Thursday, October 18, 2018

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: SUBSPECIES 4: BLOODSTORM (1998) *


A young woman named Ana (Iona Abur) finds Michelle (Denice Duff) on the side of the road and brings her to see Dr. Niculescu (Mihai Dinvale).  As he tries to study Michelle’s condition, Radu (Anders Hove) awakens and begins his search for her.  Meanwhile, the good (bad) doctor is actually using her blood to turn himself into a bloodsucker and plans to finagle the precious bloodstone out of Radu's possession.

The all-around quality is down a notch or two from the other movies.  Say what you will about the previous installments, they at least had a modicum of atmosphere.  There are moments here that look like they came out of one of those cheap-o Wishmaster sequels.  The make-up on Radu isn’t very good either (at some points he looks like The Grim Reaper from Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey) and the other vampires look almost laughable in their pancake make-up and goofy wigs.  The shadow effects of Radu traveling return to their low budget roots but aren’t nearly as effective as the stuff we saw in Part 2.

Overall, this is even worse than Bloodlust.  The pacing is slower than that film (if you can believe it), and what good bits there are (like a cop eating a rat) are few and far between.  There is a little bit more skin than usual, but not enough to bump it up to a * ½ rating.

The film’s biggest crime is that it wastes the talents of Denice Duff.  She spends most of her time either sleeping or lying down in a hospital bed.  (She must've had the same agent Eric Stoltz had when he made Anaconda.)  It’s enough to make you wonder if the poor woman got bedsores during filming.  She does get a few opportunities to vamp it up a bit in the third act, but by then it’s too little too late.

AKA:  Subspecies:  The Awakening.

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