Entry Forty-Four: Subspecies (1991)

Subspecies (1991)

Dir: Ted Nicolaou

"The night has fangs"

 

After the collapse of his theatrical company Empire Pictures, Charles Band created the DTV label Full Moon, whose releases dominated video store shelves throughout the 1990s.  Tonight, I journey down into the Basement of Sleaze to view one of the most notable entries in the Full Moon catalog...

Two medieval history majors (Laura Mae Tate and Michelle McBride) travel to Transylvania to study an ancient fortress for their PHDs, meeting up with a Romanian exchange student (Irina Movila) on the way.  Since there are no hotels in the vicinity, they're granted permission to stay in the fortress itself, which OF COURSE was once used by Vlad "Dracula" Tepes as a bastion against the Turks.  Lurking in a nearby dilapidated castle is vampire Radu (Anders Hove, Nymphomaniac), who is obsessed with an ancient artifact called the Bloodstone (it looks like a piece of DOTS candy), and has the ability to create the diminutive title creatures from drops of his blood.  Caught out in the woods at night, our bevy of brainy beauties are set upon by Radu and the subspecies, but are rescued by hunky good-guy vamp Stefan (Michael Watson), but not before Radu manages to slice the arm of McBride.  As it turns out, Radu and Stefan are brothers, fighting over possession of the Bloodstone; whoever holds it is recognized as "king of the vampires."  While the girls plan to attend a local festival, Stefan and an elderly vampire hunter make plans to end Radu with a rifle filled with wooden bullets (the one genuinely clever idea in the script).  As the festival unfolds, Stefan and Tate fall in love, Radu kidnaps Movila and McBride dies from the wound Radu inflicted upon her.  After Tate rescues the delightfully-disrobed Movila, she is captured by Radu, who prepares to make her his bride with the help of the risen McBride and now-infected Movila.  Stefan shows up with his vampire hunter buddy, who kills the shit out of McBride with the wooden bullets, and Stefan engages in a sword fight with Radu, while Tate stakes the vampiric Movila.  Stefan dispatches Radu, claims the Bloodstone, and takes the now-vampiric Tate as his bride.

As with several other Full Moon features, this (really dumb) movie was filmed at Band's real-life castle home in Romania.  The script (excluding the aforementioned wooden bullets) is a boring pastiche of vampire movie cliches and the performances never rise above the "serviceable" level.  Prior to this, director Nicolaou was best known for making Clive Barker adaptations for New World which were so awful that they inspired Barker to direct Hellraiser himself.  This movie imitates (badly) several scenes from the classic Nosferatu.  On the plus side, the Radu makeup effects by Greg Cannom are decent and obviously inspired similar effects on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series, and the stop-motion subspecies effects by Dave Allen (Flesh Gordon, Star Wars, Laserblast) are excellent.  The score is alright, too.  This is really only worth watching if you're a fan of Allen (and you should be, even if he is the original designer of the frustratingly-difficult boss monster at the end of the cantina level in Super Star Wars).