Editorials
Remembering ‘April Fool’s Day,’ An Underrated “Slasher”
I don’t usually write two anniversary posts in one week, but I just watched the 1986 “slasher” April Fool’s Day for the first time (I know, I know, I’m a bad horror fan) and couldn’t resist. The film actually came out on March 28, 1986, so I’m a few days late for its 30th anniversary, but I thought it would be more appropriate to post this on April Fool’s Day in honor of this underrated gem.
***SPOILERS FOR A 30-YEAR-OLD FILM BELOW***
That warning may seem a bit snarky (it is), but seriously: if you’ve never seen April Fool’s Day stop reading now and just go watch it. Knowing the ending will completely ruin your enjoyment of the film and I’m definitely going to talk about its ending. That being said, I can’t point any fingers at someone who hasn’t seen it yet since I just saw it for the first time. My hope is that this article will get those people to go out and watch it (and stop reading before I start talking about the ending!).
The film is essentially a slasherized adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians. Add in some elements of 1984’s Clue (which is in my Top 10 films of all time) and the casting Amy Steel (arguably the best final girl in the Friday the 13th series) as the lead character, and you’ve got a rather brilliant film that was ahead of its time by about 10 years. Had April Fool’s Day been released in a post-Scream era, it probably would have been at least a moderate box office success and had positive word of mouth.
I don’t want to oversell April Fool’s Day. Calling it “brilliant” may be a little hyperbolic. It certainly contains many slasher tropes (such as a jump scare involving a cat) and the twist may seem obvious by today’s standards. Still, the film subverts plenty of the tropes it contains. The primary example of this is the character of Nikki (Deborah Goodrich), who could have easily come off as the typical blonde bimbo archetype (the whore), but ends up being one of the more endearing and intelligent characters in the film.
It’s not just Nikki though. Nearly all of the characters are likable, if you don’t mind watching a bunch of privileged white college kids goof around with one another, that is. The females fare the best, and while there aren’t any major backstories given to them these feel like people you may have known in college. Their conversations and mannerisms with each other feel organic (the sex quiz scene is a good example of this). You believe that all of these people really are friends. The men are all sort of douchey, but not in an “I really want to see that person get killed” kind of way.
While April Fool’s Day never takes itself too seriously, the moments of suspense are handled well. The scene with Nikki in the well and Kit’s final chase scene immediately come to mind. The gore effects are top notch as well, which is rather ironic once you get to the end of the film…
STOP READING IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE
April Fool’s Day managed to gross $12.9 million ($28 million in 2016 dollars). That’s more than double the $5 million it cost to make. Unfortunately, the film still managed to leave audiences confused and frustrated. By the time the big third act twist came around, audiences felt cheated. April Fools Day, after all, isn’t actually a slasher film. Nobody dies in the entire movie! As evidence by the lukewarm reception Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning received the previous year, audiences don’t like to feel cheated, and April Fool’s Day made them feel cheated.
Interestingly enough, the film was never intended to be marketed as a horror film, at least according to the film’s director Fred Walton. According to Walton, the reason that the film failed to resonate with audiences was because “Paramount didn’t know how to release it other than as a typical slasher picture. So most audiences came in expecting to see something they weren’t going to see and they were disappointed. It wasn’t marketed as something fresh and hip and fun.” Horror-comedy has never been an easy sell to audiences, and April Fool’s Day is just one of the many examples of that fact. Paramount was afraid to market it that way so they decided to play a prank on the audience, and much like any prank, it wasn’t well-received.
With such negative word of mouth, and with the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises beginning their creative and commercial decline, the slasher was deemed to be out of style. The extremely negative reaction to April Fool’s Day is a big reason why the early 90s were such a wasteland for slasher films (it was part of the “fall” in Adam Rockoff’s Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film), and that is a real shame.
One has to wonder what would have happened if the original third act, in which Muffy’s brother Skip (Griffin O’Neal) actually kills Muffy in order to get his father’s inheritance, had been included in the film. Would reception have been different? It’s difficult to say, but considering that would have been just one murder in the film, it may have been a case of too little, too late.
April Fool’s Day is not a perfect film. I would hesitate to even call it a great film, but it deserved a better reception than what it received in 1986. It certainly deserves to be brought up in conversations about slasher movies more often. At first glance it may seem like a cheap attempt to cash in on the holiday horror craze that took over in the 80s, but it is actually a lot smart than that. With that dear reader, I will leave you with this request: watch April Fool’s Day today. If you don’t, well, Jerry Whitman put it best:
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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