Editorials
5 Underrated Female Horror Performances!!!
There are many elements that need to work in tandem for a horror movie to be memorable. You need a great story at the heart of it, pushing it along. If your story doesn’t work, nothing can save it. Next up, you need a good antagonist. Someone (or something) that will slowly crawl into people’s nightmares and burrow there for a long time after the credits roll. Lastly, you need good performances. Don’t get me wrong, there are many other factors involved (good direction, movie getting proper hype in the press, and so on), but at the heart of that, you need good performances. The kind of performances where the audience forgets they are watching people play pretend. The kind of performances you walk away from wondering if that actor or actress may be a little off. You can have the best story, the best creature design, and the best direction, but if your actors or actresses suck, it will all be for naught.
It was with that idea in mind I decided to compile a list of hugely underrated performances in the genre of horror. Thing is, once I started doing the list, it became very clear to me that I would need to split it into two lists. There were just too many great horror performances to mention just a handful. I also thought it might be cool to separate the list by sex. One list for each gender. I started with females because it is “Women in Horror” month here at BloodyDisgusting. We all know women are a huge part of horror, and more people than just horror fans like is to recognize that. From finals girl to feral killers, here are five hugely underrated performances from women in horror!
I watched this movie in awe the first time I saw it. Every single thing about the movie affected me. But I would say nothing affected me as much as Lina Leandersson as Eli. How does a pre-teen girl convince you that she is actually ages old and tormented? Like, where does that even come from? I ask because I watched Eli in Let the Right One In, and never once thought I was looking at a child acting. You could feel her angst. You could feel her pain. You literally could see the struggle in her eyes. Where the Hell does a little kid get that experience or know how to mine that?
I also want to give huge props to Chloe Moretz in the remake. She definitely did the character justice, but I would have felt wrong not giving the credit to the first actress who portrayed her.
By the way, you guys ever read the sequel, “Let The Old Dreams Die”? I think you should.
Say what you want about director Lars Von Trier. This is not about him. Say what you want about this film, and all the lines it (so beautifully) crosses. Say what you want about Willem Dafoe spewing blood from his wee wee. I know this movie incites discussion, and that is fine. What I think few can argue is that Charlotte Gainsbourg gives a performance in this movie that could have very well broken any other actress. She is asked to go to proverbial places in this film that are so dark and twisted, it seems it would be very hard to come back from. She plays a downward spiral so palpably, you can feel yourself circling the drain with her. If the Oscars weren’t so f*cking afraid of horror, she could have walked away with one for just what she committed to film for this role. A harrowing, unforgettable role to say the least.
Also, let’s none of us forget where she came from.
Um, excuse me while I go stab out my eyes, puncture my ear drums, and weep for infinity.
Okay, I will admit, I am SERIOUSLY biased here. Pollyanna McIntosh was my first professional interview I wrangled and made happen myself. Quite a proud accomplishment of mine, and she was an absolute doll to me. Kind and charismatic, she won me over immediately. But the whole reason I hounded her for that interview was how awed I was by what she did in the Lucky McKee movie, The Woman. It takes a certain amount of courage to agree to be tied, (faux) raped, and (faux) abused for a performance, and that is just what Pollyanna did. But if that was all she did she would not be on the list. Sadly, horror has done that to many women. No… she did so much more.
What Pollyanna did that certainly set her apart from many other performances I have seen is she truly made me believe she was feral. She acted with NO dialogue, using only her eyes. Do you even understand how brutally difficult it would be to convey EVERYTHING you are feeling with only your eyes? Yet, she does it. She looks differently at the daughter than she looks at the son. You can see moments when it looks like she has accepted her fate, and then you see these sparks of revenge behind those eyes. Again, all conveyed without words.
Remember when the acclaimed Jodie Foster tried to do that for the movie Nell, and it ended up being unwatchable? Well, that Oscar winner could learn a thing or two from Pollyanna McIntosh, in my honest opinion.
I have spoken of this film on numerous occasions across multiple sites, and there is a solid reason for that. AnnaLynn McCord, as Pauline in Excision, easily gives one of my favorite horror performances of the past few years. She is an incredibly nuanced character that bounces back and forth from broken to confident with an energy rarely seen on screen. The film is a black comedy with horror roots but, at the heart of it, it’s an utter tragedy. And it’s McCord who drives that home.
What makes it all even more remarkable is that this is an actress best known for being in the 90210 remake. She is, pardon how shallow I sound here, an absolute fox. To take that image and then take a risk as big as playing a girl like Pauline is incredibly brave. I mean, she takes out her tampon at one point in the film and smells it. Yes, it is disgusting, but it is that sense of morbid curiosity that made the character feel so real and believable.
Also, as dark and satirical as most of the movie is, what she conveys in those final fifteen minutes is just so heart breaking and real feeling, it drives the whole film home. Oh, and her Elizabeth Bathory fantasy sequences were staggeringly cool. I have to link them because of boobies.
Ah, to end with the movie that has the greatest beginning in horror cinema. Well, one of them, anyway. Another scene I have to link cuz, well, decapitated blow job (watch below).
First thing that made this movie so good was the simple fact that when it came out, Cecile De France was very much France’s Natalie Portman. Can you imagine Natalie Portman as the lead in this movie? Maybe after Black Swan you can, but don’t forget about that ending. I, for one, cannot imagine it. But just knowing that makes me appreciate what Cecile does here even more.
There will be spoilers from here on, so if you have not yet seen this movie, no excuses. Go watch it right now.
For the rest of us, what made Cecile’s performance so amazing is the simple fact that she needs to convey three things in this film, that all stand in bitter opposition to one another. In one sense, she has to be the perfect victim. That is the first half hour of the film, when she silently watches most of her friend’s family get slayed.
Next up, she needs to convey to us that she is a hero, suddenly being brave enough to try to save her friend (whom we slowly figure out she is in love with), even though we all come to find out she is only trying to save her from, well, her. That is the last thing she needs to convey. A frothing amount of madness. The kind of madness that bubbles over so much, you cannot stop it. Across the course of the film, that is exactly what she does. It is as if she plays three different people in this movie. Well, she does play two.
Oh, and you can hate the ending, but that takes nothing away from the powerhouse performance she delivers across the entirety of the movie.
Alright, fellow mutants and miscreants, thank you for reading. If you dig this kind of madness, head over here and toss up a like, then go here and delve even deeper into my rotted brain.
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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