Think Udo Kier and you might be tempted to say: ‘Special Appearance’; but would he be enough to have you watch Dracula 3000, even if you were a complete vampire or Dracula fan?

Not that Dracula 3000 is without merits, it’s just that they would be quicker to list than its faults. Some of the acting in Dracula 3000 is shit beyond belief, and most of that is down to the director. Of course 14 year old boys, the intended audience of Dracula 3000 like their acting to be shit beyond belief; but two of the cast of Dracula 3000 in particular do shit beyond belief badly, and are beyond the director’s control in that respect.

Casper Van Dien is not cut slack for the fact that he is in what I rate as one of the greats of recent years, Starship Troopers. Casper Van Dien is one of these guys who might be president one day; one of these guys that nobody cares about because he’s never been in anything serious; but Casper knows he’s serious. CVD is the seventh Casper in his family; naval academy and published poet; and great, great, great nephew of Mark Twain (maybe thousands of Americans are); the point is that CVD knows he’s serious.

Dracula 3000 isn’t serious. Any film set in the ‘Carpathian System’ is going to be dire; but what is a real surprise is how bad the Dracula himself is; it is surely incumbent upon any Dracula director to make a decent stab at casting and decorating the Count; but not here. Dracula looks a bit like a creepy young fattish guy with black hair that lives down the road; and is like so many other aspects of the film just not good at all.

And if you are wondering where you saw Erika Eleniak, you may have been boy enough in 1992 to remember – yes you do now – the girl who jumped out of the cake in Under Siege.

For anybody to nab Udo Kier for a production like this, they are doing very well; he is certainly the only point of note, although one must be kind to the enthusiasm and stoner-inspired performance of Coolio.

Kier’s part is interestingly remote from the production however; this is because he plays someone who has been dead for 50 years, a character that we only see in video replay. I can only hope therefore that Udo Kier was never on set for the filming of Dracula 3000; that in fact he never even left Germany to make it.