Anjos Malditos

Dracula's Curse is a B class horror film done on a low budget. While most of the scenes were well shot and the dialog was adequate, there was stodgy editing that left a good deal of time between lines. The story is about three groups, the regular vampires, an elite group of powerful pure blood vampires decedents of Dracula, vampires out to dilute the pure blood line lead by Van Helsing, and the vampire slayers that protect humanity from out of control vampires. The enter into an armistice, that eventually fails and leads to the final battle of 'good' v evil. Interesting, but nontraditional plot. Dracula is spoken of many times, but never seen until the very end. Semi-entertaining.

At 107 minutes, the least they could have done was offered the editor (if there was one) a pair of scissors! A few other things that might have come in handy 1. a script, 2. a director, 3. some actors (although if there's a half way decent script, I can make do with some wooden actors. 4. an editor, the movie was at least 35 minutes too long. 5. Some decent special effects, I don't know if anyone at "The Asylum" would know what decent special effects or make were. Poor Bram Stoker, he must have been crying out for a stake thru his heart as he spun in his grave or crypt! The movie had know scary scenes nor did it have any kind of atmosphere. The only thing going for it was the adherence old vampire traditions, not being able to go out in the sun, being allergic to wooden stakes etc. Give yourself a break from this kind of junk and go find a decent vampire movie, preferably one made by Universal in the 1930's or Hammer in the 1960's. You'll be glad you didn't waste your 107 minutes on this stinking pile of vampire waste!

OK this is a low budget movie - but even some low budget movies have good acting. The film "Manticore", for example was low budget but it did stand up because the acting was good.

Draculas Curse lacks any descent acting - in many scenes the actors seem unsure of what their next line is which makes me wonder if this film was properly story boarded. The poor screenplay, direction and editing back up my suspicions.

The fight scenes were consistent with the general low quality of the film.

The story was kind of interesting but is over shadowed by the over all poor quality of the film.

Avoid at all costs

I won't say it was a bad offering, but why doesn't someone make a vampire film that actually is a vampire film and not another kung fu action movie where the villains just happen to drink blood? What we get from Dracula's Curse is once again lots of fancy gunplay, swordfighting and martial arts involving hot goth chicks, which seems to have become the rule for vampire films these days (Blade, Underworld, Van Helsing etc. etc.) The cast perform adequately, but there's nothing much for them to do except strike poses looking cool or angry. The fights are choreographed okay and there's no poorly done CGI to laugh at, but we have seen this sort of thing before and I expect better from The Asylum.

Seeing as Dracula's Curse was from The Asylum, you would expect bad acting, bad production values, bad scripting, bad special effects, bad story, bad everything really. Dracula's Curse does show more effort than most other Asylum outings, so it wasn't the case of not trying. The problem was that Dracula's Curse came across as too ambitious. There are good things certainly. The monster is cool-looking and does look good. Not all the acting is bad either, the best actor is easily Rhett Giles who oozes charisma and intensity and close behind is Christine Rosenberg as the villainess. And the costumes and sets are a step above most Asylum movies, not opulent but not amateurish. The camera work and editing is hit-and-miss, in the fight scenes they can get confused but everywhere else they're adequate. The sound does sound rather muddied and somewhat dated. The fight sequences do suffer from confusing editing and are not particularly exciting, while the dialogue is written in a way that begged for several re-readings/writes because it sound rather stilted and senseless at times. It is also too talky, some of what was said agreed could have been shown instead. The rest of the acting is not very good, Rebekah Kochan is just grating and Eliza Swenson is so stiff in quite possibly the biggest female role in the movie. Thomas Downey is nowhere near as problematic, but he is one of those cases where he is hindered by not having enough to work with. But it was really the story and the way the characters are written. The story does get bogged down by too many side-stories(not all of them relevant either) and draggy pacing, and because there are some scenes that are pondered on too long and others(often the more important) skimmed over some of the story can come across as convoluted. The most interesting scene was probably the weapons scene. That there are too many characters also hurts Dracula's curse, and hardly any of them are developed that well, the most interesting probably is Jacob Van Helsing. The villainess Bathorly was the worst case, Rosenberg is very commanding as her but Bathorly was very under-utilised and the "less talk, more show" thing would have helped. Others like Kochan's Trixie McFly veer on pointless. The twist is okay if not particularly mind-blowing or memorable. All in all, Dracula's Curse is not a terrible movie and is much better than other Asylum movies(and with director Leigh Scott's movies I'd say it's one of his better ones too) but suffers from over-ambition, convoluted storytelling and too many characters. 4/10 Bethany Cox