Directed by Ted Nicolaou
Starring Anders Hove, Irina Movila, Laura Tate, Michelle McBride, Ivan J. Rado, Michael Watson and Angus Scrimm
Are you ready, kids? Are you ready for Radu?
Last week, I took an in-depth look at Full Moon Features' storied (ok, by me) [i]Puppet Master[/i] franchise. That series is pretty much Charles Band's combined meal ticket and his kids' college tuitions, but it would surprise some of you normals out there to learn that Blade, Tunneler, Leech Woman etc. weren't the only bona-fide franchise that Full Moon boasted to its name. Subspecies is a very different kind of vampire flick, one that combines Tolkien-esque sword and cheesy horror into something wholly unique. It's also got Greenland-born-and-bred Anders Hove as a way-out-there vampire that had to have been a welcome change back in 1991 when this movie was released...to say nothing of now, now that we're just starting to exit the Twilight school of sparkly romantic vampires. And, by proxy, the True Blood school of slightly edgier sparkly vampire stories with tits and gore. Alas, this movie was quite successful on video store shelves upon its release, and much like those wacky killer puppets, Charles Band and company started pumping out sequels.
Today, though, we're just looking at the first film in the series. I saw it way back in 1998 on some lonely Saturday afternoon, and remember thinking that it was awesome. Upon revisiting it, I can safely say that 15-year-old Me was correct. And that is what you call grade-A reporting.
One thing about Subspecies and its sequels is that these flicks have a very distinctive look. They were all directed by Ted Nicolaou, and he chose to shoot the films in Romania. This was nothing less than a stroke of genius, because (a) it lent the movie great atmosphere, what with all the ruined castles, leafy greens and fog that was present in the countryside, and (b) it was cheap, because they didn't have to build any of this stuff. We're quickly introduced to everything we need to know as far as the back story goes. The vampire king Vladislas (played by the incomparable Angus Scrimm of Tall Man fame) has some convoluted affairs that result in two sons: virtuous Stefan (Michael Watson) and Radu (the aforementioned Anders Hove). We have a struggle for power between good and evil that has gone on for centuries, and we're also gifted with the presence of Hove whose combination of overacting and occasionally incomprehensible accent gives us some fantastically funny material to work with. Trust me - MST3K this one with your friends and you're in for a great time.
Flash forward to the present day, where three young college friends are traveling to Romania to study...stuff. Lo and behold, one of the first people they meet is Stefan, and we get the opening bouts of romantic tension between Michelle (Laura Tate), the leader of the students, and Stefan the leader of wooden actors. Unfortunately, this guy is kind of the weak point of the flick, as he has about as much raw naked charisma as my left pinky finger. Fortunately, Tate is pretty good, although she was recast as the series wore on. More on that later.
Anyway, time for this King Arthur-esque plot to truly get rolling. See, there is this ancient artifact called the Bloodstone that Radu is after that holds the key to conquering the entire cosmos, or something. In order to gain control of it, he kills his father (presumably not before said father chastised his murderous son by yelling "BOYYYYYYYYYYY!"), and then makes it his mission to make Stefan's life miserable. As the college kids thumb around the Romanian countryside, Radu manages to turn two of them into vampires while Michelle becomes the focal point of the story. There's a broad sweeping romance between Stefan and Michelle, an epic climax, and a truly awesome side character in the vampire hunter Karl played by Ivan J. Rado who gives us the amazing gift of SHOTGUN SHELLS FILLED WITH ROSARY BEADS. That was some creative thinking, right there, and I award 10 cool points to the screenwriter who came up with it.
When you rented a movie like Subspecies in the early '90s, you knew what you were getting. But with the Full Moon name attached to it, you also knew that you were getting just a little bit more than that. For starters, the setting - much like the Bodega Bay Inn in the Puppet Master films - is a masterpiece of atmosphere. Again, every Full Moon movie was made on a Filet-o-Fish budget, but this movie definitely doesn't look it. But the thing about this flick, like all of Charles Band's pet projects, is that there's this tangible sense of FUN to the whole thing. I know that I harp on the differences between "THEN" and "NOW" in entertainment a lot, but that's the thing that's missing from, like, 95% of modern movies and television shows to me. Entertainment these days seems to be about anything but fun, and it's so refreshing to revisit these movies where everything was unapologetically simple with no hints of "well, yeah, this guy is KIND OF a dick, but he's got SOME endearing qualities even though he does all of these illegal things..." F**K that noise. Give me thickly accented vampires and rosary-loaded shotgun shells.
The other reason to see this movie lies in the people in front of and behind the camera. Yeah, you're not getting any Academy Award-winning performances, but everyone involved (especially Hove) went way above and beyond considering the kind of script we're dealing with here. Even Michael Watson as Stefan. I can't say that he didn't try; he's just as human black void of personality. As for the other side of film-making, this really was just a textbook example of A-B-C screenwriting, where everything made sense and escalated. For a goofy 1991 movie about vampires and ancient artifacts, that's an impressive feat.
*** 1/2 out of ****. It's a fun start to a fun series, and speaking of...it's easy to see why the Full Moon audience responded so strongly to this one and made Charles Band bankroll more of them. Seek out this box set if you've got the budget.
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