Only through God’s forgiveness, I can truly die. And I wonder, are you truly ready to forgive me?-- Dracula

"Dracula 2000" was a very loose and modern retelling of the classic Bram Stoker tale. Its sequel, "Dracula 2: Ascension", was a claustrophobic, character-driven vamp opus. "Dracula 3: Legacy", which will be upon us later this year (tentative straight-to-video August 2004 release) daringly took the series in an all new direction, resulting in one hell of a rousing adventure.

This party favor worked on many levels. First, as a clever buddy picture with the humorous banter between the straight guy Luke (London) and too-kool-for-recess Ufizzy (Lee) hitting the spot. The two lads shared groovy chemistry and that made it easy for me to get attached to them. It also helped a lot that their characters were extremely well written with Uffizi, in particular, sticking out via his various internal struggles. I was right there with the man and feeling it! You gotta love good screenwriting! THANK YOU! The flick also punched in hard as a compelling genre treat with all of the required sugar tossed into the blender for our drinking pleasure. We get ample gore, decapitations, dismemberments, female tatas and more female tatas (that female vamp feeding orgy rocked!)...it was all there and then some!

Action-wise this one went “Hi-ho Silver, away” on my bootie with a slew of exciting rumbles filling the screen. If like me, you craved seeing more Ufizzy damage in "Dracula 2", fear not because the vamp-priest cleans house here more efficiently than any Pest Control douche bag ever could. Wait till you see him fight a vampire who’s mounted on especially long stilts! That scene was one for the books! And what’s a ping-pow-ping adventure without a love story present to wash all of the violence down with class? Not much. It’s like having a steak with no mashed potatoes. Here, we’re actually served up two lovey-dovey subplots, both of which were thankfully not force-fed down our throats like Ron Jeremy on the job. They actually wound up complementing the narrative quite admirably. Point 2 for GOOD SCREENWRITING!

It should be said that throughout my sit-down with this big, bad bat, the words “Apocalypse Now” kept ringing in my head as I followed our two heroes trekking through a war-torn Romania in search of the isolated Count. That in itself is a big compliment. The total change of feel when compared to the 2 previous entries unquestionably made this second sequel feel fresher than a 6:00AM BJ with a side order of pancakes. High five and hookers goes out to director Lussier for delivering tight and snazzy visuals while capitalizing on the mood imbued locations at hand. I was having a blast discovering this seedy world alongside the leads! Add to all that “loving”, a left hook ending that granted, I saw coming (it just made sense) but that still whooped my watermelon into a health-shake and you get a highly competent action/horror hybrid that goes to show that not all straight-to-video offerings are of poor quality. They actually could also OWN!

On the “I gotta bitch about it” side of the coin, call me a greedy “jack-knob”, but even with all the action found here, I still wasn’t fully content. I think variety was the missing spice here. Maybe the addition of martial arts would’ve helped to juice things up. And again (I had the same qualm with Dracula 2) the fights were, at times, just too short for my taste buds! Ahhh...the pitfalls of being a child of the wham-bam “Van Damme” fights for 15 minutes 80’s! Lastly, I found Dracula (this time played by “The Hitcher” himself, Rutger Hauer) to be lacking prominent presence throughout. It’s too bad because when he did finally arise...he came with a unique spin on his persona and a bang-on Hauer interpreting it with gusto. I would’ve loved to have spent more time with The Count and his novel (for the character of Dracula) state of being. Bummer.

This flick was shot back to back with "Dracula 2: Ascension".

The screenplay was written by Joel Soisson and Patrick Lussier.

The flick was shot in Bucharest, Romania.

This flick is not to be confused with the upcoming Casper Van Diem/Coolio vampire-in-space flick “Dracula 3000” (wow…now that’s what I call an unsubtle rip on a title…shame on whoever called the film that)