Van Helsing (2004)

On movies your Mom once criticized

My brother and I demanded that we go see this one in the theaters something like five times in the theater. One of the times that we had gone to see it, my mom had come to see it with us. She commented that it was definitely a movie for men. At the time, and until recently, I thought it had something to do with the setting or the genre. When I would think about the movie, I would consider that it might have something to do with its tragic protagonist. 

It was a story of a man who largely went out on his own to fight evil. The introduction to the protagonist’s character painted a somber, lonely portrait. He had hunted Mr. Hyde (of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde fame) to Paris after a string of murders. Before doing battle, he offered to bring the killer back to the Vatican so that Dr. Jekyll might live while Hyde was extinguished. In the end, Van Helsing has to kill them, but as he was dying, he transformed back into the Doctor, a frail old man. Thus, the people who found the body only saw the old man, and not the killer. They looked on and cried out, “You murderer!” as Van Helsing could only sink back into the shadows. 

He’s soon whisked away to the distant land of Transylvania to kill Dracula. There, he allies with the last remaining member of an ancient bloodline sworn to kill the son of the Devil, lest none of them enter Heaven. They succeed, but not without great loss. In some ways, Van Helsing ends the movie in the same way he started it. Alone. This is why I thought my mom might have remarked that it was a ‘movie for men.’ 

I rewatched the movies recently, and think it might have been that the brides of Dracula were all in revealing lingerie, and that the last remaining member of the bloodline was also pretty attractive. These factors might have contributed to the comment. I see that now as an adult in the way that I wasn’t able to as a nine-year-old. 

There’s a number of considerations here, perhaps you could find an issue with the portrayal of women, or you could say something about avoiding media that might bring about the ‘near occasion of sin.’ That’s not what I’m here to talk about. There is a profound statement here. It’s not original to this movie, but can be seen in a couple of the main inspirations of the movie, including Dracula (and vampires more broadly), Frankenstein, and not least: Catholicism. 

Vampires 

It’s not really a secret that Vampires are sensual characters. They kill with a bite on the neck. They visit in bedrooms, at night. They’re tall and powerful. There’s something erotic about them. In this portrayal, the sensuality is in the forefront. Van Helsing quips two-thirds of the way through the movie about what he imagined Dracula and his brides getting up to over the centuries of their unnatural immortality. 

It is an important point that their immortality is unnatural. In this telling, Dracula is explicitly the son of the Devil, lacks a soul, and drinks blood to sustain life. At his natural death in the 13th century, he makes a deal with the Devil after being killed by the angel Gabriel, called here the left hand of God. In his un-death, he is an inversion of Christ. Instead of bringing people into his fold by offering blood, he takes it. Instead of bringing unending life, he brings unending death. Instead of the fullness of life, he recognizes himself as hollow. 

In the same way that Dracula’s being is inverted, the sacrament of marriage is inverted. I want to return to the observation about how the brides are dressed. For Dracula, their appearance and general subservience to him is something of a fantasy for many men. Dracula feels no responsibility towards them. Genuine human relationships include an element of responsibility, a man cares for his wife and a wife cares for her husband. There is no evidence of this in castle Dracula, he seemingly seldom leaves the castle, leaving his brides to the dangerous work of hunting Van Helsing and company. After two of the three of them are slain in battle, he considers taking on another bride to replace the one he lost no more than a day prior. The remaining bride, Aleera, takes offense to this, but lacks any ability to protest the act to Dracula and takes it out on Princess Valerious in the final act of the movie. So, fair enough the outfits the brides wear throughout the movie are objectifying, but that’s the point. This is a commentary on the inversion that is the Son of the Devil.   

So when he engages in the marital act with his three brides, what is the result? Sex is how new life is brought into the world. Human children are born alive, not like birds whose eggs are laid. This isn’t true for Dracula in this movie. His children are born dead. As is his nature, the birth of his and his brides’ children are inverted. They do not have life, so they cannot produce it, they cannot create in and of themselves. The big threat in the movie where Dracula threatens to move beyond harassing the local towns folk and moving onto his grand plan to give birth to his children, to steal life. 

This is already how they operate, but the movie mixes a few of these late 1800s horror stories to produce this. Yeah, sure, they already steal blood which is associated with life. That would be to sustain their own lives though. To gain life for his children, they had enlisted the help of Doctor Frankenstein. Their goal is explicitly to circumvent God in this endeavor. 

