WES CRAVEN PRESENTS: DRACULA 2000 — turkey — Jonny Lee Miller, Gerard Butler, Justine Waddell, Christopher Plummer, Colleen Ann Fitzpatrick, Jennifer Esposito, Jeri Ryan, Omar Epps; rated R (violence, profanity, gore, sex, drugs, partial nudity, vulgarity); Carmike 12, Cottonwood Mall and Ritz 15 Theaters; Century Theatres 16; Cinemark Jordan Landing Theaters; Gateway 8 Cinemas; Loews Cineplex Midvalley and Trolley Square Mall Cinemas; Megaplex 17 at Jordan Commons.

Horror films with delusions of historical grandeur have to strain awfully hard these days to come up with fresh explanations for the origins of evil. Hasn't it all been done at least 10 times over? Well, as it turns out, no.

The doozy of an explanation offered by "Dracula 2000," a thudding, suspense-free montage of unshocking shock effects and more severed heads than toppled during the French Revolution, is that Dracula is actually the undead spirit of Judas Iscariot. Or something like that. Judas, you see, tried but failed to commit suicide (the rope broke) and thereafter became the father of the undead. The movie doesn't go into details of how these two villains are actually related.

The Judas connection is why the movie's rapidly expanding population of the undead, drooling and foaming and biting their way through the movie, are so terrified of silver(there are repeated shots of silver coins being scattered). It also gives the film, "presented" by Wes Craven and directed by Patrick Lussier, the excuse to throw in several warehouses full of tawdry Christian symbolism.

This version of the Dracula legend might be described as Dracula Meets Stigmata and They Fly to New Orleans via Hong Kong. That's because on top of all the Christian imagery (electrically illuminated crosses exploding into showers of sparks and such), the action sequences sometimes find the characters doing combat in the air. In barely two years, the airborne Hong Kong action-adventure antics that promised to refresh Western action-adventure movies have turned into a grating new cliche carelessly tossed into a picture (as it is here) to give it a hip kinetic gloss.

It's a little sad to see actors of the quality of Christopher Plummer and Jonny Lee Miller struggling straight-faced to dignify this sewage. Plummer plays Abraham Van Helsing, a 100-year-plus-old vampire slayer who keeps himself alive through leeches that have sucked on vampire blood (the leeches are the only scary element in the film). Miller is his assistant and surrogate son, Simon, who has been kept in the dark as to his boss' true occupation.

Justine Waddell is Van Helsing's estranged daughter, whose small quotient of vampire blood (through her father via the leeches) makes her the ultimate apple of Dracula's eye and an object of jealousy among his many female victims who, once liberated from human life, turn into foul-mouthed, bloodthirsty sex fiends .

The clunking, fill-in-the-blanks screenplay portrays Dracula as irresistible to women the moment he walks into a room . Gerard Butler, the pale, glowering actor clad in chi-chi black duds, who plays him, radiates a certain suave self-assurance, but he is no head-turner.

A continuing annoyance is the movie's promotion of Virgin megastores. Two of the characters work in one such store, and even when they're off the job they wear shirts with the Virgin logo prominently displayed.

"Wes Craven Presents: Dracula 2000" is rated R for gruesome violence (including graphic vampire attacks), scattered strong profanity, graphic gore, simulated sex, drug use, partial female nudity and use of crude sexual slang. Running time: 99 minutes.