udo Kier on screen for a small amount of time delivering exposition dumps while sitting down could salve the wounds that was the rest of the film. Somehow, the director of this (South African Darrell Roodt) also had the same role in a few highly-regarded pictures-including Yesterday from the same year, which received a Best Foreign Film Oscar nomination!-but after 3000 went on to do a bunch of pictures I’ve never heard of, along w/ the presumably awful Lake Placid: Legacy. I’ll blame his career going down the toilet on the disaster Dracula 3000 was.