I may not be the biggest fan of famed Italian horror director Dario Argento, but I definitely have nothing but the utmost respect for he and his contributions to the world of cinema. He's done some incredibly work and his style is the sort-of thing that movie-goers dream of and film students salivate over. So I loaded up his recent 3D adaptation of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" with a certain sense of intrigue. I saw an early concept trailer some time ago that looked woefully bad, but it was clearly unfinished, so I opted not to judge the film by its quality. I needed to see the entire completed film start-to-finish to be fair and balanced in my assessment....I should have just stuck with the trailer. It had all the camp and unintentional hilarity of the finished film, but none of the prolonged and shockingly boring padding."Dracula 3D" might just be one of the worst adaptations of the character I've ever seen thanks to the nonsensically and bizarrely awful production. While lead Thomas Kretschmann salvages what he can in a surprisingly decent performance, the film just implodes around him. Forget what you've heard about the incompetent craftsmanship, laughable visual effects and amateurish direction, because despite what you might suspect... it's far worse than what you might have imagined. Nothing will quite prepare you for just how poor this work is in virtually every conceivable sense.The film predominately follows Mina Harker (Marta Gastini), as she travels to the village of Passo Borgo at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains sometime after her husband Jonathan (Unax Ugalde) was sent to meet Count Dracula for business. Soon enough, she encounters the vampire count (Thomas Kretschmann), who is entranced by her resemblance to his beloved Dolinger- who had died some centuries ago. And it soon becomes clear that he desires Mina for a dark and devious purpose. And so, Mina must team with famed vampire hunter Van Helsing (Rutger Haur) to try and stop the vile vampire lord...The film is an absolute trainwreck. The quality of filmmaking is shocking, with very little effort put into basic facets of production like frame composition and flow, and a complete lack of post- production tweaking like color- timing or pacing. Most sequences are constructed with only the most basic of set-ups; poorly framed with one or two cameras simply set- down somewhere vaguely near the action on tripods with a complete lack of cinematic lighting or eye towards capturing the scene dynamically. It feels completely thrown together without interest. Completely apathetic. And outside of maybe mildly tinting scenes vaguely a dark blueish- green during the night or lazily brightening the image with a mild yellow "tinge" for daytime scenes, it seems no effort was put into trying to manipulate the cinematography. The editing is also inorganic and lacks any sense of real flow, lending to the film feeling bloated and boring despite being less than two hours long. There's plenty that could have been done to improve the speed at which scenes play out, but the lack of effort prevents this.The effects? My god, the effects! This was a 2012 film, but it boasts digital trickery about on par with a 1992 TV-movie. I know not to expect "Avatar" quality digital trickery, but when an early green- screen sequence at a train-station actually boasts some of the same stock background elements I got for free online over five years ago, lazily patched together with no treatment to blend them realistically, you know the effects are gonna be something else... in all the wrong ways. Digital creatures all move with hilariously inorganic motion and shine like plastic. Green-screen sequences look cartoonish and completely unreal. And then there's the Mantis. If you've seen the trailer, you know what I'm talking about. It might be the worst digital effects sequence I've ever seen. It comes out of nowhere, lacks any set-up or pay-off and looks like something out of a children's cartoon. It might be the single most unintentionally hilarious thing ever committed to the screen.Add to that flat performances from the bulk of the cast, forgettable music that fails to thrill or enthrall, atrocious cinematography and some of the most bland screen writing I've ever had the misfortune of witnessing, and you got yourself one of the most perplexing failures in recent cinematic memory. If it weren't for one or two decent roles performed by actors far too talented to be here, the unintentional humorous moments of camp that crop up here and there and gorgeous co-star Miriam Giovanelli's penchant to be nude for much of the run- time, it'd be unwatchable. Argento... you're a talented man. And you've made some phenomenal films. But crap like this won't do."Dracula 3D" barely scoots by with a 2 out of 10. If you want some laughs, maybe pop it on. But even then, they're few and far in- between, and the bulk of the film is just an incoherent, incompetent, boring mess.

