Coventry
All through my viewing of "Transylmania", I kept picking my brain where I knew the names of David and Scott Hillenbrand from. I knew it had to be horror-related, but seriously couldn't place them. Afterwards, upon checking here on this website, it finally made sense! They are the genius minds behind "King Cobra" and "Demon Island". Now, both those movies really sucked but at least they were serious intended horror attempts, whereas "Transylmania" is a spoof of the genre. Not only have we been saying way too many horror spoofs coming out in the last couple years, but there also aren't any valid excuses in case a spoof is embarrassingly bad. The good news is that "Transylmania" definitely isn't any worse than "Stan Helsing" or "Scary Movie 4". The bad news is that it sucks nevertheless and hardly contains any juvenile and sexist gags you haven't seen approximately three dozen of times before. As part of a student exchange program, a bunch of idiotic college kids travel to Romania for one semester. One of them is anxious to finally meet his sexy Romanian internet girlfriend while the other just intend to party hard and score with the easy local beauties. Rusty's romantic plans backfire as it turns out the lovely Draguta has a hideous hunchback and a psychopathic midget father and the rest of group runs into trouble with ancient vampire curses and bodily possessions. I chuckled perhaps a total of four or five times throughout, but the rest of the film was derivative and infantile. The acting performances are all neutral, with the exception of the late David Steinberg as the crazy dean with a dungeon full of torture devices, and the Hillendbrand clearly know as little about comical horror as they do about cheesy horror.
Joseph J. Airdo
Despite outward appearances, "Transylmania" is a biting comedy packed with plenty of amusing absurdity."Transylmania's" trailer piggy-backs off the success of the "Twilight" franchise, giving the appearance that the movie is a direct spoof of those films. That cannot be further from the truth as "Transylmania" avoids such cheap opportunities and instead sinks its teeth into its own unique brand of outrageous humor.Full Circle Releasing's "Transylmania" is actually the third installment of National Lampoon's "Dorm Daze" film series in disguise (although National Lampoon carries no association with this chapter). It features a cast of young actors portraying eccentric college students who embark on a semester abroad in Romania.Once there, the young men and women discover that Razvan University is home to a band of vampires. While a few of the students get mixed up in an ancient curse on the blood-suckers, others attempt to save their friend from a Frankenstein-like procedure.The subplots get interwoven with each other and, soon, cases of mistaken identity threaten the students' plans for a fun-filled semester. As the film's official synopsis states, if the partying doesn't kill them, the vampires just might.Like its two predecessors, "Dorm Daze 3" ... er ... "Transylmania" features a consistent collection of laughs leading to a truly riotous finale. Every coincidence falls into perfect place and hilarious misunderstandings bounce off one another in rapid fashion to create a rousing cinematic experience.Moreover, the road to the explosive grand finale is just as engaging. This is not the year's most brilliant comic material on the big screen but it is some of the most screamingly funny. Directors David and Scott Hillenbrand make full use of Patrick Casey and Worm Miller's screenplay by allowing the characters to freely roam about the movie's setting."Transylmania's" eccentric characters amplify every side-splitting line of dialogue and visual gag. The filmmakers deserve kudos for sticking with these characters to this installment, which is hands-down the best of the franchise.However, it is also important to note that a moviegoer need not have seen either of the "Dorm Daze" flicks prior to "Transylmania." It stands on its own justifying the title change. Although, folks who are familiar with these characters will likely appreciate the movie's scintillating stupidity slightly more than newcomers.The stunningly gorgeous Jennifer Lyons is given room to stretch her acting abilities and manages to emerge as one of the film's brightest stars. Oren Skoog and James DeBello are also terrific here, emoting extra-large reactions at every corner. Such over-acting is part of "Transylmania's" charm."Transylmania" is an all-out comedy extravaganza. It may not be the ideal form of entertainment for all moviegoers but those who know how to let loose and enjoy 90 minutes of pure alacrity will find it to be a gut-busting good time.
