The summer movie season is launched with an exciting horror spectacle that combines Frankenstein, Dracula, and Biblical lore with elements of the James Bond series. Essentially a vampire-hunting chronicle, Van Helsing offers crisp special effects and lightening-quick editing, plus the campy one-liners we've come to expect from warm-weather blockbusters.

It's easy to sniff at such an entertaining jumble, to decry the glibness with which studio films try to cover every base. But that's what a popcorn flick has to do, and when it's done reasonably well there's no shame in tipping your hat. As he did in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, writer-director Stephen Sommers scrambles classic horror yarns into something both familiar and current -- and, yes, overblown and often silly. The title character appears in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula yet the true source material is every monster movie in Universal’s vault. 

A black-and-white prologue takes place in Transylvania in the year 1887. Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh) kills Dr. Frankenstein and tries to appropriate his creature for his own dark purposes. One year later, we see God's bounty hunter, Gabriel Van Helsing, trying to nab Dr. Jekyl's boorish alter ego in Notre Dame Cathedral. (A peek at Mr. Hyde's plumber's behind is a brief reminder of the film's jokiness.)  Armed with six-shooters, rotating handsaws, and a world-weary wit, Van Helsing captures his latest monster.

Next stop: a confessional at the Vatican where Van Helsing quarrels with a Cardinal. The James Bond parallels are blatant as he receives his assignment from the cleric (his "M") who oversees a multi-denominational religious league that is mankind's last bulwark against evil. A nerdy friar (David Wenham) -- the equivalent of Bond's "Q"-- equips him with high-tech gadgets and, with friar in tow, he's off on his next mission to Transylvania to protect the last surviving members of a Romanian royal family and slay Dracula.

Battling werewolves and Dracula's flying vampire brides, Hugh Jackman is relatively subdued, which is understandable for a hero claiming to seek "self-realization." The most wanted man in Europe, Van Helsing suffers from Catholic guilt; he's tormented by his violent past, even though he can't remember much about it. The mystery about his identity is solved and is bound up with Dracula's story. Dracula's paln to unleash his progeny on the world using Frankenstein as an energy source are thwarted after much special effects laden action. 

As Romanian princess Anna Valerious, Kate Beckinsale has one of the worst accents in recent memory, a flaw accentuated by the fact she’s given the weakest lines in the movie. Her raven-colored hair and heaving bosom are her best attributes, and the camp factor is unintentionally boosted whenever she’s on screen.

Thankfully, the comparatively long picture never lingers on anything. Highlights include a sequence when junior, bat-like vampires start picking off townspeople, letting you see what would have happened to Dorothy’s party if the monkeys in The Wizard of Oz had the benefit of today's technology. A Halloween ball in Budapest is pretty cool and an extended carriage chase is exhilarating.

Maybe because it's dealing with such familiar creatures and storylines, the effects are coherent and the action easy to follow. The serious parts of the story have some heft because they traffic in elemental themes:  medieval notions of salvation, Victorian science, enlightenment themes about creating life, and twentieth-century concerns about the apocalyptic demise of mankind. Crazy as it sounds, think of this monster entertainment as The Matrix meets Young Frankenstein meets Dr. No.  

(Released by Universal Pictures and rated "PG-13" for non-stop creature action, violence, frightening images and sensuality.)