Sunday, October 30, 2011

The Month of Terror: Dracula III: Legacy (2005)

Alright, I did the other two Dracula borefests with all their illogical plots and ridiculous acting, what’s one more? I might as well finish off this horrific waste of time series so I never have to deal with it ever again! Then I will be RID OF THIS CRAP FOREVER! Hallelujah! I cannot wait for the day! Let’s get this monkey excrement over with for good.

Director: Patrick Lussier
Starring: Jason Scott Lee, Jason London

The film begins with superfluous and idiotic opening credits interspliced with flashbacks from the second film, which aren’t even in the chronological order the movie played them in. Amazing attention to detail there you goddamn idiotic mongrels. Then we get to see our two favorite characters ever, the wimpy guy from the last movie and the Slow Walking Priest! Wimpy Guy gets knocked over by a few vampires and pinned down when Slow Walker appears and…walks slowly.

At least his character is consistent. More than you can say for anything else in this damn series.

Seriously, man? YOUR PARTNER’S LIFE IS AT STAKE. RUN FASTER. HOW HARD IS IT? His flair for the dramatic is reaching parodic levels. He kills the vampires unfortunately before they kill Wimpy Guy. And I say unfortunately because Wimpy Guy’s dialogue in the rest of the movie is, shall we say, special. Not to mention his acting is about as convincing as a camel with syphilis.

Slow Walking Priest talks to Roy Scheider from Jaws, reprising his amazing role as the father of whatever random church they worship at, and is told he cannot be a priest any longer because he’s trying too hard to be Bruce Lee I guess. So now he’s not even a priest anymore. He’s just a slow walking idiot.

Then we get some witty banter from our two main piss-stains that basically amounts to this:

WIMPY GUY: Blah blah blah, I’m trying to lighten the mood but failing horribly!

SLOW WALKING IDIOT: Blah blah blah, having my sunglasses on all the time means I don’t actually have to emote at all, because I’m just that cool!

They start driving to the border of this military sanctioned area I guess, where they’re then told they have to wait for the captain. He pulls up in a jeep with some stuff obviously covered up for a reason, and so instead of doing the logical thing and talking to him like normal human beings, Slow Walking Idiot just walks right up and looks at the dead bodies in the jeep. Doesn’t that breach some kind of security protocol? To hell with that! Slow Walking Idiot does what he wants!

Some guy does try to stop them, but then the weirdest thing happens…Slow Walking Idiot turns around to face him and then the guy shoots himself in the head? I really don’t get what this is supposed to be, and since it’s never brought up again, I’ll just assume they needed to pad out the running time – because that’s what you’ll be seeing a lot of in the next few scenes too.

It's never explained, does he have psychic powers? Was the other guy just suicidal? Ugh forget it.

They come across some burning crosses with pumpkin heads on them, cool! Might as well have just put signs on ‘em saying ‘WE DIDN’T HAVE ANY IDEAS.’

Then they find a bunch of terrorists taking some people hostage and stop despite Slow Walking Idiot’s better judgment. Look at the leader; it’s like a combination between Harvey Keitel and Fabio by way of Gary Oldman:

And more slightly obscure pop culture/cinema references!

Some more pointless stuff happens and through a truly weird chain of events, their car gets blown up! And the terrorists get away…well, glad that was in the movie. Seriously, what was the purpose? They didn’t meet any new characters to take with them, the story wasn’t advanced in any way…it was totally pointless! Dracula III, you are a complete failure on every level.

After that, our two morons come across a circus that has been burnt to the ground and everyone in it slaughtered. They also meet this chick named Julia, who doesn’t really do anything and who the filmmakers apparently think is important. She’s a journalist, and her companion, who should probably be in a comedy flick instead of this. But sadly he ended up in Dracula III, so all we can do is have him kidnapped by vampires and turned.

While that boring garbage is going on, we see Slow Walking Idiot fighting against…


Vampire clowns. You’re seriously giving us VAMPIRE CLOWNS.

No! Don't kill Snooki!

My God that’s silly. I don’t even know what to say about it other than I’m glad we’ve finally returned to the ridiculous corniness from the last two movies. I was really getting bored. I’d talk about how stupid it is that he kills the first one by sheer luck when its stilt-leg gets caught in a sewer grate, but frankly I don’t want to complain too much right now. Beggars can’t be choosers.