This must have been one cheap production! Dario Argento, once my favorite horror director, has made a Dracula for those amused by the CGI giant snake films that run on the Sci-fi Channel. There is something about bad CGI that makes them hard to even laugh at. Some old school FX, like the man-in-a-cheap-monster-suit, could be charming. there is no charm to be had with bad computer effects. The ones in this Dracula film look like they were leftover from a low budget 1990's movie. Dario Argento once had an outstanding visual style (Suspiria, Inferno). His Dracula movie is overlit and fake looking. The digital photography makes it look like porn. Add in the frequent nudity (the only visually appealing images in the film) and one starts to wonder if Dracula's bride will be sucking more than blood. My friend and I gave up taking this film seriously after the first half-hour. The remainder of the running time was spent casting the porn version. Dracula - Dale Dabone (in place of the only fair Thomas Kretchsmann)Mina - Stoya (in place of Marta Gastini) Jonathan - James Deen (in place of the lame Unax Uglade) Lucy - Sasha Grey (in place of Asia Argento)Tania - Lexi Belle (in place of Miriam Giovanelli) Van Helsing - Nina Hartley (in place of tired looking Rutger Hauer)fat priest - Ron Jeremy (of course!)Now that I write this, I think that Argento's film would have been improved with that cast, even if it still had no sex in it. At least the players would have matched the photography.

"Suspiria", this ain't.Why Dario Argento attempted to make the one millionth version of "Dracula" is probably the most puzzling thing about this truly terrible version of Bram Stoker's undying novel. By this time, who cares about the Count, anyway? The poor guy has been invoked and re-imagined so many times it's nothing but sad anymore. Argento evidently wanted his shot at the venerable story, but the result is a hot mess that can't even qualify as a cult movie, despite the fact that late in the movie, Dracula turns himself into a giant deadly mantis to kill another extra who didn't know he needed to call Orkin.The entire movie is shot under incredibly bright light, making even the night scenes looks as if everyone's going to hit the beach as soon as the director yells "cut". This is Transylvania/California. The story is a precariously balanced retread of the superior "Horror of Dracula", Hammer Films breakthrough in Technicolor vampirism that shook the world in 1958. Here, Argento wastes film in a weak copy of the Hammer visual style, reducing the original 1958 color palette of rich autumn hues to something you'd see on the Vegas strip. Hammer's heaving bosoms are now in full view, jiggling all over the place. The subtle eroticism of the 58' version is now stroke magazine fodder. Most damnably, Argento attempts to recreate the seminal scene in which Harker is attacked by Dracula's bride. Instead of the shock of Christopher Lee's red-eyed Count knocking the hell out of the bride, we get T and A and the worst pretend Dracula ever seen, the lousy Thomas Kretschmann in a Z-list sleepwalk performance of one of the world's greatest villains. Oh yeah, he's also blond. Surf's up, Drac!And so on. We get a seriously truncated version of the original story. Dracula never goes to England. Somehow, all the characters come to him. No hunting necessary. Within ten minutes of the movie's start, we get soft-core porn involving a buff gymrat and a Hustler Honey banging in a barn. Dracula is not only a weak player, but also a very bad CGI owl, werewolf thingy, and again, a giant praying mantis. Who knew? Rutger Hauer shows up late in the game as Van Helsing, gets knocked around for his trouble and Mina shoots the Count, who turns into an ashy replica of himself before blowing up real good.For Dracula completists only, and even then, on fast-forward. Really, it's that bad.

The dubbing, the casting, the acting, the effects, the goofy score. It's worse than you think, even if your expectations were low to begin with.But there is one element that's fairly interesting, that makes it a damn shame that the execution was so abysmal: A lot of the characters share more than a little history. In this version, Harker isn't a guest, but Draculas librarian. The Renfields character knows Draculas bride, Tanja, before she turns into a vampire. In turn, Tanja is set up as a real rival to Mina Harker later. Yes, Draculas bride does have a name and an agenda. And instead of unnamed gypsies, Dracula has a strongman working for him (as well as a pact with a few other citizens). Lucy is a piano teacher, and when she turns into a vampire and kidnaps a child, it's not just a child - but her own pupil. Going further, Dracula believes that Mina is his dead wife (it seems to be going into "The Mummy" territory here), and van Helsing knows Dracula from a previous encounter. Of course, most characters are killed off effortlessly in the last act. And that's where the movie disappoints the most: It sets out as a character-driven Dracula movie, and then it suddenly comes to an abrupt end.