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Reel Advice, by Steve Anderson
Dracula 3000: Infinite Darkness
***
DVD
Directed by
Darrell Roodt
Written by
Ivan Milborrow
Darrell Roodt
Cast
Casper Van Dien .... Van Helsing
Erika Eleniak .... Aurora
Coolio .... 187
Alexandra Kemp .... Mina
Grant Swanby .... Professor
Langley Kirkwood .... Orlock
Tiny Lister .... Humvee
Udo Kier .... Captain Varna
87 mins
Vampire movies are older than the hills.
Let's face it--they've been going on for years. The first theatrical appearance
of the quasi-legendary toothpick fetishist Vlad Dracul, AKA Vlad the Impaler,
AKA Vlad Tepesh, AKA fifty dozen other nicknames of much more unsavory quality,
hit in the thirties. And ever since, Dracula movies, vampire movies, have been
a staple of popular American film.
Dracula 3000 is at once the newest and possibly best retelling of a gestalt that
should be as tired as an eighty-year-old man in a marathon.
So what we have here is the story of, surprise surprise, vampires in space. If
you couldn't tell that from the title and the box art I recommend a serious
course of remedial studies. But we don't truly know about that until a little
ways into the picture. What we kick off with is a handful of crew members on
the deep-space salvage ship Mother III. Captained by a terribly ironic Abraham
Van Helsing, Mother III is heading off after a rumor. Apparently a cargo ship
is floating derelict out in the blackness of space, and this means a serious
payday for Mother III if they can get to it while in the universe's equivalent
of international waters.
Out on that ship is a cargo involving a set of black crates. Contained in those
crates is our collection of vampires, and the crew of Mother III has to survive
the vampire assault and escape intact.
Now this is actually pretty interesting. We're all familiar with the basic
vampire mythos--the story always seems to end when the sun comes up. But here,
here in the depths of space, the sun never rises. Not unless they actually find
a sun and orbit it, but that's beside the point.
Ironically, that's their course of action--to take the salvage cargo ship (not
the Mother III, that poor girl took off long before all this really got started)
to a system with two suns and let some sunshine in.
The ending includes a few interesting surprises. In fact, one surprise will
absolutely make your jaw drop. Guaranteed. Folks brave enough to sit through
the credits will get one final chuckle.
The special features just plain old don't exist. There's not a subtitle,
deleted scene, or audio option in the bunch.
All in all, Dracula 3000 is quite possibly the best retelling of the Dracula
legend to date. It takes a lot of liberties with the concept, and yet these
liberties actually make the film into a solidly produced package.
--------------------------- A prudish Dark Elf? How amusing...
 (From Darken. Click on image to see full-sized image.)
I gladly admit to being a Dungeons and Dragons geek. I started playing in the late 1970s (thanks to Boy Scout camp - one of the few decent things that I got out of camp) and (due to a lack of groups) ended up collecting rulebooks and the like, reading more than playing. I was introduced to the Drow with the Against the Giants modules and then with the Vault of the Drow module as well.
Drow (Dark Elves) were cool. They had extra abilities, magic resistance, and were basically kick-ass. Even their little grunts were a threat, and the coolness of Drow only increased when R.A. Salvatore came out with his Drizzt Du'orden novels. People love playing "reformed" Drow, "evil" Drow, and on down the line.
The concept of the Dark Elf continued in literature. Sometimes they were the dark-skinned pale-haired demon spawn of the Underdark that Gygax envisioned. Sometimes they were corrupted evil brethren to normal elves, as found in Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar Saga. They've long been a part of the tabletop war-game Warhammer, by Games Workshop. And in almost every setting, they are a great danger, manipulating events around them, feared and hated by other races.
Darken started out with a small prequel with a slam against Lodoss War. Well, I consider it a slam. Of course, Darken is a bit tongue-in-cheek anyway, and doesn't take much of anything seriously, let alone itself. From there, we go to a besieged Drow city being attacked by some Cthulhuoid wyrm (I actually know what it is, but it's easier to describe this way) and a drow soldier who escapes the Wyrm's attack, only to find himself the potential sacrifice of the priests (who are trying to get their devil-lord protector to send some help).
Thus we're introduced to Komiyan, a sardonic highly intelligent Drow warrior/scout who is smart enough to know what's coming next, and who kills the Drow high priest in his place. The sheer treachery and sneakiness of the killing (or perhaps sheer dumb luck) results in the summoning of Mephistopheles Champion, Gort. After making fairly short work of the Wyrm, Gort leaves, with Komiyan tagging along as an unpaid minion. (Something about killing the high priest of the city upset the rest of the priesthood. I have no idea why...)
Add a half-dragon Priestess of Hextor (an evil God), a noblewoman who has a tendency to marry rich men and then kill them for their money and land, and a thief (because no adventuring party is complete without a thief), they go forth into the realm of Darken to find three artifacts to basically turn Gort into a god-killing powerhouse to kill the Devil above Mephistopheles, and take control of Darken itself.
