Hooptober X: The Devil Made Me Do It
#20: The worst Dracula film (by Letterboxd rating) that you haven't seen and can access
Tubi

I was tasked with watching the worst-rated Dracula movie on Letterboxd that I could access. DRACULA 3000 is rated lower but it's not available on any of my streaming networks, and it didn't sound like it was worth some kind of deep dive. So I went with ARGENTO'S DRACULA aka DRACULA 3D, which was still bad but not as bad as I expected.

The digital effects are SyFy-channel original-level bad. We're talking ReBoot-looking shit. I know this film was made for 3D and I watched it in regular-old 2D but there's no way the cartoonish effects would look acceptible in 3D either.

Rutger Hauer as Van Helsing is tight casting, not going to lie, but then he doesn't even show up until close to the end. There's a genuinely cool scene where Dracula murders a roomful of guys. Slashing a throat, ripping a head off, throwing a sword, all good stuff. But then when he encounters Van Helsing he just...punches him a bunch of times. Come on.

Oh and Dracula doesn't turn into a bat at all but he turns into a wolf and a giant praying mantis. Is that from the book? If not, the mantis was quite a decision. And it looked awful of course.

I know Argento lost his fastball for a long time. But the good news is he turned things around with 2022's DARK GLASSES.