Review of Dracula 3D (2012) by Andy G — 17 Feb 2014

I had hopes for this movie, since I love director Dario Argento's films of the 70s and 80, and he was re-teaming with frequent composer Claudio Simonetti of Goblin and his "Suspiria" director of photography, Luciano Tovoli.

There's also Rutger Hauer playing Van Helsing and a sweet looking retro style poster for the film. However, like most of his horror filmmaker contemporaries of the 70s and 80s (Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter, George Romero, etc.

) Argento now seems long past his prime and has made yet another dud. The main problem with the film is that I couldn't figure out if Argento was trying to make a campy "bad" movie out of the very tired Dracula story or if he merely made an awful movie.

The budget for this film must have been minuscule because the sets look awful and about as good as your average high school production, with sparsely decorated sets, walls the clearly do not connect with the floor and just an overall cheapness.

Given the talent of director of photography Tovoli, it's surprising how poorly shot this film looks. Simonetti's score heavily relies on the use of a theremin, which gives it a corny ironic feel that seems out of place for the "scary" film Argento was trying to make.

Or was he purposefully making a campy film? Either way, the film just feels thrown together without a lot of passion or conviction on the part of Argento. On the plus side, I'll watch Rutger Hauer in anything and Asia Argento is still a dish.

There continues to be the weird creep factor of her being naked him a film directed by her dad, but that is now kind of old hat for the Argentos. There is a pretty wonderful gory attack near the end that has some glimpses of what Argento is capable of delivering, but the rest of the film is so dull and hammy that it's hardly worthy more than a footnote in Argento's filmography.