Director: Patrick Lussier
Cast: Jason Scott lee, Jason London, Craig Scheffer

Not a single cast member from the Wes Craven-presented Dracula 2000 returns for Dracula II: Ascension, the first of two straight-to-video sequels, and who can blame them? Unlike D2K, which was fun in a pure genre way, Ascension is only occasionally fun in a really-bad-movie sorta way.

Picking up where D2K ended with the count burnt to a crisp on a neon crucifix, Ascension wheels the charred, crispy body of the vampire into a morgue, where the enterprising workers steal the corpse, sensing an opportunity to make some money. They take it to the conveniently vacant and isolated mansion of their professor, Craig Sheffer, who is confined to a wheelchair because of
cerebral palsy and has his left hand drawn up and turned in a way that looks like he’s constantly playing charades and no one has yet guessed “hieroglyphics.”

Sheffer – like Stephen Hawking without the RoboVoice and the charisma – believes the key to his cellular regeneration lies within the blood of Dracula, so he has his students revive the body by literally giving him a bloodbath. It works, and the first to die is former Playboy Playmate of the Year Brande Roderick, who briefly comes back as cinema’s only vampire to sport matching red bra and panties from Victoria’s Secret semi-annual lingerie sale. Eventually dying (but not soon enough) is the token black guy who, after sprouting fangs, exclaims with no irony, “I got the hooyah power in me!”

Meanwhile, the increasingly oval-faced Jason Scott Lee tracks them down. He’s a priest-***censored*** vampire hunter, as quick with the scythe as he is with the scripture, and he is as intent on saving souls as he is severing heads. Oh, and what of Dracula? He’s tied up for nearly the entire movie, freed of his chains only at the end to set up Dracula III. Maybe that one will have more bite.