In the heart of Romania, vampire king Vladislav is taking serious steps against his son Radu. As the son is not following the peaceful way of cohabiting with humans, King tries to imprison Radu, but he quickly frees himself and kills his pop. He is off for some blood and in the same time a couple of US female students are visiting a nearby castle.
Subspecies is one of those films I always wanted to watch, but never had a chance. Almost 8 years ago I downloaded a low quality trailer from the Internet and I remember it looked quite different from the average vampire flick I was watching in those days. Recently I got myself all of the Subspecies movies (oh yes, there are 3 more sequels and one spin-off) and tried my luck.
The first thing anyone can see about the flick is that the filming locations are perfect for this kind of a movie. 15 years before Nu Image and similar companies started mass producing horror movies in Bulgaria and Romania, Full Moon was actually the first US company to shoot a movie in the Romanian capital Bucharest. Of course it was cheaper, but the surroundings looked really good and definitely give an extra point in the overall movie rating for the atmosphere. You'll get the old school eastern European trains, castles, local people and you can even see our heroins driving one of the worst cars of all time - Trabant. The horror...
 
The story of the movie is really simple. Radu wants blood, students are his prime target and his good vampire brother Stefan comes to save the day. The brother is pissed at Radu for killing their father played by legendary "tall man" Angus Scrimm with a particularly cheap Amadeus Mozart wig. Stefan quickly falls in love with one of the students and by the end of the film she is not just a "final girl", but her character will lead the way in all the sequels.
If you watched some older Full Moon movies, you know that their special effects people often used animated sequences. While some modern horror viewers don't like this, I would always take them over CGI effects. A couple of scenes where Radu breaks his own fingers and they transform into his little minions really have that special feel of late 80 horror. Besides this, there are a couple of really solid effects, especially the ones related to dismemberment.
The character of Radu is rather effective, he has a distinct vampire look that makes him look like an 700 year old heavy metal band singer (which is a good thing of course). His physical look, especially the hands are inspired by the Murnau's Nosferatu, but in this case he fingers are even longer and often look hard to control in some scenes. His voice is sometimes rather creepy.
Overall the movie has some good atmosphere, but from the entertainment perspective it doesn't offer anything special. The story is too simple and the running time is often just stock filled with extra long scenes of things such as local customs, boring talks and lousy fights.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 1991
DIRECTOR: Ted Nicolaou
WRITING CREDITS: Charles Band, Jackson Barr
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Angus Scrimm, Anders Hove, Irina Movila
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 90 min
RATING: 4/10
Subspecies Website/IMDB Click here
Subspecies Trailer
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