danthsmith-75606

This cartoony version, completely lacking menace is a bit of a dud. Mystifyingly it seems to be a blatant ripoff of the Coppola take (Itself flawed). It starts of in CGI Transylvania and has the count in the now cliched lovelorn warlord mode. He becomes a vampire because of a hissy fit with the church. This story is now so familiar that any new take should certainly take liberties with the character and plot so Paris is a nice change. Christoph Waltz, standing in as Van Helsing's sub is great. The cartoon gargoyles were silly and more like the seven dwarves than evil henchmen. I recently watched Hammer's 1958 take and it was far classier and more stylish.

Some might argue that this goes to far over the top but if you accept that its basically a Buster Keaton movie with more bloodshed (a lot more) you start to get the picture. The single minded quest to rebuild his house from the protagonist and the unstoppable thirst for payback from the Russian make a live action road runner cartoon. More laughs than most so-called comedies. The fun is seeing how our stoic hero gets out of each situation and how it gradually escalates to pure insanity. Marvellous stuff. Please don't go to Hollywood and direct superhero crap Mr Helander. The offers must surely be there.

This is worth watching for the fantastic effects and miniatures by the Great Tsuburaya. I don't expect many will find them particularly convincing but they are ambitious and beautiful with a great combination of mattes, models and animation. I don't think the space battles were beaten till Lucas came along. The moon stuff is on apar with George Pal. The destruction by gravity beam of Tokyo is amazing. This is a gem from the golden period of Toho Sci-fi movies.