Radu
(Anders Hove) kills his own father, Vladislav (Angus Scrimm), the king of the
vampires because he wants to possess the magical “bloodstone”. (It looks like a half-melted snow cone.) Meanwhile, a couple of American college
students studying folklore wind up in Radu’s castle. As Radu tries to put the bite on the girls,
his half-brother Stefan (Michael Watson) becomes smitten with Michele (Laura
Tate) and tries to protect her from being turned into a bloodsucker.
The
opening scene where Scrimm locks Hove in a cage, holds promise. Hove cuts off his own fingertips and the
severed digits transform into red-colored minions (who resemble a mash-up of the
monsters from The Gate and MUSCLE wrestling figures) who help him escape. Dave Allen’s stop-motion animation is quite good,
but unfortunately, we don’t see enough of these “Subspecies” dudes throughout
the rest of the movie to make it worthwhile.
Directed
by Ted (Terrorvision) Nicolaou, Subspecies is a slow moving, ponderous, and
dull vampire flick. After the decent
opening scene, nothing of interest really happens. Even once the girls start being turned into
vampires, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before, or particularly want to see
again. The romance stuff is almost as
bad as a Twilight movie as you’re forced to suffer through a lot of scenes of
pasty-faced people gazing longingly at each other. It also doesn’t help when Watson and Tate
have absolutely no chemistry together.
Another
debit is the character of Radu. As
played by Hove, he feels like an interchangeable vampire villain. At least Greg Cannom’s make-up, which makes Hove
sort of look like a cross between Nosferatu and a Lost Boy, is pretty
good. We also get an okay amount of skin
and one or two decent gory bits, but it’s nothing especially memorable.
The
frustrating ending leaves things wide open for a sequel (of which there were
three).
AKA: Subspecies:
In the Twilight. AKA: Vampiri.
I rather enjoyed this one and the sequels
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