http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e1x_9Tv9QZ8 />
Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned was created in the 1980s based off of the comic series(which I highly recommend). Tomb of Dracula. Marvel comics licensed the character to a Japanese anime company which made some...
strange choices with the material. Instead of just taking one story to base the movie off of, they took all 70 something issues of the comic and converted them into an hour and a half long movie. The film is only available on vhs and never got widespread release in the states but fortunately, the movie can be found in full on YouTube!
Due to the compacting of material the movie moves along very quickly from one plot line to the next, barely giving you time to rest. The movie begins after some overly enthusiastic narration with Dracula trolling a satanic sacrifice. He, pretending to be the devil, kidnaps the sacrifice and convinces her to marry him. We learn later some motivation behind this but meanwhile, a team of vampire hunters that includes a Racheal Van Helsing, a dog that can sniff out evil because it drank a lot of holy water(really) and an elderly man in a wheel chair tricked out with vampire hunting equipment.(silver spokes) are hunting Dracula, planning to hunt and kill him.
At at the same time, the devil has tricked Dracula into returning to the satanists(don't trust the devil everyone. Remember that) and the satanists shoot and kill Draculas recently born baby boy, leading to the main plot of the movie. I don't want to spoil much but it involves divine intervention, an epic battle, a shower scene, nightclubs, zombies, and Dracula mugging someone for hamburger money.
The he film has a lot of great twists and turns, but every one of them is batshit insane. Dracula is a sympathetic and likable supporting character(although he does repeatedly kill with impunity) and it has a lot of great ideas that would have worked great if the fat had been trimmed off.
Final Thoughts
Even so, I can't see this movie any other way than what we got and for all its insanity, I love it. It's endlessly rewatchable and deserves a re release. This movie is the special kind of bad that you can't help but enjoy. While by principle as a critic, I have to give it a:
6 out of 10
in my heart, it will always be a perfect 11.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e1x_9Tv9QZ8 />