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STUDIO: Miramax
MSRP: $29.99
RATING: R
RUNNING TIME: 90 min.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
Auditions
Deleted and alternate scenes
Commentary

The Pitch

“It’s Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer… in Romania!”

The Humans

Jason Scott Lee (Timecop: The Berlin Decision, Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go To College), Jason London (Out Cold, The Rage: Carrie 2), Rutger Hauer (Split Second, Turbulence 3: Heavy Metal)

The Nutshell

Although the church no longer supports his cause, Father Uffizi (Lee, looking ready for a Riki-Oh remake) is dedicated to fighting the vampire menace across the Romanian countryside along with his wisecracking sidekick Luke (London), who’s on a mission to rescue his chick.  When he’s not staving off vampirism from within (he was “infected” in a previous battle that must’ve happened in Dracula II, which I haven’t seen), getting involved with Romanian revolutionaries and calling his vows of celibacy into question with a sexy female reporter (Alexandra Westcourt), Uffizi makes his way to the typically musty castle where Dracula (Hauer) now hangs his cape.

Wonder no longer… Spider-Man 3 villain revealed!

The Package

The anamorphic widescreen transfer (looks around 2.20:1) is a bit on the darkish side, but the movie is, too.  A Dolby 5.1 audio track is plenty punchy, and the disc has more bonus features than most people could probably care about, including a commentary track with writer-director Patrick Lussier, producer Joel Soisson and FX guy Gary Tunnicliffe (who all previously ganged on Hellraiser: Deader and probably other entries in the strange little Dracula-Hellraiser-Prophecy triangle), a deleted scene and a rather lousy alternate ending, cast auditions, the written treatments for all three movies in the Dracula 2000 “franchise”, and two reasonably interesting conversations, one with the FX guru and another with Lussier on the mythology of vampires — some of which actually made it into the movie!

The Lowdown

Superficially, Dracula III: Legacy is like a Hammer film by way of The Crow (of which Uffizi is obviously a big fan, judging by his hairstyle, attire and operatic entrances while stalking bloodsuckers), meaning it’s full of shadows, intermittent carnage, gratuitous nakedness, overly stylized action and sloppy filmmaking (the inconsistent abilities of the vampires and heroes seem to be a combination of budgetary constraints and erratic editing). 

"Damn… next time I have to resist eating the whole cherry pie at once! Just… so… good…"

As for the cast, the ladies are sufficiently pretty, and the Jasons have a surprisingly fun chemistry with their straight man/smartass shtick.  Don’t believe Roy Scheider’s cover credit, though – he’s literally in the movie just long enough to tell Uffizi to piss off.  Now that I think about it, Hauer’s climactic appearance also isn’t much more substantial than a cameo, and his Dracula here is only slightly more menacing than his campy vamp variant in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie.

Lussier, who helmed both previous Dracula films (but not Dracula 3000, thank the blessed beasts), is obviously also quite fond of arterial spray (fake hemoglobin gushes across walls with alarming regularity) and inexpensive productions (let’s hear it for Romania!), which compared to a lot of direct-to-vid fare he uses to admirable advantage, at least in a Saturday night “Creature Feature” kind of way.  

6.5 out of 10