Dracula II: Ascension

When I first rented this i thought that it was a sequel to the very predictable "Dracula 2000". The only highlight of that film is that the character was Judas Iscariot which gives the whole Dracula concept a much needed boost as usual Drac's Vlad the Imapaler or a direct descendant. This film has a very solid plot as the morgue attendants discover a burned up vamp in their morgue & upon realizing what they have the female character played by underrated actress DIANE Neal ( who is great on NBC's Law & Order: SVU) decides to perform an experiment for her crippled boyfriend Craig Sheffer (who overacts as usual. His only good movie is Nightbreed.) to use Dracula's blood, somehow expel the evil taint & restore him to being a fully-functioning walking & talking man again. Jason Scott Lee as the priestly vamp-hunter does an okay job though his presence in the film is not one of great importance. They could have not used him at all in this film & no one would have missed the character. Great work from B-movie actor Jason London, & pretty cool special effects especially the scene where Dracula (played pretty damn well by the sexy Brit actor Stephen Billington)bites the British investor in the face as he brags to Dracula " That's right! Make me immortal!" Dracula replies "Alright,but you won't enjoy being immortal!" And,proceeds to bite a huge chunk out of the man's face. tHEN AS THE MAN COMES BACK IN VAMPIRIC FORM HE HAS NO FACE SO his fangs are (and this is so cool!) growing out of the sides of his jaws and forehead & it's the craziest special effect I've ever seen in a vampire film.It could've been bloodier & was left open for a sequel but unfortunately the sequel is called Dracula 3000:

This is a sequel of sorts to "Dracula 2000", and the opening moments will be somewhat confusing to those who haven't seen that movie first. D2K had one original idea going for it (Dracula was actually Judas Iscariot, consumed by his own guilt in his betrayal of Jesus, and who hanged himself), and in the end of D2K, Dracula is both hung from a giant cross AND burned by the rising sun, the combination of which is supposed to be enough finally put the King Of Vampires to rest once and for all.

So D2:Ascension opens up with a paramedic team pulling the fried remains of Dracula in from his hanging gibbet. Apparently the heroes of D2K couldn't be bothered to actually either a) finally dispose of his body or b) explain to the authorities that the 'corpse' might still be dangerous, which strikes me as REMARKABLY irresponsible of them. But anyway, the cleanup crew who pulls in the body only sees Dracula's remains as those of another anonymous John Doe, and ship the remains off to the nearest morgue. By an INCREDIBLE coincidence, the young lady in charge happens to be part of a group of medical students (and a professor) who are on the lookout for vampire remains. She becomes suspicious that these remains might be those of an actual vampire, and the group carts the remains off to a lonely mansion to soak Drac's corpse in a bathtub full of blood (don't worry, it's plasma from the hospital). Drac revives, and hijinks and hilarity ensue.

I give the creators credit for adding a few interesting twists and details to the standard vampire tale. The idea of a group of researchers trying to hold a creature as insanely powerful and dangerous as the King Of Vampires while they try to isolate the factors that grant him power and immortality is potentially quite good. The group dynamics are also interesting, with internal dissension and betrayals tearing the group apart almost from the beginning. And some of the little touches - the 'sun gun', the use of seeds and knots and chains soaked in liquid silver, the idea of the vampire blood itself as a viral infectious agent - are fun to play with. The plot also throws in Jason Lee as a half-vampire priest who is trying to rid the earth of all vampires, especially Drac. Lee is a great ham, and his presence in the movie is a good excuse to do be-headings and fisticuffs and glares filled with Jesuitical outrage, etc.

But in the end, the whole thing falls short. I really don't have a problem with the cast, but no one here has half the acting firepower of Christopher Lee OR Christopher Plummer. (Of course, that's true of most movies!) The guy who plays the revived version of Dracula seems to have a bit more charisma this time around than Butler's D2K version, (or maybe it is just that the plot has him acting in ways that are a bit less cliché than the normal run of vampire movies.) but it's still an pretty subdued performance. The movie suffers a bit from lack of internal consistency and cohesion about how the whole vampire infection things is supposed to work. And all but two of the group members turn out to be hateful creeps (except for a member who gets killed early on), which murks up the 'good versus evil' theme common to most horror movies.

But there is ONE great moment moment near the end of the film where Dracula finally escapes his bonds and confining measures with contemptuous ease and bites the face off one of his captors ("Go ahead - I'll still live forever!" "But will you *WANT* to?!?" C-H-O-M-P!!!) that reinforces the fact that messing with the Prince Of Darkness under ANY circumstances is like trying to catch lightning in a bottle.

