10 Films You Won't Believe Were Released At Christmas

Release Date: December 22, 2000

You may have gathered that this is a modern rehashing/ trashing of Bram Stoker’s tale, but the filmmakers have seen Dracula VS Frankenstein (1971) and realized the difficulties in bringing the count into the present, especially when he’s portrayed by a stockbroker in a bad make-up job.

So they’ve cast a hip, good-looking actor (well, Gerard Butler), ditched the cape and thrown in plenty of blood and special effects. Defeated by Van Helsing over a century ago, and sealed in the Professor’s basement ever since, the vampire’s remains are stolen by comic book villains searching for treasure, Dracula gets free etc. Story may not be the film’s strongest suit, but if you’ve ever wanted to see the Prince of Darkness reduced to pimping for Virgin Records, you’re in the right place.

Desperate (and we do mean desperate) to launch itself in America, Virgin effectively becomes an unbilled character in the movie, though the shameless plugs aren’t limited to a few close-ups of one of its stores. Not only is our virtuous heroine a shelf-stacking employee, which allows her to afford an aircraft hangar-sized apartment, but did we mention her name is Mary? Yes, they link ‘Virgin’ and ‘Mary’, so you can see why it was released it at Christmas.