JAKKS Pacific | Vintage Action Figures

Hugh Jackman IS Van Helsing!

I actually found today’s action figure buried at the bottom of a toy box on a market stall some months ago, but have been waiting for the countdown to Halloween before posting him here. I was pretty pleased to find the companion figure to the Richard Roxburgh as Count Dracula we looked at last Halloween – the vampire’s arch-nemesis himself Gabriel Van Helsing, as played by Hugh Jackman in Stephen Sommers’ steampunk homage to the Universal Horror Monster films from the 1930s and 40s, Van Helsing.

Richard Roxburgh as Count Dracula in ‘Van Helsing’

With the month of October now well under way, let’s start the countdown to Halloween with the first post in a series dedicated to monsters and ghouls, with a few slayers thrown in too! Today’s action figure is a fresh lucky find that I picked up only yesterday in a mixed box of random toys on a market stall in Rome. Some years need to elapse before this becomes truly vintage, of course, but it’s such a fun figure that it merits its own review now!

Whilst Stephen Sommers’ 2004 action-movie-meets-horror-film Van Helsing starring Hugh Jackman as Gabriel Van Helsing may have divided critics, I thought it was a highly enjoyable if camp homage to some of my favourite all time movies – the Universal Horror Monster films from the 1930s and 40s. One of the high points of the film is certainly the amazingly versatile Richard Roxburgh’s performance as an extremely dapper Count Dracula.

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