Movies
[Book Review] ‘Shock Value’ Scores Perfect!
I believe this is the first book reviewed by Ryan Daley to receive a perfect score.
Everyone’s raving about Jason Zinoman’s “Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror,” a new novel now in stores from Penguin Press. The book is said to be an enormously entertaining account of the gifted and eccentric directors who gave us the golden age of modern horror in the 1970s, bringing a new brand of politics and gritty realism to the genre.
Read on to see why you NEED to own this book, like now. Drop everything, read this , and then go buy it on Amazon.
“Horror has become so pervasive that we don’t even notice how thoroughly it has entered the public consciousness. It’s on television, in the movies, and in the show that goes on in our minds when we go to bed at night. The modern horror movie has not only established a vocabulary for us to articulate our fears. It has taught us what to be scared of.”
New York Times reporter Jason Zinoman has penned the most effortlessly enchanting treatise on the American horror film since Stephen King’s Danse Macabre. Beginning with its first few paragraphs–which depict a 1972 argument between Wes Craven and Sean Cunningham over whether or not Last House on the Left is “too sick” for release–I read the entirety of Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror with a shit-eating grin on my face. Serving as both a behind-the-scenes look at American horror films of the 1970s and a discussion of what makes horror both relevant and timeless, Zinoman has crafted an enormously entertaining non-fiction narrative that`s easy for even a horror novice to love. Die-hard horror fans, meanwhile, will worship it.
Zinoman’s story progresses smoothly from the post-Corman artistry of Rosemary’s Baby (“a horror film for adults”) to Night of the Living Dead (“Romero says he didn’t even think the flesh-eating undead were zombies”) and beyond, with chapters devoted to The Exorcist, The Texas Chansaw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead, the films of Brian DePalma, and more. Moving chronologically from the late 60s to the early 80s, Zinoman has a tendency to stray toward engaging tangents (how Psycho influenced Blood Feast and Blood and Black Lace, for example), before veering back to his central narrative. Rather than distract, these random meanderings manage to flesh out his central point, and always fascinatingly. These are movies the readers of this website have seen hundreds of times, but Zinoman manages to put these pieces of art into a whole new context. His observations are frequently so insightful and illuminating, it would be far too easy for this review to regress into a series of smart quotes from the book.
But if Zinoman has one point to make, it’s this: “Being in the dark about evil; that is the real horror.” As he explains, the horror films of the 1970s managed to strip away motive, and as Randy in Scream put it, “It’s a lot scarier when there’s no motive.” The monsters of The Exorcist, Halloween Night of the Living Dead, and Alien had no real motive, and this served as a calling card of the New Horror of the 70s. Modern horror wants to fill in the backstory, writes Zinoman, using Rob Zombie`s Halloween remake as an example: “[He] explained away the horror with a litany of tedious excuses.”
Zinoman seems to be right about pretty much everything, but he’s especially right about one thing in particular: The time period that saw the release of Rosemary’s Baby, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Carrie, Halloween, Alien, Jaws, The Shining, The Hills Have Eyes, Dawn of the Dead, The Exorcist, and Night of the Living Dead was certainly “the greatest golden age of horror”. And Zinoman, a consummate storyteller, guides you through that golden age with a potent mixture of wit and insight.
Perfect 5/5 Skulls
[An interesting side note: Although The Complete History of The Return of the Living Dead depicted writer/director Dan’O Bannon as a passive-aggressive nutcase loathed by almost everybody on the planet, Zinoman takes great pains to paint him in a far more flattering light. “Despite being one of the most influential minds in genre movies, [O’Bannon] had only two directing credits, and is overlooked in discussions of the major figures of horror,” he writes.]
The problem with filming sequels back-to-back is that, unless you can afford expensive reshoots, there’s no easy way to adjust course in between movies if fans react badly to where the story is headed. That’s why it’s important to have a complete narrative thought out well in advance lest you accidentally kill a budding franchise.
However, this isn’t always the case. Every once in a while, it seems like the cinema gods smile upon certain chaotic productions and gift moviegoers with complete franchises that feel like more than the sum of their hastily produced parts. Ted Nicolaou’s Bloodlust: Subspecies III is precisely one of these miraculous pictures, with the raw talents of the artists involved (as well as the continued support from Romania) turning the feature into an effective conclusion for a series that kind of made things up as the filmmakers went along.
That’s why I’d like to invite my fellow readers to join me on this third part of our journey through the Subspecies franchise as we look into Bloodlust and talk about how it remains a surprisingly satisfying finale to the original trilogy.