So in the end, is this movie worth watching? Yes, in fact, I prefer it to D2K for the sheer novelty of the plot. Is it a great movie? No, because there is no actor here who does more than a competent job, and the screenplay doesn't live up to the promise of the premise.

So the original plot outline of Dracula 2000 comes to light in its sequel, Dracula II: Ascension. Gripe #1 – as indicated by my summary, it's an unbalanced trilogy. Meaning? You get one stand alone film (Dracula 2000), and one two-part film (Dracula 2: Ascension & Dracula 3: Legacy) which go nicely together, requires the other to complete the idea, but really leaves the first one kind of hanging by its stand-alone, self-contained, lonesome. For other such trilogies, see also Star Wars (New Hope through Jedi), Back to the Future, and Matrix.

Unfortunately, Dracula II takes the path of Dracula 2000 and tries to throw a few shockers at the audience, making the same mistake of its predecessor in thinking that shocks and plot twists can replace decent story telling. Even worse, Dracula 2000 used up all the good twists. Jason Scott Lee as a butt-kicking priest? Um . . . that might be cool, and Lee's pretty cool. A film that gives action a back seat in favor of ‘resurrecting' Dracula and letting him subtly use/influence the people around him? I'm down with that. But the film is directed by the same man who did Dracula 2000, and well, Dracula 2000 had a lot more elements that could make it work and, well, you know where this heading . . .

Then I found myself asking questions like, what exactly do those priests do to the vampire bodies in the morgue? What is Father Uffizi's lighter fluid (or holy water, whatever it was) going to do to Dracula's corpse that hanging him in sunlight isn't going to do? If they do something else (not shown) like behead the bodies, why bother burning them?

Or how ‘bout: why wasn't Uffizi mentioned in the original film? Where's the Van Helsing offspring? Why must the actors do that hideously fake and unintimidating vampire hiss? And while they're at it, why do the `so liberating, blah, blah, blah' boastful speech when they turn? Why is this film so cliché in its setup?

I'm all for suspending disbelief for the sake of enjoying a film, but there comes a point where the clichés and questions add up beyond what you're capable of ignoring.

Dracula II: Ascension has 2 big twists to its plot. One is expected, typical of films like this, and incredibly lame - I never would have guessed who was in league with who, let's come out of the closet while we're at it. The second twist is actually very well executed, and much harder to spot. It would've been really great if they just ended the film and the series on that note instead of revving up for the third film, but I get the feeling that without the third film the writers would have opted for a happier, family friendly, resolution.

Oh well, we'll see where Dracula III leads.

I enjoyed 'Dracula 2000' despite it's faults and I thought the portrayal of the timeless count was very good but this was a poor sequel. After about 15 minutes I was commenting to my wife about how well filmed it was for a straight to video release but please, if you're going to do a vampire film try to please the thousands of undead fans out here in the real world. It was quite clever to include the folklore elements of vampires having to count seeds (done to good effect in The X Files) and undoing knots; but people turning into vampires within minutes of being bitten?! What happened to dying first, you know the draining all the blood and coming back as the undead bit? The obligatory black character Kenny injects himself with Drac's blood and turns into a vampire on the spot yet in Dracula 2000 Van Helsing has been doing that for years with no ill effect. I realise that this was a low budget movie but they must have cut their costs by not employing someone to cover continuity. That said, the production was good and it tried hard. Better luck next time. PS It was better than 'Dusk till dawn 2'

This movie is `sold' as a sequel of `Dracula 2000'. The unique common point, besides the vampires, are the producer (Wes Craven) and the writers and director Joel Soisson and Patrick Lussier. The rest has nothing to do with `Dracula 2000'. The story has a good beginning in Czechoslovakia, with the vampire hunter Father Uffizi (Jason Scott Lee) chasing the Twins of Evil (Jennifer Kroll). His character is not well developed, but anyway his blood is contaminated by a vampire. Meanwhile, a group of students steals a carbonized body from the morgue for a research about life. Together with the handicapped Professor Lowell (Craig Sheffer), they bring a vampire back to life, keeping him chained and taking his blood for experiments, trying to isolate evil from the blood. Father Uffizi arrives in town chasing the vampire. This story has bad interpretations, a confused script and an important character (Father Uffizi) not developed. Jason Scott Lee seems to like undressing his shirts on the screen to show his body: his self-flagellation is ridiculous, and in `Timecop 2: The Berlin Decision' , he also undresses his shirts to fight against his opponent. Narcissism of his chest? My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): `Dracula II: A Ascensão' (`Dracula II: The Ascension')