The Adventures of Young Van Helsing

Watched June 15, 2017

2004
Starring: Keith Jordan, Ned Narang, Joe Zaso

1905: The real Van Helsing (Ken Mitzkovitz) and his errand boy Aki (Freddie Sabaugh) are looking for relics together. Up pops Simon Magus (Joe Zaso), an arch-angel. He tries to kill Van Helsing but the Aki throws Van Helsing a magical scepter. Van Helsing uses the magical scepter to stab Simon Magus, seemingly destroying him.

Jump to a present day High School. Ordinary teen Michael Harris (Keith Jordan) is in chemistry class messing around with the equipment. He's bullied by Karl, who is dating the girl that Michael has a crush on. Karl punches Michael a bunch in the hall until one of the teachers stops it and tells Michael he's looking forward to hearing his band play the dance at the end of the week.

Meanwhile Professor Arad (Ned Narang) is at a dig site where they have found the remains of Simon Magus. One of the interns touches the remains, this lets the leftovers bits of Simon Magus suck the power from the intern and it brings Simon Magus back into being. Simon then kills everyone at the site, except for Prof. Arad and his dull personal assistant. After this terrible occurrence, the Professor  and his assistant go back to London to look for something in the warehouse that stores the ark of the covenant. They are looking for the scepter that Van Helsing used to destroy Simon Magus before, but it's missing from it's assigned spot in storage. It turns out it was sent a long time ago to Michael's dad. But it turns out that Michael's friend found it when he was a kid and was illegally opening mail at the post office where his dad worked. Michael's friend as a kid stole the scepter and buried it in the woods.

Crazy Prof. Arad comes to Michael's house where he lives with his Aunt Molly. The Professor is there to explain to Michael about his Van Helsing heritage.

 Earlier that day, two of Michael's schoolmates where driving to school when they ran into Simon Magus. Simon killed the driver and looked into the girls mind to try to find info about the scepter. This leaves her in a coma. She's the best friend of the the girl who Michael has a crush on. Michael drives past the same road where the two teens were attacked by Simon and he drives over a weird leftover bit of Simon. He picks up a piece of it and it has a weird property of being ever burning. Michael takes this weird bit to the chemistry lab where his crush helps him try to figure out what it is.

Michael's crush comes over to his house to explain what she found out about the mystery substance, then Simon show up and tries to kill them all. Michael is there with the Professor and a couple of his friends then manage to make it to Michael's car and take off, but Simon is close behind. They run into Karl, which forces their car off the road and it explodes. It seems that Simon may be burned in the car explosion, but he had brain sucked the friend of Michael's to discover where the scepter is buried. The group manages to find the buried part of the scepter and stab Simon.

Michael and his friends now have a name for their band, the Van Helsings. They play the school dance. Karl and his girlfriend rock out together, Michael never had a chance. The Van Helsings play a Creed style rock, and an entire song is played completely.

 The very end is the crazy Prof. Arad storing the scepter only to find a werewolf has escaped from the storage warehouse, hinting at another young Van Helsing adventure to come. I'm not surprised that this didn't kick off an entire series of young Van Helsing adventures as this one is terrible. It's very slow with terrible acting and it doesn't seem like Michael has any of the Van Helsing spirit in him at all. He just wants to play with his awful band. At the beginning, the assistant to the real Van Helsing is a white boy in brown face, which is a terrible choice for a movie made in the early 2000's. I'm sure this movie was made on the cheap, but who funded it anyway. Not fun in a bad movie way, just a bummer.