But since the film actually catered to what any normal human being would want out of their entertainment – i.e. something entertaining – they decide to backpedal fully after that and deliver nothing of worth. Like the very next scene of the characters trying to act romantic and coming off more like a bunch of socially awkward Big Bang Theory rejects.

Actually Big Bang Theory is miles better than this tripe even at its most pandering and low-brow comedy...

Seriously, it’s bad. I love how Julia goes back and forth between these two morons like the writers couldn’t decide whose love interest she was. I love how she tells Slow Walking Idiot off for saying good morning (because the previous night was so hellish) but then is perfectly fine with Wimpy Guy’s terrible horse-spewing jokes that sound like lines even Dane Cook would fine puerile. I love how they kiss and then she takes off his sunglasses and just says sorry. Then he should have said, “Whoops, forgot to mention if we kiss then you turn into a vampire too!” It didn’t happen. And the movie was all the duller for it.

So they split up. Then we get another wonderfully plot-advancing scene where Slow Walking Idiot lets Wimpy Guy drive and – surprise – he stops at the side of the road to help a woman with a baby. God, this guy is stupid. You might as well just staple ‘IT’S A TRAP’ in bright red lettering to the top of that woman’s head. And whaddya know, it IS a trap, as she throws him the baby and it turns out to be a bomb. Slow Walking Idiot knocks it away just in time and mercifully, Wimpy Guy’s life is saved. I’m so glad…oh wait no I’m not. Then they both get kidnapped by the terrorists from earlier! Oh the humanity!

So this is what happens to toys rejected from the Toy Story series for malfunctions...they get put in crap Z-grade horror flicks with bombs strapped to them. What a shame.
Because explosions always make a movie good!

But seriously, what was the idea behind this plan? Did they…anticipate him knocking the bomb away in time to save his friend, or was the kidnapping just plan B? This makes no sense! They try to kill them first and it fails, so they kidnap them? It’s like a plan hatched by people in different rooms.

Anyway they get taken to some ridiculous underground lair that looks more like something you’d see on a Looney Tunes Halloween special or something. Some stuff happens but frankly, it’s not that exciting. We find out that Julia betrayed them to get a story, although this will never be brought up again and has no relevance to the actual plot. Must be more of that padding this movie is so good at! And by good at, I mean terrible at.

Our lovely main characters all escape unharmed. God! Does anything in this movie have any connection to anything else? I mean, at least they managed to keep the basic plot consistent with the previous film this time, unlike the transition from the first to the second movie, but in doing that they’ve uncovered a whole new level of sucking! This whole movie is just a collection of random scenes that have nothing to do with the previous ones. It’s a new record for padding! Half of the movie is just filler!

Oh, and don’t you just love how we’re an HOUR INTO THIS DAMN MOVIE AND WE HAVEN’T SEEN HIDE NOR HAIR OF DRACULA??? I mean it’s in the title! How would you feel if in the new Avengers movie, you don’t get to see any of the Avengers until the 45-minute mark, spending most of the runtime with accountants and lawyers? Yeah, ripped off, right?

We do eventually see that Dracula is played by Rutger Hauer in this movie…what a waste of talent. Some more stupid long drawn-out bullshit happens, and the movie even manages to make an orgy of half-naked vampire chicks uninteresting with its very poor editing and writing:

That takes TALENT man.

Then we get the end of the movie where they cut Dracula’s head off unceremoniously (because the best way to end a trilogy is killing off your main bad guy in an unimpressive and anti-climactic one-second death scene) and the Slow Walking Idiot becomes the new Lord of Evil, through more poorly explained plotlines.

And that’s it, the LAST Dracula movie in the series. It leaves the ending open for more sequels, but I’m going to go ahead and speak for the world when I say PLEASE don’t make another one of these! This movie is horrible. It’s not even funny like the other two were at times; it’s just horrible. It’s trash-cinema, people; the kind of scum you only find in the lowest, most despicable nether regions of SyFy. It’s seriously up there with movies like Croc and Bear for purely low-rate garbage with nothing redeemable. The only legacy Dracula III will leave behind is one of shame and disgrace to mankind’s creative powers!

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