Even if you don’t watch the rest of the movie, the opening scene is pretty cool. Has some great old-timey horror vibes. I might be blinded by nostalgia. 

Frankenstein’s Monster

The story of Doctor Frankenstein is a telling of science working against the natural order, and the service provided to Dracula, in an attempt to further his goals of bringing his children to life, is a riff on this. It reminds me of the state of the modern Satanist, where half the people who refer to themselves are just edgy atheists, whereas the other half worship demons. Doctor Frankenstein’s cooperation with Count Dracula in this movie is a little like that. Perhaps one can see further parallels when people like Dawkins look at the current state of culture and attempt to retreat to ‘Cultural Christianity,’ hopefully it’s not too late for them as it was for the mad scientist from this 2004 mid budget action movie.  

Frankenstein’s monster is an affront to the natural order, not unlike Dracula in being alive through corrupt means. Unlike the Count, he wants to be left alone and to simply live his life, being uninterested in further corruption. He’s not ignorant to the fact that he might be used to bring terror and destruction on the world, so he understands when people want to end his life. Far from being a mindless brute, he becomes a critical piece in the fight against evil, his wisdom and knowledge about where to find the cure for Van Helsing’s werewolf curse at the end of the movie proves invaluable to the mission of ending Dracula. 

Van Helsing’s reasoning about whether or not to kill the monster caught my attention as being something reminiscent of Tolkien’s treatment of Gollum. In either the Lord of the Rings or this movie the characters either could be used for evil or could commit evil, but there is a dignity afforded to each. They cannot be killed for convenience, even when it would appear that it would be easier or better to safeguard the world. Van Helsing refuses to kill the creature on the basis that he cannot detect any evil in the creature. This type of moral reasoning is the Principle of Double Effect, the potential good of the action cannot be justified given the evil that is the taking of innocent life. In the movie, the Vatican betrayed this principle and ordered that the monster be killed. Surely, the Catholic Church was founded by God, but operated by men. 

Catholicism

This movie set the stage for my impression of the Church. I grew up Protestant, but crossed the Tiber as an adult. This movie made it seem like Catholicism was cool, though I didn’t really know much about it beyond it being secretive at times. I can only pray that there is a secret order within the church developing weapons to fight Vampires. I suppose we have exorcists, but while prayer and fasting are truly the weapons to fight devils, crossbows and retractable silver steaks are fun. 

Catholicism catches the eye in a couple of different ways. It’s legacy can in some minds be the oppression of the non-Christian. To others, it’s the stalwart of the fight against evil, as it is here. Though as noted above in regards to Frankenstein’s Monster, it had looked into the abyss too hard, and had been peered back into. The events of the movie aren’t something that the church would ever say is true. Never read anywhere in the Bible that an angel would be incarnated as Van Helsing is. The actuality of Catholicism isn’t really captured here, but an aspect of it is. This type of media is not just a sermon wrapped in a bad movie. Perhaps it is a bad movie, but it’s not a sermon in a movie. It presents a worldview that the Church and maybe organized religion is, obviously imperfectly, in the fight against the forces of evil and darkness. It’s battered and imperfect, but still a force for good in the world. 

Speaking of an imperfect Church run by imperfect men, Friar Carl is an interesting case. His initial instinct in regards to the story is to remain in Rome while other men, namely Helsing, go out and do ‘field work.’ At different times he excuses his misbehavior with the excuse, “I’m just a friar and not a monk.” By the end of the movie though, he’s much more willing to participate in the work of Vampire slaying. By the end of the movie, he’s willing to go against a Van Helsing that was still a werewolf. 

So, in each way, our protagonist, Van Helsing, the so-called left hand of God, stands as both an antithesis of Count Dracula and the upright portrayal of morality shown towards the monster. He, along with his partner the friar, and the beautiful Princess Valerious stand as the upright ways of being. Their efforts bolstered by mutual self sacrifice and loyalty. Though imperfect, quarreling and halting each others efforts at times, the camaraderie between these characters is what to look for in life. 

Portrayals like this need to have an aspect of the truth. It doesn’t have to be completely in line with reality, but it needs to say something true of the world, or even the world above the world. The symbolic world if you would. Making media that has themes of Christianity requires being able to reach back into history and understand the traditions with older storytelling. Van Helsing is the type of content that needs to be made into the future as part of the project of re-Christianizing the culture. We also just need more kind of campy mid-budget action movies.