Shades of Villains by Necessity (by Eve Forward). (By the way, if you ever find this book for sale, buy it immediately. It is hilarious and superbly written, and also shows that the good guys are in many ways no better than the evil they had overcome.)
Oh, and Komiyan? His people are considered scum, and weaklings. The gang ends up fighting a Beholder at one point and are all but defeated (Komiyan being immune to its charms) and Komiyan is captured... and the Beholder sneers at it and calls it "vermin of the Underdark". Well, okay, Beholders are pretty damn arrogant in any event, but still, vermin? One of the greatest terrors of many a D&D game, and they're called "vermin."
Further, Komiyan describes how a Beholder once attacked his home city, and did a fair number on the city before being taken down. Beholders aren't dumb. It would have attacked if it believed it had a good chance of winning.
So, we have a world so dark and twisted that Drow are vermin. It's just too humorous.
That's what Darken has going for it. The comic is following the dark quest of a group of evil adventurers... and not only do they not take themselves seriously, but the world doesn't take them seriously. Whether it's the "blooper comics" that were drawn up or the chibi strip recently drawn, or even the fact that Gort and crew are sneaking into the bastion of goodness in the world dressed in armor that doesn't fit... things tend to be downright silly at times.
That's not to say things can't be serious. After fighting the Beholder, they have their healer on death's door, the Duchess turned to stone, and the other three are injured. Further, they've no idea at all where to find the artifacts needed for Gort's quest.
While in the past Darken updated irregularly, it is currently an active participant of the 3x Grind and seems to be going strong with updates. Of course, the fact Gort has threatened to hurt the artist should she miss an update probably doesn't have anything to do with this at all...
Addendum note: Okay, seems Darken's writer/artist is a lady, not a guy. Er, ee-whoops? Consider it fixed. Rob
Robert A. Howard
------------------------- It is definitely worth the risk
NASA has long had its share of critics. When you look at the long history of manned space flight, if you dig a little deeper you can unearth reams of complaints about it: it costs too much, it's too dangerous, we can do the same thing with robots for less risk, there's no reason for us to be out there, humans make mistakes, we should take care of our planet first before going out there, and so forth.
Legislatures contemplated canceling Apollo 13 because they saw no point: we had made it to the moon. We beat the Russians there. Why do we have to return? Why not spend the money on something else? Why not spend it here at home? And after Apollo 13, the outcry no doubt increased. After all, we barely saved the three men who risked their lives to go to the moon... so many things could go wrong.
So many things can go wrong...
I sit here on my computer, which is a by-product of our quest to go to the moon. So many technological achievements have been accomplished through our need to spread our wings and leave the nest we call Earth. New technologies... new ideas... new dreams... these have helped spur the growth of our economy and our society. It has given birth to literature and entertainment. Hell, could we have had Star Wars or Star Trek if we hadn't gone into orbit, if we hadn't gone to the moon?
We've lost two space shuttles in 17 years. Each has been a tragedy... and each time NASA has examined the problem, learned what went wrong, and moved on. Unfortunately, this isn't enough for some people. They want a 0% chance of anything going wrong. They want to be 100% sure that if something did go wrong, that the astronauts would survive and escape. They want assurities and NASA refuses to give them. NASA realizes that there is no sure thing... and anything can go wrong.
The thing is... if you get into a car, or a bus, or a train, or an airplane, there's a chance of something going wrong and being in a fatal accident. Heck, there's a chance of something breaking on a bicycle resulting in even the most prepared cyclist dying. You can walk on a lawn and stumble and break your neck, and that doesn't even require mechanical parts!
Going into space is a dangerous endeavor. The astronauts who get into a rocket or shuttle realize that they are putting their lives on the line here. It doesn't have to be a mechanical difficulty; a piece of undetected debris in orbit (either manmade or just a space rock) could hit the shuttle and hole it... and if the hole is large enough, there's no fixing it. In fact, the astronauts might not have time to suit up in a worse-case scenario.
Other critics claim that we should fix what's wrong with our country and our society before "wasting money" on space exploration or space stations or anything else like that. The problem with that argument is that we've had social problems for centuries and no matter how much money we throw at the problems, the problems remain. I liken it to a couple who postpone having children "until they can afford to have a child." I don't care how much money you make (unless you're upper class, and sometimes even then), you never have enough to afford a child. But millions of children are born every year to families who tighten their belts and make due with what they've got. Waiting until we can "spare money" for the space program means never going to space again.
If you weigh the advantages of the space program, with the new technologies and new ideas and the general progress made through our quest to go into space with the problems... it more than balances out. Further, if you asked any astronaut, even those who have died, if it is worth the risk, I'm willing to bet almost to an individual they would say "yes, yes it is."
Humanity as a whole has a need to dream. We stare at the moon and the stars and we want to go there. We want to go to other worlds, to step on these worlds, be it the moon, Mars, the moons of Jupiter, or a distant world orbiting another star. This dream has influenced our fiction, our comics, our movies, TV; radio... all manner of culture. This dream has driven our technology, our science, and our industry.
We should not forsake our dreams because of the fears of the few.
Robert A. Howard
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