As Mardi Gras movies go, “Dracula 2000” is basically an afterthought. A shoddily constructed, opportunistic cash grab from Miramax Pictures, which sprinted into production and wide release in the waning days of the twentieth century, the film reeks of artistic ineptitude, or at the very least damnable inattention, which leaves little to linger upon except what it could have been. Beyond the evergreen fascination with vampires that retains residence in the French Quarter through the lurid tales spun by Ghost Tours, the pale denizens of the Vampire Cafe, and the totemic work of Anne Rice, Dracula himself has little tie to the city, and certainly none whatsoever to the Carnival Season. And still, for all its frantic music video editing, wire-fu vampire fights, and nu-metal sludge, “Dracula 2000” holds more than a little Mardi Gras blood coursing through its clotted veins, a flawed creation that presents not unlike a grab bag of broken ground beads all knotted inexorably together, which in their tangled abundance are somehow transfigured into something more than the sum of their parts.
“Dracula 2000” opens with the voyage of the Demeter, the doomed sailing ship crewed by dead men that brought Dracula to the shores of England in Bram Stoker’s original novel. Soon after, we jump ahead a century and change to modern times with Christopher Plummer, who we will later learn is the undead Abraham Van Helsing himself, presiding over an antiquities organization that is secretly protecting the remains of Count Dracula in the bowels of a vault secured, booby-trapped, and skull-laden tomb. Unluckily for him, a group of bumbling thieves led by Omar Epps somehow razzle-dazzle their way through his security and penetrate the catacombs in search of whatever the old man is hiding. They find it alright and sequester the casket toward North America, where mid-flight Dracula (Gerard Butler) resurrects himself, turns the thieves into the undead, and crashes the plane amid the swamps just outside New Orleans. Meanwhile, Mary, Justine Waddell as the estranged daughter of Van Helsing, is leading a quiet, provincial life in the French Quarter, working at the Virgin Mega Store by day and dreaming of a seductive man in a long black trench coat by night. This supernatural monstrosity has haunted her for a lifetime, though she cannot be sure if he is even real. As Mardi Gras dawns, it’s clear nightmares do come true as Dracula emerges amid the revelry of New Orleans, in search of Mary as Dr. Van Helsing follows close behind, desperate to find a way to finally destroy his undead nemesis once and for all.
“Dracula 2000” is an unholy abomination cobbled together from ill-gotten appendages that never healed properly with stitches loose enough to allow fetid parasites to leak through and die baking in the sunlight. Heralded by the monstrous Weinstein brothers, the film apparently was made for its title alone, as the script was atrocious. Screenwriter Scott Derrickson remembers speaking with sex pest Harvey Weinstein, asking him why they would even make the movie if they knew it was garbage. “Because it’s called ‘Dracula 2000’”, said Harvey, standard practice for Weinstein ineptitude as they had done the same hatchet job on Executive Producer Wes Craven’s “Scream 2” several years before. With the looming millennium soon to sundown, the film was shotgunned through production at an obscene pace; with filming commencing a mere six months before the movie’s premiere in December 2000. The final film, seemingly hacked apart with a weed whacker and reassembled with Elmer’s Glue, was intended to be an homage to classic Hammer Horror films, which often saw Dracula, in that case Christopher Lee, return into the modern world; a high-collared Count awakened to contend with television, rock music, and the seventies fascination with satanism (See “The Satanic Rites of Dracula” for more fun on that front). Despite the Hammer films, and those of legendary schlock-meister Roger Corman, being similarly shoved through the production pipeline based on little more than a poster and a release date, there were sticky ideas which slipped through the cracks, filmmakers who wanted to say something, and a gurgling creative mania which renders even the worst of their ilk at least mildly charming, if not often transcendent. “Dracula 2000” wants to revel in its trashy vestments but is hamstrung by its own aesthetic, the afterbirth of the late twentieth century penchant for irony and stylish, star-driven horror which became Miramax’s bread and butter post “Scream (1996)”. Still, even with a cast of dead-eyed stars and a lead character so underwritten that one wonders why they bothered with a script at all, there is an element of the film which bleeds through as if by accident, a little hint of Mardi Gras within the movie’s one redeeming concept which pits the sublime against the carnal in ways it, sadly, never fully expounds on.
In the film, Dracula admits to being, in fact, Judas Iscariot, the disciple who sold out Jesus for thirty pieces of silver and, allegedly, hung himself in shame after realizing the long-reaching implications of his betrayal. This revelation tries to link together the several impediments to vampires: silver, crucifixes, and the Bible itself (or “propaganda” as Dracula calls it), into a cohesive ethos, marrying Catholicism and the perverse blood lust of the undead under one tidy umbrella. If there is a succulent morsel of Mardi Gras to be found in “Dracula 2000,” it is this cross-pollination of religious iconography with more slimy bedfellows. As Dracula strides through the Mardi Gras sequences of the film, inexplicably shot in August with what looks to be Krewe of Bacchus floats, you can see the salacious joy he feels, as if his own kindred desecrations have finally found a place and a time to match his freak. Many films with little understanding of the season hit on the pivot point of Mardi Gras and Lent, the demarcation when our baser impulses are able to be fully purged before crawling back to God with contrition. As Dracula looms above the French Quarter, or at least a soundstage set in Toronto, leering at a neon-tinted crucifix that towers over him, he makes this point abundantly clear, the thesis of a film that could have something to say but instead lets the bead slip through its grasping fingers. “It was my destiny to betray you. You needed me,” croons Butler as he looks down upon the accumulated masses in their exuberance, “Now, I drink the blood of your children. But I give them more than just eternal life. I give them what they crave most. All the pleasure that you would deny them. Forever.” A better production, one lingering just beyond the event horizon of the film’s panicked creation, could have found ample purchase in this dynamic, of an immortal demon taunting Christ as a perfect anachronistic mirror to Mardi Gras itself. That the film’s final, explosive climax hinges on the dawning sun on Ash Wednesday shouldn’t be a mistake, but probably is. The great, insatiable evil that ravaged the souls of the faithful now rendered kindling for at least one year more. Striking imagery abounds, which could impose meaning, though its true shape remains blurry, ill-formed, and corrupted, like an elephant being described by a band of blind men. If you squint, you can see what we lost: a fine film with the soul of the season worn on its sleeve. Instead, what we are left with is merely a crop circle, barely visible when squinting from just the right altitude, a shadow of something grand revealed to be little more than plywood artifice.
Is “Dracula 2000” a Mardi Gras movie? It certainly wants to be, yet much like the titular Count, its soul is corrupted and perhaps left to smolder. That doesn’t mean there aren’t tea leaves to be read in the ashes of its funeral pyre. If nothing else, let this flawed film be a harbinger decrying that the true soul of New Orleans is in its inherent contradiction, and it is there, in that delicate balance between the otherwise divine and the decadent, where we all might find salvation.
You can rent a copy of “Dracula 2000″ and a wide selection of other New Orleans/Louisiana-set films from Future Shock Video.
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Happy Mardi Gras!