RichardSRussell-1
Transylmania (1:35, R) — Other: Comedy, 3rd string, original, OSIT chauvinistsWhen you're shooting for stupidly outrageous, it's really, really easy to slip off the tracks and end up as outrageously stupid. That's what happened to the parody Stan Helsing, for example. And that was a movie that featured at least a few actors that you'd heard of before and a character who was supposed to be a descendant of Dracula's Abraham Van Helsing. Transylmania features nobody you've ever heard of before, and one of its characters is a descendant of vampire hunter Victor Van Sloan, equally unknown to history prior to today.Nonetheless, Transylmania works on its own terms. It follows 10 American college students, every one of them a flaming stereotype, as they arrive for a semester abroad in Romania, specifically Transylvania (where the movie was actually shot), explicitly at Razvan University, whose campus is in historic Castle Razvan, which 500 years ago was the home of famed vampire Count Radu. Rumor has it that the count is immortal, a hypothesis quickly confirmed as we find him roaming the corridors. Rusty, the student who opens the film as our narrator, is a dead ringer for the count, made more so when (by sheer coincidence) he dresses up for the freshman welcome ball in exactly the same outfit that Radu habitually wears.Also among the American students are a couple of stoner lads who discover their blue jeans are a local gold mine; twin sisters, Lia the goody-goody and Danni the try-anything good- time gal; Newmar, the inept football player; Lynne, the nymphomaniac airhead cheerleader who has the hots for him; and Cliff, the oaf who figures the way to impress women is by claiming to be a vampire hunter. He uses this line on Prof. Teodora Van Sloan (the aforementioned descendant of Victor), and she takes him with the same deadly seriousness with which she approaches vampire hunting in general. With lips, vocal tone, and swordplay, she evokes Catherine Zeta-Jones in Zorro.* (In the only college class we actually see on screen, she demos self-defense techniques involving decapitation and a stake thru the heart. In response to a question she says "Vampires? Don't be silly. Now let's talk about what to do if someone jumps at you from out of a coffin." The rest of the movie is much like this.)The mcguffin is a music box containing the soul of Radu's true love, the sorceress Stephanie, entrapped there by Victor. It was lost half a millennium ago but has recently been rediscovered. It falls into Lynne's hands. Every time she opens it, she's possessed by Stephanie; then, when it's closed, she reverts, wondering what happened.There's much more. Dean Floca, the dwarf with a dungeon. His dotter Draguta, totally babeulicious chatting with Rusty via videocam but sporting a hideous hunchback in real life. Better than the Kama Sutra, the Codex Eroticon, which "can blow a chick's mind". The machine that keeps disembodied heads alive. The tall, gawky student who once kissed another guy while drunk and can't live it down. The horses with the odd reaction to the word "Razvan". Much of this is throwaway stuff, but a lot of it actually advances the plot.Really, the story is way more complex that you'd ever expect for something played as broadly as this — and it's played VERY broadly — but it all hangs together. Not a millisecond of it can be taken even remotely seriously, of course, but the audience is all in on the joke, and the writers (Patrick Casey and Joshua "Worm" Miller) and directors (David and Scott Hillenbrand) make it work.Objectively, this is a terrible movie. But subjectively, I got a real bang out of it. Of course, I happen to be partial to breasts the size of canteloupes, of which there's an abundance, and that helped. And I kept laffing out loud because I kept thinking "Wow, are they really trying to be THAT outrageous? Yeah, I guess they are."So I give it a 5. This is higher than where I've pegged Fantastic Mr. Fox (3) and 2012 (4) and a coin-flip with that other vampire movie in town. Does that mean that I'd rather see Transylmania than those others? Yes. Yes, I would. Heaven help me, yes, I would. YMMV. No guarantees.––––––*I don't recall that Catherine ever went in for the tight-black-leather look, but from now on I'm not going to be able to get that image out of my head.
