| | | Adventure Lives Forever.
Features: HD DVD, Digital Audio, Dolby Digital (5.1), English, Spanish, French Subtitled
Legendary monster hunter Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) is summoned to mysterious Transylvania on a mission that will thrust him into a sweeping battle against the forces of darkness! With non-stop action and electrifying special effects, Van Helsing is an adrenaline-powered motion picture event Roger Ebert calls "Spectacular."
"...succeeds magnificently as compulsively watchable spectacle." Gregory Weinkauf, Dallas Observer
"...exhilarating fun, a richly designed and often quite funny re-exploration of the movie past." Kirk Honeycut, The Hollywood Reporter
"Non-stop action...a breathtaking thrill ride." Jeffrey Lyons, NBC-TV
"Silly and spectacular, and fun." Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
"The dark, desaturated imagery perfectly complements this vampires and werewolves tale..." Widescreen Review
Editor's Note
All varieties of otherworldly creatures come out to play in Stephen Sommers' gothic carnival. Frankenstein's monster, ferocious werewolves, vampire bat babies, a maniacal scientist named Igor, and a CGI Dr. Jekyll are just a few. When they come together, a thrilling fantasy adventure results, making VAN HELSING a visual feast. Destined to fight the world's evil, Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) is a warrior in a cowboy hat and a trench coat, heavily armed with a rapid-fire multi-arrow crossbow, among other gadgetry. A legion of monks in Rome send Van Helsing to Transylvania to hunt the immortal Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh), who terrorizes the local people with the help of his three vampire brides. Especially threatened is the vixen Anna Valerious (Kate Beckinsale), whose family also strives to kill the Count. Van Helsing and Anna Valerious work together, searching for the secret door to Dracula's lair. But it is only after massive battles involving impossible stunts, races on horse-pulled carriages, and the desecration of enchanting medieval castles (all done with dizzying computer graphics) that they succeed. Not only does the eye candy keep on coming, the tongue-in-cheek writing and deep Transylvanian accents perfect the film with a dose of dark humor.
| Features | Track The Adventure: Van Helsing's Map | | Audio: English Dolby Digital Stereo | | Audio: English, French, Spanish Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 Surround Sound | | Bloopers | | Dubbed: French, Spanish | | Feature Audio Commentary With Actors Richard Roxburgh, Shuler Hensley & Will Kemp | | Feature Audio Commentary With Director Stephen Sommers & Editor/Producer Bob Ducsay | | Featurettes: Bringing The Monsters To Life, Van Helsing - The Story, The Life, The Legend, The Music Of Van Helsing, Dracula's Lair Is Transformed, The Masquerade Ball Scene "Unmasked", & The Art Of Van Helsing | | Interactive Menus | | Scene Selection | | Subtitles: English, French, Spanish | | This Is An HD-DVD Made For HD-DVD Format Players Which Produce Higher Quality Picture & Sound |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Universal |
| Release Date: 8/8/2006 |
| Running Time: 132 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 2004 | | Catalog ID: 26514 | | UPC: 00025192651427 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English, French Dubbed, Spanish Descriptive Video, Spanish Dubbed | | Available Subtitles: English, French, Spanish | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Widescreen 1.85:1 |
| Cast & Crew
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| | Professional Reviews | New York Times
"[With a] gleeful, chaotic sense of visual excess." 05/07/2004 p.E1USA Today
"The best part is the moodily handsome look of the sets..." 05/07/2004 p.2E Chicago Sun-Times
"The movie is like a Greatest Hits compilation; it's assembled like Frankenstein's Monster, from spare parts stitched together and brought to life with electricity, plus lots of computer-generated images." 05/07/2004 p.39 Widescreen Review
"The dark, desaturated imagery perfectly complements this vampires and werewolves tale, with lots of cold bluish-gray exteriors and warm firelit interiors." 06/01/2006 p.67 Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
Strange that a movie so eager to entertain would forget to play "Monster Mash" over the end credits. There have been countless movies uniting two monsters ("Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man," "King Kong vs. Godzilla," etc.), but "Van Helsing" convenes Frankenstein, his Monster, Count Dracula, the Wolf Man, Igor, Van Helsing the vampire hunter, assorted other werewolves, werebats and vampires, and even Mr. Hyde, who as a bonus seems to think he is the Hunchback of Notre Dame...The movie is like a Greatest Hits compilation; it's assembled like Frankenstein's Monster, from spare parts stitched together and brought to life with electricity, plus lots of computer-generated images...At the outset, we may fear Sommers is simply going for f/x overkill, but by the end, he has somehow succeeded in assembling all his monsters and plot threads into a high-voltage climax. "Van Helsing" is silly and spectacular, and fun. - Roger Ebert
ReelViews 5 of 10
Before I start mercilessly shredding this movie, let me offer a silver lining. Those who delight in bad movies and enjoy producing their own unfilmed versions of Mystery Science Theater 3000 may gain a measure of semi-masochistic enjoyment out of Van Helsing. There are quite a few unintentionally funny moments, although the overall experience was too intensely painful for me to be able to advocate it as being "so bad, it's good." (The length is part of the problem - boredom eventually overwhelms cheesiness.) Some, however, will doubtless view it as such. More power to them, since sitting through this movie requires something more than a strong constitution and a capacity for self-torture...Most monster movies are entrenched in the horror genre, but so little about Van Helsing is scary that Sommers is forced to rely on action. There's plenty of that, but each set piece outlasts its welcome, and the exposition that fills the interludes is hollow and boring. 15 minutes into the movie, we're already tired of the artificiality of the fights and chases, but there's still two hours to go. Van Helsing quickly becomes an exercise in repetition, which leads to tedium. Watching a movie about vampires, werewolves, and other assorted monsters is supposed to be fun, not drudgery. - James Berardinelli
Variety 7 of 10
A monster mash on steroids, "Van Helsing" takes Universal's hallowed horror cycle to a new level. Whether that level is the pinnacle or the nadir will be a matter of distinctly divided opinion, depending very much on viewer age, respect for genre tradition and appetite for being pummeled by nonstop CGI effects and a thunderous soundtrack. Fans of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr. will be appalled...Packed with nothing but "big scenes" and breathlessly paced in a way that suggests panic at the idea the audience might get bored if things were slowed and toned down even for a moment, pic opens in voluptuous black-and-white with a nine-minute Transylvanian prologue, set in 1887, in which Dracula (Richard Roxburgh) puts the bite on Dr. Frankenstein in an attempt to adopt the monster for his own private purposes...Overdone as they are, the effects are superbly rendered, delivering the thrills and shocks the intended audience will pay to see. Same is true of Allan Cameron's spectacularly dark production design, Allen Daviau's superbly judged shadowy cinematography (if only he could have shot the whole thing in black-and-white), the coolly inventive costumes by Gabriella Pescucci and Carlo Poggioli and the innumerable visual, special and makeup effects by a team so large the end credits take 10 minutes to unspool. - Todd McCarthy
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