Editorials
[Special Feature] ‘Dredd 3-D’ vs. ‘The Raid: Redemption’
When Lionsgate released their trailer for Dredd 3-D way back in July, we all basically thought the same thing: “Hey, this looks an awful lot like The Raid.”
It’s no wonder why. Just like The Raid, Dredd’s trailer sells a film in which an outmatched badass must take on an entire building of villains, battling level by level to the top floor where he must kill a drug kingpin who waits among cool, mini-boss henchmen.
You can cry foul all you want, but sometimes these things aren’t so simple. According to Wikipedia, Dredd started filming in Novemember 2010, while The Raid began its shoot four months later in March 2011. So there appear to be no shenanigans here to curse. We instead have something a bit more complicated. Two movies, completely independent of each other, both utilizing the completely awesome conceit of containing their action film within dangerous high-rises.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun comparing the two, if only to highlight what an embarrassment of riches we action fans have been enjoying recently. Head inside for the death match!
THE BUILDING:
Dredd’s building is way taller than the relatively diminutive domicile featured in The Raid. Both buildings house innocent poor people as well as badasses, though Dredd’s appears to have a much higher poor innocent to badass ratio. As a result, The Raid’s tenement feels immensely more dangerous to walk around. That’s illustrated in each films’ respective number of action sequences. Dredd has a handful, while The Raid is pretty much all action from beginning to end.
Raid-1, Dredd-0
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THE SHUTDOWN:
In both films, our heroes cannot leave due to a building lockdown demanded from the main bad guy. In Dredd this basically amounts to a bunch of metal blast shields covering all exits. In The Raid, all exits are covered by snipers.
I personally found the snipers more threatening. Not only that, but there’s a part in Dredd where he actually gets out of the building and chooses to reenter, so the whole lockdown thing is clearly less important than in The Raid. For that reason alone, The Raid wins this one.
Raid-2, Dredd-0
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THE CITY:
Finally, Dredd gets a little love. While I enjoy The Raid, its action is so simple and compact that we learn very little about the surrounding area other than it’s dangerous and corrupt. Dredd, however, takes place in an overpopulated future city with all kinds of interesting stuff going on. Just the one moment in which we visually see how overwhelmed the Judges are with crime does wonders for delivering a fun and new cinematic setting. They don’t do as much with it as they could, but that’s the price paid for the simple plot set-up, which is worth it in my book.
Raid-2, Dredd-1
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ACTION:
This one seems more obvious than it actually is. While The Raid’s all out kung-fu assault gets everyone excited in all the right ways, Dredd’s slow-motion face shooting should not go overlooked. Even when Dredd goes hand to hand, we get that incredibly icky throat smash kill. Add Dredd’s super cool futuristic guns with their wide array of voice-activated ammunition, and you have a surprisingly strong showing from this masked underdog. Unfortunately, it’s just not enough to overcome The Raid’s truly amazing scenes of physical combat, snipers, and refrigerator bombs.
Raid-3, Dredd-1
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SIDEKICK:
When Dredd was just a mere trailer, its use of a female rookie sidekick raised a lot of red flags. Now that we’ve all seen it, however, Potential Judge Anderson ends up helping rather than hindering Dredd’s awesomeness. She’s a psychic who can totally hold her own both mentally and physically against The Wire’s Avon Barksdale. Furthermore, she and Dredd never have a boring, forced love story.
The Raid, in its infinite wisdom, had a pesky sidekick but shoves him out of the way as soon as possible, leaving Rama free to roam the halls like the lone wolf we wanted. Still, I’m kind of more impressed with Dredd’s successful use of a pesky sidekick rather than The Raid’s dismissal of the trope.
Raid-3, Dredd-2
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VILLAIN:
Dredd goes up against a narratively hyped and visually interesting Ma-Ma (played by Game of Thrones’ chilly Lena Headey). The Raid’s Rama has to deal with drug kingpin Tama Riyadi, a character we learn very little about. This one’s kind of a draw overall. Ma-Ma looks cooler, has a better backstory, and gets the better demise. But Tama seems far more raw and dangerous. Plus, he sounds really cool when he speaks.
Raid-3, Dredd-2
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VILLAIN KILLS OTHER VILLAINS SCENE:
So if that’s a draw, lets get more specific. Both films show us how bad their villains are by offering scenes in which they deal with internal conflicts (i.e. offing henchmen). In Dredd, Ma-Ma skins three guys alive and hits them with slow-mo just before dropping them 200 stories to their death. Pretty brutal.
The Raid’s Rama, on the other hand, just shoots his guys in the head. When he runs out of bullets on the last guy, he beats his head in with a hammer. Less showy, but equally effective.
Here’s the important difference: While Ma-Ma wins for sheer inventiveness, the slow-mo bit was not her idea. Furthermore, she does not dish out the punishment herself. Rama on the other hand, does his killing with his own hands. Therefore, he wins.
Raid-4, Dredd-2
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MINI-BOSS:
Ma-Ma has one traditional henchman, but Judge Dredd throws him over a balcony without much trouble. That would put her out of the contest, but she then calls up four dirty Judges to kill Dredd. They don’t succeed, but it’s a pretty cool move.
Unfortunately, The Raid has Mad Dog. No film is probably ever going to out-do Mad Dog as far as badass mini-bosses go. That little guy is just too insane.
Raid-5, Dredd-2
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Poor Dredd. In all honesty, it’s just not fair to put even the best action films up against The Raid. Dredd suffers but only by comparison. Action movies as pure and visceral as The Raid don’t come everyday. Dredd can reach some impressive cinematic highs and still be the inferior film. For my money, 98% of the film’s I have ever seen are inferior when it comes to The Raid.
At the end of the day, some concepts just make especially exciting films. Dredd and The Raid happen to share one of them. I wouldn’t mind a new version of the “Awesome badass fights an entire building of bad guys” sub genre once every year, regardless of how derivative of this or that film they may end up. I didn’t like The Hunger Games much, but I’m always ready for more films where kids have to hunt and kill each other. After all, how many movies do we have where a dude in a mask chops up teenagers? It’s a concept, and there are films enough to share.
If you haven’t seen Dredd yet, what are you waiting for? It’s an awesome, gory, action, science fiction film, the kind most people complain about missing lately. Karl Urban totally brings the hammer down on the role and the film manages to sidestep most of the stupid business that derails its ilk. Check it out and support R-rated sci-fi films while you still can.
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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