Review: Transylmania
Plot: Horny, partying American college kids try to survive vampires and wacky horror at a Transylvanian university. Rated R.
Bottom line: Drive a stake through it. At high speed.
Cast: Oren Skoog, Jennifer Lyons, Tony Denma
Length: 1:35
'Transylmania' vampires: pain in the neck
Photo credit: Full Circle Releasing | Vampire King Radu (Oren Skoog) welcomes another member to his flock in David and Scott Hillenbrand's vampire comedy TRANSYLMANIA in theaters nationwide December 4, 2009.
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Trailer: Transylmania
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Movie: 'Transylmania'
Dracula would be spinning in his grave if he got word of this raunchy comedy set in a Transylvania castle turned college. Remember how the horses in "Young Frankenstein" would rear and whinny in panic when they heard the name "Blücher"? Here they react to the words "Razvan University" with flatulence. That pretty much sums things up.
Reprising the same characters and actors as in their barely released, essentially straight-to-DVD "National Lampoon's Dorm Daze" (2003) and "National Lampoon's Dorm Daze 2" (2006), producer-directors David and Scott Hillenbrand (who grew up in Dix Hills) and writer-actors Patrick Casey and Joshua "Worm" Miller create a Frankenstein-like patchwork that borrows not only from the Mel Brooks classic but also from the "Underworld" movies, "Hostel," "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" and even vaudeville - that last being a poorly played variation on the "mirror gag" made famous by Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, Lucille Ball and even Bugs Bunny, who all did it better.
Overpopulated by a mostly throwaway cast, this clumsy comedy isn't a broad spoof like the "Scary Movie" franchise, and is actually better for having a genuine story and not being just a string of gags. On the plus side, Jennifer Lyons, in a dual role as a squeaky-voiced coed and a scary demoness, displays the same deft comic touch she's shown in a zillion TV shows, and James DeBello and co-writer Casey, as two of the college boys, have an appealingly assured casualness.
Otherwise, fangs but no fangs.
