The Sexy Adventures of Van Helsing

The Sexy Adventures of Van Helsing

This is another example of what we have come to expect from Seduction Cinema over the past few years, a funny, sexy, nonsense movie with low production values.

Wilhelmina Van Helsing (Erika Smith) is the great-great-granddaughter of Van Helsing. She is charged with a mission to track down Countess Dracula (a very sexy Darian Caine) and kill her. This doesn't run too smoothly when Wilhelmina is brainwashed by Dracula into going out and finding lesbians for a mass orgy back at the crypt.

So what we get is a somewhat curious Wilhelmina sneaking about watching various lesbian sex scenes through windows before it climaxes in one big lesbian scene. Pure genius! Apart from the many naked women and various sex scenes the film plays out a treat. The characters are mostly annoying but one stands out a mile, Uncle Abe, played by Bob MacKay. He is perhaps the only actor working for Seduction who can actually act to some degree and his delivery of lines, and indeed the lines themselves, are brilliantly funny.

As normal for a Seduction film it is not just the plot that is important but the little filler scenes that have nothing to do with the film. Van Helsing has many of these and the most notable is the diner scene where Wilhelmina's friend explains sex to her using to dolls. Not much to do with the film but is very amusing.

The overall production values are poor, as you would expect from a low budget film although the Uncle Abe makeup isn't all that bad. The set constraints have been used to add some humour to the film, the crypt and tombstones are shockingly bad, but really the production values neither add nor detract from the film. The sound is audible and the picture is clear, it's just the story and story telling that deserve your attention.

Once again I was pleased with what Seduction had to offer and although these films will not be as popular as a 'Corman quicky' or a Russ Meyer 'tit flick' they are well worth a watch.

DVD EXTRAS

Vampire's Seduction (John Bacchus, 1998): To get a second film on a disc should be a huge bonus but it seems to me that they had to give it away as they would have had big problems trying to sell it. It is pretty much the same story as The Sexy Adventures of Van Helsing only with Wally Van Helsing as the great-great-gandson of Van Helsing instead of Wilhelmina. The difference is that with Vampire's Seduction the script and characters are not nearly as funny and the production values do for once get in the way. The lighting is very bad and as the film is set at night it is often hard to see what is happening on screen. As well as this the sound recording is not always clean. As a freebee extra however I must grumble too much.

There is also an audio commentary to accompany Vampire's Seduction by the producer Michael Raso who spends most of his time pointing out what's wrong with the film.

There is a very short behind the scenes featurette which seems somewhat pointless but the deleted scenes are funny to watch. Mostly just extensions of scenes that did make it, I can only assume that they did not make the final cut for pacing reasons.

And of course we have the usual trailer reel for other Seduction Releases.

Review by Marc Woods


 
Released by Seduction Cinema
NTSC R0
Extras :
see main review
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