DURING a time in history when the supernatural still seemed as conceivable as the everyday, when storytellers supplied imaginative reasons for the unexplained and when mythic creatures still crept by nightthere was a single figure fighting the forces of darkness: Van Helsing.

Gabriel Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) is a man cursed with a past he cannot recall and driven by a mission he cannot deny. Charged by a secret organisation to seek out and defeat evil the world over, his efforts to rid the world of its nightmarish creatures have been rewarded with the title that now follows him: murderer.

Van Helsing roams the globe as an outcast, a fugitive, a loner, himself hunted by those who don't understand the true nature of his calling.

When dispatched to the shadowy world of Transylvania, Van Helsing finds a land still mired in its past, and where legendary creatures of darkness come to life. It's a place ruled over by the evil, seductive and undefeatable vampire, Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh) - and it is Dracula that Van Helsing has been sent to terminate.

Anna Valerious (Kate Beckinsale) is one of the last of a powerful royal family, now nearly annihilated by Dracula. A fearless hunter in her own right, Anna is bent on avenging her ancestors and ending an ancient curse by killing the vampire.

Joined by a common foe, Van Helsing and Anna set out to destroy Dracula along with his empire of fear. But in challenging an enemy who never dies, Van Helsing uncovers a secret he never imagined and comes face-to-face with the unresolved mysteries of his own enshrouded past.

Following the phenomenal success of both The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, writer/director Stephen Sommers was casting around for a change of pace.

He says: "People had been kidding me, saying, Hey, you did The Mummy, so when are you going to do Dracula?' But that seemed limiting and already done. So I was thinking that it would be cool if all of the classic Universal monsters could be brought together somehow."

That idea stayed with Sommers and drove him to re-examine the classic monsters from the studio's canon - the cinematic hallmark which had helped turn Universal Studios into a Hollywood leader more than seven decades ago.

"What I tend to do is look at these myths and then try to explain them. For instance, we know we can't see Dracula's reflection, so my natural curiosity as a filmmaker asks: Why?' If the mythology doesn't provide an answer, then I supply one of my own.

"I realised that Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula and The Wolf Man could all exist in the same world - the setting for all of their legends is Eastern Europe around the same time. Then I would come across something else, like when I read that werewolves were supposedly the guardians of vampires during the day. I started to be really excited by the potential of a film that could include all of these ideas and storylines."

Hugh Jackman, best known for playing Wolverine in the X-Men movies, takes the title role in Van Helsing. "It was a rare opportunity to be in a project like this. As soon as I read it, I could visualise it strongly and I thought I could really bring something to the role," says Jackman. "I always wanted to do a big action movie like Errol Flynn and this project had that huge, epic, action-adventure quality to it. It's a boyhood dream of mine to be in a movie like this, with such scope."

He adds: "Van Helsing is a reluctant hero. He's very much the outsider, carrying out solitary missions for a secret worldwide organisation. When it comes to battling monsters, this is what he was born to do.

"He's got a great gift for it. When he's in a battle situation, everything just becomes calm and still - fear doesn't enter into the equation.

"In his quest to find Dracula, he's hoping to find a key to his past - hopefully put the jigsaw of his life together. Then he comes in contact with a woman who gets under his skin."

The filmmakers cast actress Kate Beckinsale as Anna Valerious, a gypsy princess and monster hunter in her own right. She says: "I love action movies with girls. I think it's unusual to find a role in an action-adventure where the girl actually has something to do. My character, Anna, has a real vendetta with Dracula.

"There's a whole family curse that's been going on for hundreds of years - unless she kills Dracula, her family will remain in purgatory forever. So the stakes are, needless to say, quite high for her."

l TAKING AIM: Hugh Jackman stars in Van Helsing. (Photos: UIP)