Subspecies (1991)

Director: Ted Nicolaou

Screenplay: Jackson Barr and David Pabian

Cast: Angus Scrimm as King Vladislav; Anders Hove as Radu; Irina Movila as Mara; Laura Mae Tate as Michelle; Michelle McBride as Lillian; Ivan J. Rado as Karl; Mara Grigore as Rosa; Adrian Vâlcu as Ian

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

This is a case where my tastes do not appreciate Subspecies being what it is. It offers something initially promising for me before we even start the film properly, which does disappoint once it is clear Subspecies will not to it. Angus Scrimm, of the Phantasm franchise, is introduced in a puffy white wig as a vampire lord, not impressed by the prescience of his Orlok-looking older son Radu (Anders Hove) and telling him he cannot have the bloodstone, a McGuffin. Before Radu can even have his “your time is over old man” speech, Scrimm wisely kept a lever by his throne to drop cages on people, but Radu can break his own fingers off and summon stop motion red demon imps from them to win the argument. That certainly opens a film well on a pure entertainment level.

Scrimm is sadly not in the film after this, though considering horror and exploitation cinema’s history of selling themselves on known actors barely in the productions, this is less a concern. What this is, from Full Moon Pictures, is the enticing idea of an American-Romanian co-production-. For a vampire film, in which two female American students of mythology and folklore have come to the country, meeting a locale female friend, to study for a paper, this is on paper a masterstroke in actually setting a Dracula or vampire film in Romania, the old Slavic world used for this folklore entity considering Dracula was said to occupy Transylvania.

And the film, as a low budget production, is helped so much here by this. There is lore, which is something to realize with Full Moon between this franchise and the Puppet Master one, in which vampires fought off invading Turks in the past and thus, with a peace treaty and a bloodstone involved, have not attached any of the locales in the centuries past, which is actually an interesting concept to consider even if this is set in the then-modern day. The world onscreen, the rural Romania which is clinging to its past in the building choices, is distinct and would have been an incredible advantage if this had been closer to what I would have preferred over what you get – a horror film made in Romania made by Romanians, even if this had been an American film with a largely American creative team, in terms of tone and leaning on the cultural background. Even its lore involving this treaty, with someone, a Radu, is going to ignore this peace between moral and immortal, and a bloodstone which is a stone with the infinite blood of saints within it, sounds like it could have had layers even if it had stayed a lurid b-movie vampire film.  Even as a traditional vampire plot, Radu taking interested in these women’s pale necks, and a good younger vampire brother who is falling in love with one of them, is all stuff that could have worked, especially as there are quirks here, the stop motion demon imps, which are eccentric and are charming in their existence.

The location choice does add a personality. Something is here which is atmospheric inherently in the gothic Eastern European locations, and little touches shooting rosary beads into vampires’ hearts, adds a slither of individuality to the proceedings. The problem is simply, for me, how very conventional this is in wishing to tell an obvious story without anything unpredictable by its conclusion – bad vampire versus good = conflict in the end involving stakes being waved about and some female characters turned into vampires. Even in terms of decades which have passed since Bela Lugosi’s 1931 Dracula or those after, this has not really decided to do more beyond those original films. There is a salacious side, of victimized sensuality, which is slight but, mingling with the gore, might put some off, but even this is proceeding extremes from Jess Franco who took his own very idiosyncratic takes on these vampires stories. Vampires have been in space or come from it, been in ballet musical interpretations, and knowing when this was released, had a Francis Ford Coppola Dracula film made in 1992 which managed a year after Subspecies, even as a huge Hollywood film with tie-in videogames, to be gorier, more sexually explicit, more resplendent in production and mood, and even more out there and unpredictable in its content, in terms of tone, production style or idiosyncratic choices like Tom Waits as a maniac Renfield.

Neither is this cheesy enough – barring the realization even vampires can be confounded by a net – which does not help too, and considering the huge virtue its Romanian setting is in look and potential experience, the local Romanians are just depicted as mostly backwards and superstitious extras, that undercut the point of this creative decision. There will be some who will like Subspecies, but considering even by this point a vampire film shot in someone’s backyard as a shot-on-video film would have provided more idiosyncrasies for me to enjoy, even just a shot-on-video vampire film like Todd Sheets’ Dominion (1992) also released a year after, there was a need for Subspecies to have taken more risks, or for a greater amount of personality here, just make the obvious plot structures and conventions here.