Dracula III: Legacy

Submitted by corwin on Thu, 12 Apr 2007 10:32pm

Since I had the day off today, I decided to bite the bullet and get this one over with. Dracula III: Legacy is the unfortunate sequel to Dracula II: Ascension, the unfortunate sequel to Dracula 2000. I knew, therefore, I was not looking for quality entertainment. It turns out, I was very much right, but it wasn't quite as bad as I expected. I was better, actually, then Dracula II: Ascension. Not that the bar was set terribly high there.

Father Uffizi and Luke are now working together to hunt Vampires in Romania. They're on the trail of Dracula (from whom Luke still thinks he might be able to rescue Elizabeth). But alas, the Church has tried to rein Uffizi in, believing his methods have gone too far. When he is ordered to cease his hunt, he resigns his ordination, or whatever they call it the church, and goes from being a brooding priest hunting vampires to being a brooding man in dark clothing hunting vampires. Such a difference the collar makes. Civil war is rocking the area, as apparently after all these millenia the beast calling itself Dracula has decided to take over the area with an army of vampires. Why he's all of a sudden interested in ruling over the world, which is clearly his plan, is uncertain. Or I nodded off when they explained it. At any rate, there's a British journalist there to cover the way, and she plops right into the role of Uffizi's romantic interest. After all, he's no longer a priest, so he needs a romantic interest to be used against him. Vampiric hilarity follows them all the way to Dracula's castle. Here they find that Dracula has changed actors again, but is now played by Rutger Hauer. This change alone elevates the movie above it's predecessor, where Dracula was played by someone wh desperately wanted to be Rutger Hauer. Since Elizabeth won't hunt and drink innocent blood, he keeps her stored in his basement, in a pile of vampires who all writhe around and drink from each other. I think that was supposed to be somehow erotic, but it kinda bored me. And didn't seem to fit the character of someone who'd been turned so evil by Dracula in the previous movie that she shot down a priest to rescue the lord of vampires. But oh well, it was in the script. And they'd had difficulty working in nudity before that point. Luke sets about trying to rescue Elizabeth, despite her being a vampire, while Uffizi faces off with Dracula (who apparently mortally wounded the reporter; she lies there during the flight and bleeds at them). Dracula manages to get the upper hand without much trying and impales Uffizi. But Uffizi is part vampire, remember, so he jumps up and bites old Dracula on the nect. This so stuns the vampire lord that he just kinda sits there on his hands and knees and lets Uffizi lop of his head. The former priest then runs to the reporter so she can die in his arms. Luke, meanwhile, snags Dracula's sword so he can use it to rescue Elizabeth. But all she really wants is for him to kill her too, so he does. There are a lot of decapitations in this movie. The movie closes with a cute scene of Uffizi seated on Dracula's throne, with a now vampire-ified reporter woman sprawled across his lap. The words "The King Is Dead. Long Live The King" are printed across the screen. Possibly they hope for another movie in the franchise. Personally, I hope not.

Dracula III: Legacy would have worked much better as a stand-alone vampire movie than part of this franchise. They could have set up the bit with Dracula taking Elizabeth in place of some of the slower scenes with the rebels and run with it. They might have well gone that route, since they totally ignored the parts of the previous movies which set Dracula up as being Judas Iscariot. Suddenly, according to Uffizi, he's far older than that, having been around since before the Egyptians. As it is, I found it more entertaining than it's predecessor, though I attribute that primarily to Rutger Hauer. I like him. He was surprisingly subdued, though. I expected much more scenery to be chewed, but he was content to take the occasional nibble here and there. Thanks to Rutger, they get 0.6 Bolls.