The Plot
Somehow, every member of this group of friends -- apparently in college since 2003 -- decides to go study abroad in Romania for a semester. This suits Rusty just fine, as he's been cyber-sexing a Romanian lady named Draguta (Irena A. Hoffman) for months, and she just happens to live within walking distance of the school they'll be attending: Razvan University.
But Razvan has a dark history. Centuries ago, the sadistic vampire Radu ruled the area with the aid of his sorceress girlfriend Stephania until noted vampire hunter Van Sloan trapped her soul in a music box, which promptly fell into a river. Since then, Radu has been searching for the box, eager to restore his mistress's soul to her (now decomposed) body.
Oren Skoog and Irena Hoffman in 'Transylvania'.
© Full Circle ReleasingAs luck would have it, Newmar finds the music box and gives it to Lynne, who becomes possessed by Stephania when the box opens, but somehow goes back to normal when it's closed. This of course leads to a myriad of misunderstandings and wacky hijinks that are compounded by the fact that Radu looks exactly like Rusty, Cliff is mistaken as a vampire hunter by Van Sloan descendant Teodora (Musetta Vander), Newmar thinks that Lynne's erratic behavior is due to a magical Kama Sutra-like ancient sex text and Rusty is trying to make the deformed Draguta think he likes her to avoid the wrath of her father -- who, by the way, is a mad scientist who wants to use Lia's body parts to fix his hunchbacked daughter. Got it? No? It still doesn't matter.
The End Result
Transylmania is stupid. It knows it's stupid, and stupid can be funny, but Transylmania is not. Its humor is the broadest of broad -- fart jokes, pratfalls, vomiting, pot gags, sex gags, making fun of the deformed, Tourette's mockery, crude gay stereotypes -- with recycled jokes that weren't all that funny the first hundred times they were used in movies that predate it. Writers Miller and Patrick Casey even have the gall to pull out this old bit:
Cliff: Call me a nurse.Really??? Certain scenes were so poorly constructed and executed, I couldn't even tell if they were supposed to be jokes. (Which reminds me of a joke: How do I feel about the cast's execution? I'm all for it. Ba-dum-chhh! Now give me a paycheck, Full Circle Releasing.) Essentially, it's a poor man's American Pie with a plot driven by Three's Company "misunderstandings" and a nominal vampire element that could've been ripe for spoofing but ends up being used to little effect.
Teodora: OK, you're a nurse.
Oren Skoog in 'Transylvania'.
© Full Circle ReleasingThe acting is amateurish and over the top, which is pretty much what's called for with such ridiculous content, but there's no denying that everything about this project -- from the cast to the production value (cheesy animated opening anyone?) to the pedestrian direction and special effects -- screams straight-to-video. Despite the sheer ineptitude of the film, however, the truly staggering fact about its wide release is that, with the same writers, directors and cast as the first two Dorm Daze flicks, the studios knew exactly what they were getting. Someone actually had to say, "These folks are ready for prime time!"
Sure, this level of "entertainment" is OK for DVD, but I thought that Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans killed the viability of this lowbrow, unfunny garbage in 2008. That said, if you enjoyed those movies, you should find Transylmania a laugh riot...and you should also be preparing to graduate the 4th grade.
