Van Helsing
Van Helsing is a 2004 action horror film written and directed by Stephen Sommers. It stars Hugh Jackman as Dutch monster hunter Van Helsing and Kate Beckinsale as Anna Valerious. Van Helsing is both an homage and tribute to the Universal Horror Monster films from the 1930s and 1940s (also produced by Universal Pictures which were in turn partially based on novels by Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley), of which Sommers is a fan.
Plot
In 1887 Transylvania, Doctor Victor Frankenstein, aided by his assistant Igor and Count Dracula, creates a monster. Dracula kills Frankenstein when he refuses to go along with the vampire's designs for the creature as Igor, revealed to be under Dracula's pay, watches impassively. As an angry mob storms the Castle, the monster flees to a windmill with Frankenstein's body. The mob burns down the windmill, seemingly killing the monster. A year later, monster hunter Gabriel Van Helsing travels to Notre-Dame de Paris and kills Dr. Jekyll after a brawl with Mr. Hyde. Helsing pursues evil on behalf of the Holy Order, which has protected mankind "from time immemorial". Van Helsing, who remembers nothing before he was found crawling up the steps of a church nearly dead, hopes to earn pardon for his forgotten sins and regain his memory.
Awards
Cast
- Allison Queal
- Alun Armstrong
- Dana Morávková
- David Wenham
- Elena Anaya
- Hugh Jackman
- Jan Pavel Filipensky
- Jaroslav Vízner
- Josie Maran
- Kate Beckinsale
- Kevin J. O'Connor
- Ladislav Ondřej
- Marek Vašut
- Martin Klebba
- Richard Roxburgh
- Robbie Coltrane
- Samuel West
- Shuler Hensley
- Silvia Colloca
- Tom Fisher
- Will Kemp
- Zuzana Durdinova