A Trilogy Planned on the Fly
Released only a year after Bloodstone found plenty of success in rental stores and mail-in VHS catalogues worldwide, 1994’s Bloodlust was produced at the same time as its predecessor in (mostly) the same locations and with the same team. This means that the movie benefited from all the same upgrades as Bloodstone, with the crew now being more experienced with the ins and outs of surviving a low-budget Romanian production and the cast really settling into their characters.
At this point, everything from location scouting to the makeup process had been streamlined, with Wayne Toth and Norman Cabrera, the main duo behind special effects, even switching out time-consuming prosthetics for latex gloves in order to speed up Anders Hove’s monstrous transformation. The titular “subspecies” demons were also once again relegated to a mere cameo appearance due to the laborious puppetry required to bring them to life.
The only real hiccup came from the fact that actress Denice Duff had replaced the first film’s Michelle (Laura Mae Tate) and was immediately expected to portray the character as both an innocent victim in part II and as a secondary villain in part III. According to behind-the-scenes interviews, the hectic production schedule that blended two different movies meant that Duff would often find herself having to alternate between two incredibly different versions of Michelle during the same shooting day – though it’s obvious that she’s having more fun with Bloodlust’s more traditionally vampiric version of her character.
In the finished film, we pick things up immediately where the previous entry left off as Rebecca (Melanie Shatner) is forced to leave her vampire sister Michelle (Duff) behind in the dungeons of Castle Vladislav due to the rising sun. This allows Mummy (Pamela Gordon) to use Michelle’s blood to revive the vicious Radu (Hove) so that he may continue his quest for the coveted Bloodstone – a magical artifact that perpetually drips the Blood of Saints.
Meanwhile, the dreamy US embassy agent Mel (Kevin Blair) agrees to help Rebecca plan a rescue mission, though they’re unaware that Radu has become infatuated with Michelle during his attempts to guide her growing bloodlust. This all culminates in a climactic confrontation meant to tie up all of the series’ loose ends in one of Full Moon Pictures’ most ambitious productions.
The Evolution of Radu
Like its predecessor, Bloodlust: Subspecies III was also warmly received by fans who argued that the series was an even bigger success than Full Moon’s other major horror franchise, Puppet Master. This praise wasn’t unanimous, however, as 1994 had seen the rise of a more modern breed of sexy vampire popularized by Anne Rice, with old-school Nosferatu like Radu being viewed as obsolete when compared to the likes of Lestat and Gary Oldman’s take on Dracula.
In a way, one might argue that Nicolaou’s film is something of a swan song for the classic vampire story, as Bloodlust combines all of the traditional elements we tend to associate with these tales into a single tragic yarn that ties a neat little bow on Radu’s story as well as the old-fashioned monster movies that he represents. The finale remains shocking despite the fact that this is the third time we see Radu get brutally killed onscreen, with the brief tease that he may one day return feeling more like a nod towards the nature of evil rather than sequel bait.
The film dabbles a bit in gothic romance and even explores the inherent power fantasy behind transforming into an immortal creature of the night, but the filmmakers never lose sight of Radu as a demonic force even when he’s willing to betray his beloved Mummy for Michelle’s sake. In fact, his twisted “love” for his fledgling makes him even creepier as we get the feeling that his passion comes from a dark and disturbing place.
Anders Hove is at his absolute best in this film, with the effects department boosting his moments of what the younger generation would call “aura farming” whenever Radu emerges from shadows like a 90s version of Count Orlok. There are even a couple of surprisingly effective jump-scares here, which is why I’d argue that Bloodlust cements Radu as one of the most memorable cinematic vampires of all time despite his humble origins.
Subspecies Saves Its Best For Last
Nicolaou and Vlad Panescu also saved the best for “last” (more on that in a bit) regarding the film’s visuals, with the cinematography and overall atmosphere of Bloodlust absolutely surpassing what we saw in the previous films. Everything feels appropriately climactic this time around (including the wonderful soundtrack that was co-composed alongside an authentic Romanian orchestra), and I appreciate how this is the fastest-paced entry in the trilogy since the film doesn’t need to waste time setting anything up.
Bloodlust still suffers from some of the same low-budget blemishes as its predecessors, but there’s so much creative passion here that no amount of wonky effects work or stilted dialogue can get in the way of appreciating the flick’s gothic grandeur. That’s why it’s not surprising that the movie’s definitive(-ish) ending would later be retconned as fans begged for more Radu.
Of course, the next entry in this series would be a different kind of vampiric endeavor altogether, with the filmmakers attempting to engage with the same trends that ultimately killed Radu and his antiquated kin. That, however, is a story for another time. For now, I’ll merely insist that Bloodlust: Subspecies III remains a highlight of Full Moon’s expansive catalogue and is definitely worth seeking out today.
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