In the year 3000, the deep space salvage ship Mother III locates the vanished starship Demeter in the Carpathian System. Captain Abraham Van Helsing and his crew composed of the blonde assistant Aurora Ash; the crippled navigator Arthur "The Professor" Holmwood, who believes that he is a genius; the strong and dumb Humvee; the intern Mina Murry; and the drug addicted 187, decide to claim the possession of Demeter. While exploring the spacecraft, they see a tape of fifty years ago of Captain Varna telling that he was locked in his cabin since his crew was acting weird after getting a cargo of coffins in Transylvania station. When 187 decides to search in the coffins for some possible hidden dope, he cuts his hand and his blood awakes Count Orlock, a.k.a. Count Dracula. When Aurora discloses who Dracula is, the survivors try to find a way to destroy the vampire.
A good movie could be made about the goings-on in the Demeter (the Russian ship that brings Count Dracula to England in Bram Stoker's novel), which could play out as a sort of Ur-Alien. Now, the latter doesn’t mean that it would perforce have to occur in space; it’s never a good idea to put an earthbound monster in orbit (1985’s Lifeforce kinda went there, though not all the way, with mixed but mostly good results).
According to AllMovie, Dracula 3000 "includes a stellar exploitation cast, including Casper Van Dien, Erika Eleniak, Coolio, Tommy "Tiny" Lister Jr., and a special guest appearance from Udo Kier." I can’t decide if the «stellar» is meant to be ironic or not; on the other hand, any appearance by Kier is bound to be special — not to say almost obligatory in a vampire movie.
If the revered German actor played the titular character, there might be hope yet for this movie; Kier, however, or anyone else for that matter, can’t play the titular character because the villain is not Dracula but Orlock (like the antagonist in Nosferatu only with an extra 'c').
An intergalactic salvage team finds a seemingly abandoned spaceship adrift in space. The salvage ship's crew consists of Captain Van Helsing (Van Dien), Arthur Holmwood (Grant Swanby) — called "Professor" despite being named after the character in the novel who is an aristocrat —, navigator and "intern" Mina Murr[a]y (Alexandra Kamp), "vice-captain" Aurora Ash (Erika Eleniak), Humvee (Lister), and 187 (Coolio).
To call this movie chauvinistic would be an understatement. It’s not so much that 187 tells Aurora that he would like to "ejaculate on [her] bazongas;" it’s that she’d probably enjoy that, considering that her character, more than being sexually objectified, turns out to be a literal sex object (a "pleasure-bot," to be exact).
