Corrected entry: In the scene where the viscous fluid surrounding the syringe is used against the grating to create an escape route, the fluid (acid?) acts faster than anything on Earth, dissolving the grate in a second or two only, but it doesn't seem to release any toxic vapours from the reaction as shown by the unaffected actors.
Corrected entry: Friar, so far as this poster knows, is a term used to denote male members of the Catholic Franciscan Order - monks. Carl's making a distinction between the two is incorrect. It's possible he's trying to state that he hasn't taken his final vows yet (which would make sense, as he has no tonsure), but in that case he wouldn't be called Friar, and he'd still be bound to the same vows as a monk (as long as he dressed/acted/considered himself a member he'd have to act like one - it's part of the training).
Correction: Monks were known as 'Brother' and the head monk as 'Father'. They were attached to a monastery, and had to stay there, taking vows of chastity and poverty. Friars, on the other hand, would travel around certain areas, making 'house calls', if you will. They were allowed more licence than Brothers and Fathers, and were allowed to drink, feast and have fun with the women (not officially allowed to, of course, but the church didn't exactly frown upon it).
Corrected entry: In the scene where the friar crosses the bridge and strikes in front of him he is unaffected. However water is a great conductor of electricity and he would surely have been electrocuted.
Correction: Contrary to popular belief, water is only a great conductor of electricity if it has a salts dissolved in it. Pure water, i.e rain water, is a poor conductor of electricity. Considering the fact that the rain would only form puddles, and not a continuous waterway, at most the friar would have felt a slight zap or tingle, nothing serious.
Corrected entry: In the scene where the vampire brides first attack the village, Van Helsing shoots ones wings full of holes, but her flight is uninterrupted. Surely she would have lost altitude or crashed, whilst her wings healed.
Correction: Dracula's wives were beasts with powers granted by the Devil. Since they can ignore gravity while walking on walls and ceilings, it's not to great of a stretch to say that her flight was not entirely dependent on the integrity of the wings.
Corrected entry: In the scene where the syringe containing the werewolf antivenom is held in the viscous liquid, surely the liquid which is shown to be more than highly corrosive, (by the way in which it chewed a hole in the metal grating) would have dissolved the metallic syringe parts, even if it left the glass component undamaged.
Correction: The metal bits looked like gold to me, and gold reacts with nothing except for mercury.
Corrected entry: When Van Helsing and Carl first arrive in Transylvania, we see a shot of Anna planting her feet on the well and talking to VH and Carl. On her right leg, tucked under the laces of her boot, is a white-handled knife. Later, when she takes Van Helsing to her house and is loading up on weapons to hunt Dracula, we see her pick the same knife up off a table and slide it into her boot - where it should already have been.
Correction: Anna pulls the knife out to slash at one of the Brides who is carrying her off. The Bride drops Anna onto the roof and Anna loses the knife as she falls. She probably has a matching knife back at the house and so just replaces the one she lost when she gets home.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Kate Beckinsale closes the window she recognizes the wolfman's wet footprints on the floor. A few seconds later, in another shot, the footprints are gone.
Correction: The camera doesn't pan over that same section of the floor again. It looks behind Anna, it looks around the corner and it looks several feet in front of where she stops, but not over that same patch of ground. And we see the wolfman has climbed on top of the cases so his prints would probably not be anywhere on the floor except where he walked from window to case.
Corrected entry: In the middle of the film, our heroes travel from Transylvania back to the Vatican, which is shown on a nice map representation. The thing is that the map states that the Carpathian mountain range is to the South of Transylvania (wrong, since it is to the North, though a bit reaches in to the left side of Romania) and that Budapest (and Hungary) is not to the Southwest but to the Northwest. At least they could've bought a map of Central Eastern Europe for a film with such a big budget.
Correction: The map doesn't have the cardinal directions written on it--the camera shot might imply those directions as the line is shown travelling toward the bottom of the screen, but there is no S or N to mark which way is north or south. The map could be twisted so that North is on the left of the screen, or even to the bottom.
Corrected entry: When Van Helsing tries to hide the monster from Dracula, he uses two coaches: one is empty to deceive the vampires. When the coach with the monster departs, Van Helsing is actually there. This is the proof that both coaches start from the same location. But when the empty coach falls into the canyon and Van Helsing rides on with the horses, only a bit later the second coach comes through the forest. But there was obviously only one bridge over the canyon and it would have taken a long time to ride around it.
Correction: There could easily have been another bridge across the ravine, to the left of Van Helsing's path, behind the camera.
Corrected entry: In the Masquerade ball scene, VH sends Carl down into the ballroom to push the fire-breather into Dracula. A minute or so later, VH and Anna make their escape, and they find Carl in the next room. There is no way Carl could have got back upstairs and into that room in the time it took VH to get there.
