That hat, the look of the lead female character and "Dracula", the wolf man and that darn flying mananangal......is Just me or is the movie Van Hellsing a tad too much like Vampire Hunter D?

(Interestingly , I wasn't the first to notice the similarity. My father was the one who pointed it out . After I forced him to watched VHD2, he saw the parallelism immediately ... XD)

Actually the movie is based on the more traditional story of VAN HELSING(note that there is only one "L" in Helsing) who at the time was the renouned Vampire Hunter in Bram Stoker's Dracula. If anything, Bram's character is the original Helsing, in which anime's like Hellsing and Vampire Hunter D were based upon.

The wolfman was part of Stoker's concept of having "animal men" as personal assistants or servants of Dracula. So it gave rise to many stories of lycanthrops as either slaves of vampires or their bitter enemies (Thus the roleplaying game from White Wolf's Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Vampire: The Masquerade came into being-- and of course, the movie Underworld).

As for the manananggal part, well, i guess every movie producer likes a good catchy movie monster instead of the old traditional bat-man (which, btw, in the movie "Bram Stoker's Dracula" was superbly scary- to me perhaps). --;

For more Bram Stoker's Van Helsing sources check out these links:

The Journal of Van Helsing
Dracula the Undead: An extract from the novel

Check out the official Van Helsing the movie

Added note: I havent seen the movie yet, but i think the woman you saw in the trailer would probably be Miss Harker, Van Helsing's partner in tracking down Dracula. It's the same woman you saw in the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, who was at the time, a vampire.

Yowzer!


B)

hahaha .... I know .... but I read the book too .... just forgot her name...

and I'm looking more on the character design similarities or set designs ..... --; it's really freakish ..... XD