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Post by kooshmeister on Jun 5, 2012 4:33:40 GMT
Direct-to-video sequels are one thing, but this is one of the few times I've ever heard of a direct-to-video prequel. Tracking this puppy down back in '04 proved problematic for some reason. First I tried Columbia House, from whom I've ordered a few DVDs (The Black Scorpion, Without a Clue, Eight Legged Freaks, and the complete first season of Jonny Quest, to name a few), but lo and behold, they were out of stock.
Despite being issued to stores in needlessly massive quantities, hunting down a copy of Van Helsing: The London Assignment at Wal-Marts across the county turned up nothing. Ultimately, I found one last copy remaining for sale at a Blockbuster. Now, all these years later, I'm wondering if it was worth it.
Jack-of-all-trades monster hunter Gabriel Van Helsing is sent to London to get to the bottom of a string of gruesome murders that the Vatican is sure is being caused by some monstrous creature. With him is Carl, and together they discover that the killer is none other than Edward Hyde, the big, hairy, cigar-chomping alter-ego of Dr. Henry Jekyll. Dr. Jekyll, as it happens, is the personal physician to Queen Victoria, and he's turning himself into Mr. Hyde nightly and committing the murders as part of a scheme involving the Queen herself. Van Helsing must stop Jekyll and Hyde and save the Queen, but first he has to contend with the police, who think he is the murderer after he discovers the latest victim at the wrong place and the wrong time, not to mention the army of undead minions (mostly comprised of Yeomen Warders) that Hyde has created through a combination of mad science and black magic.
The animation is stellar throughout, and it's nice that most of the cast of Van Helsing are reprising their roles from the movie - David Wenham as Carl, Robbie Coltrane as Mr. Hyde, Alun Armstrong as Cardinal Jinette, and, remarkably, Hugh Jackman himself as Van Helsing himself. Missing, however, is Stephen H. Fisher as Dr. Jekyll, who didn't have any dialogue in the film anyway unless you count, "Aahhhhh!", which I don't; in any event, he's replaced by Dwight Schultz, who does a so-so job. It's also nice to see Tress MacNeille still doing voiceover work (she plays Queen Victoria).
But overall, that's all the good I can really say about Van Helsing: The London Assignment. The rest of the "movie," which is only 33 minutes long (!), isn't worthy of any real praise aside from one or two scenes while I will go into a little more detail about.
We get no new insight into Van Helsing's character, for one thing: He's introduced to us already a member of the Knights of the Holy Order, already at odds with Cardinal Jinette, and already chummy with Carl. Even though I know that they didn't go into Van Helsing's backstory because that would've spoiled the movie (the theatrical one, I mean), it still bugs me. On the plus side, there's a pretty fun sequence showing him training by fighting against a bunch of surprisingly (i.e., improbably) mobile stuffed dummies representing werewolves, vampires, and other monsters, including one of Carl which is the obligatory "defenseless hostage/innocent bystander" Van Helsing ain't supposed to hurt but which gets an arrow between the eyes anyway, much to Carl's consternation.
There's also the fact that besides the thing with the dummy, Van Helsing doesn't seem to care if any innocent bystanders are hurt and/or killed, such as when he causes an entire train to crash in an attempt to kill Hyde, quite obviously killing the engineer(s) in the engine, and probably a lot of the passengers too. And neither he nor Carl seem concerned about it at all. It's true that prior to this Hyde had detached most of the passenger cars trying to ditch Van Helsing, but that doesn't change the fact that there had to have been someone riding in those first two cars, not to mention the guys driving the train.
As the main villain(s), Jekyll and Hyde are extremely frustrating. His/their scheme in and of itself is at least fairly interesting. Basically, if memory serves, Jekyll fell in love with Victoria when she was young. But now she's old. And, as Hyde, he's killing young women to create a youth potion for her. How "in on it" Victoria is, or isn't, is inconsistent; her mysteriously, pointlessly unreliable memory really got on my nerves. Is she somehow brainwashed by Jekyll? Or is she totally complicit? I honestly couldn't figure one way or the other.
It would've been nice to learn how and why Jekyll created the potion and began using it to turn himself into Hyde. And speaking of which, it's a pretty widely accepted that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are two different people who shared the same body, or at least two sides of the same person. Not so here. Here, when Jekyll turns into Hyde he's still pretty much the same guy; drinking the potion and transforming into Hyde is apparently just Jekyll's way of "Hulking out," as it were, so that he can be faster, stronger, etc. This makes Van Helsing's remark in the movie about Jekyll being Hyde's "better half" somewhat erroneous. To say nothing of the fact this means Jekyll even changing his name makes no sense; he's still Jekyll when transformed so why the "Edward Hyde" moniker? It makes no sense in this context, except as an alias.
In fact, if Hyde were more of a mindless monster than he already is here, this version of Jekyll and Hyde would have a lot more in common with the Abbott and Costello version. Thankfully though, Mr. Hyde does have a lot of the malevolently playful personality he had in the movie: One blackly humorous scene has him lighting up a cigar by striking a match on his own face and going "Oopsie!" after hurling the body of a woman he just stabbed to death at Van Helsing, and his indifferent reaction to Carl in drag (don't ask!).
Aw, hell, I can't resist: Since all of the murder victims were female, Van Helsing has Carl dress up like a woman in the hopes of luring Hyde out. Speaking of which, much of the anachronistic humor on display here is quite annoying. It's one thing for Carl to curse and sleep with a beautiful peasant girl he's rescued and get away with it just because he's a friar and not a monk, but the inevitable, groan-inducing dialogue that comes as a result of him fussing over his appearance whilst in drag is just too much. It's even hinted at - quite strongly - that Carl has dressed in drag before in situations that don't call for it. Needlessly anachronistic comedy like this is nothing new with period pieces, but it felt especially forced and obnoxiously, uh, anachronistic here (can't ya just tell I love that word?).
And on a more personal note, I was also rather annoyed that we didn't get to see hardly any of the events referred to during Van Helsing's encounter with Hyde in Van Helsing. We see how he got the bullet wound in his arm, but, sadly, we don't get to see the other stuff they talked about, like the "rather nasty massacre of poultry." The mental image of Mr. Hyde tearing into a flock of chickens because of an intense KFC craving is so hilarious I'm honestly amazed they didn't bother to include it.
In conclusion, it comes as no surprise that Van Helsing: The London Assignment was nothing more than a half-assed attempt to promote the full-length film. However, unlike many such shameless promotions that try to pass themselves off as actual movies, this one gets brownie points for A), having surprisingly good animation, and B), involving most of the actors from the movie. Still, it makes Van Helsing look like Oscar-worthy material by comparison.
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