Correction: There was plenty of time. VH and Anna stood on the balcony for quite a while as Dracula talked to them, then Frankenstein's Monster was wheeled through the ballroom reciting the 23rd Psalm (modified), then the other vampires made evil faces at them, THEN they ran to the room where they met up with Carl. Carl was probably running the whole time he was offscreen.
Corrected entry: In the scene where the brides of Dracula and Dracula are hanging upside down from the ceiling, their hair is obviously hanging down the right way, but not the jewelry on the brides. You can see the necklace on one of the brides laying flat on her neck and chest, when it should be dangling down towards her head.
Correction: The necklace is a rather stiff beaded thing--her earrings are going in the proper direction, so I assumed that the beaded necklace had simply stacked itself so that it stood 'upright'--ie, away from gravity. I have a similar necklace, and it can be done (the beads are so tight on the string it acts almost like blocks and can stand upright in a sort of tower). The director probably had to force it to stand up to keep the big dangly bits hanging on the bottom from obstructing the actress' mouth and face, but it can happen naturally.
Corrected entry: The river depicted in the film (and also appearing on some of the film's posters) is actually not so much in Transylvania or Romania for that matter. It is the Danube and what is depicted is how the bridges of Budapest, capitol of Hungary, cross over it as viewed from the Gellert hill. On one particular poster of the film, the one with a greenish tone featuring Van Helsing and Anne, actually has the Hungarian Parliament and the famous Chain Bridge between the two characters in the background.
Correction: A big part of the movie takes place in Budapest.
Corrected entry: When the trio pass through the "magic mirror" to Dracula's Castle, it is snowing and the ground is covered in snow. A scene or two later, they are outside the castle in a major thunderstorm. Does Romanian weather change that drastically?
Correction: Bram Stoker's vampires, especially Dracula, have the ability to control the weather. If he needed it to storm, so be it.
Corrected entry: Van Helsing became a werewolf and his clothes were torn when he transformed. So how come when he and the Friar are at Anna's funeral he has the exact same clothes on that were torn in the first place?
Correction: He took off his coat and hat before the transformation, and more than likely had spare pants and shirts stowed with his gear. Considering his line of work, he might be used to damaging or destroying clothes during his battles, so he would travel with extras, just in case.
Corrected entry: At the beginning of the film wasn't Dr Frankenstein's monster able to break free of his hefty restraints and hurl the table he'd been lying on at Dracula so hard it knocked him through the fireplace? Funny how when he's captured later on he doesn't use this strength to free himself despite the number of opportunities he has.
Correction: The restraints in the opening of the movie look like they're made of leather which can easily be broken (by a creature of his size). Later on he can't break free from the block of ice because his arms and legs are immobile. And later on top of the tower, he's being restrained by metal beams that have bolts in them. It would make sense for Dracula to use something stronger after seeing how the creature easily escaped before.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Van Helsing first meets Dracula and tries to pierce his heart with a stake, he stabs the right side of his chest whereas the heart is on the left. Even though it says Dracula has no heart, you'd still think he'd try to stab the correct side.
Correction: No, he doesn't. He stabs him in the general area of where his heart should be.
Correction: Contrary to common belief, the heart is not on the left side of the chest. It's in the middle of the chest, between the lungs, only partly protruding to the left. Van Helsing stabs Dracula in the middle of his chest.
Corrected entry: If Dracula knew the only way he could be killed was by a werewolf, why wouldn't he kill all the werewolves instead of using them and taking the chance one might kill him one day? We already found out from Anna that they had tried every means to kill Dracula so obviously there wasn't a real need to use the werewolves to do his bidding. He could have done anything a werewolf could do by himself, or send out one of his wives.
Correction: Werewolves are great hunters and none of them had a reason to attack Dracula nor even knew that they were the only thing that could kill him. If he had tried to kill all of them, the werewolves would surely have had their revenge and killed him too.
Corrected entry: When Van Helsing and Anna originally find the icy portal into Dracula's secret lair, Van Helsing forces his hand through and then pulls it back through. His hand is covered in snow as if it were storming worse than a Canadian winter. However, when Van Helsing and Anna actually cross through the portal they are in the midst of a thunder storm.
Correction: They do encounter a thunderstorm at the old Frankenstein castle, and later it does storm at Dracula's castle, but when they first cross through the portal it IS snowing.
Corrected entry: At the end, when VH has set fire to the pyre, there is only about 2-3 feet between the pyre and the vegetation around it. With a fire that big, surely the radiant heat would catch all this on fire. And where is the smoke?
Correction: There is smoke present in this scene. The smoke is what drifts upward and forms the vision of Anna's face in the sky.
Corrected entry: How did Van Helsing know that the werewolf was Anna's brother? She never told him.
Correction: Van Helsing overheard some of the conversation that the two had before Anna's brother reverted to his werewolf form.
Correction: It's never mentioned what the liquid actually is, therefore we have no idea if it should release toxic vapours or not.