Editorials
Book a Stay at These 12 Haunted Hotels!
There are a plethora of “haunted” hotels all around the world. Some are home to some surprisingly sick and twisted crimes. Of course, this means that they are prime tourist attractions, with people all over the world coming over to visit them. I did a little bit of digging and thought I would single out some of our favorites (and by favorites I mean I really want to go to there).
Driskill Hotel – Austin, Texas
I’m a little biased towards this one because it’s the hotel my partner and I stayed at the night that I proposed, but it is supposedly haunted! We were lucky enough to stay in a room near a painting of Samantha Houston, whose ghost is rumored to haunt the hallways (we didn’t see her though). She was the daughter of a U.S. Senator who was chasing a ball down the stairs and tripped and fell to her death. The creepy thing is that the stairs are in the painting with her. In other news, Room 525 is dubbed the “Suicide Bride” room because two brides committed suicide on their respective honeymoons in Room 525’s bathroom on the same day twenty years apart. Talk about creepy! It’s one of the smallest rooms in the hotel though so it may not be worth the price of admission (the Driskill is known for being pretty pricey).
Stanley Hotel – Estes Park, Colorado
Lying just five miles from the entrance of the Rocky Mountain National Park, the Stanley Hotel is best known as the hotel that Stephen King stayed at in 1974 (in room 217, no less) and inspired him to write The Shining. Unsurprisingly, reports of paranormal activity started popping up after. King’s book was released.
Grand Hyatt Taipei – Taiwan
Supposedly built on top of a former World War II prison camp and Japanese execution ground, the Grand Hyatt Taipei has more than earned its status as a haunted hotel. Rumors of wandering spirits permeate the halls. It has gotten to the point where locals stay away from the place.
Emily Morgan Hotel – San Antonio, Texas
The Emily Morgan Hotel is supposedly the third most haunted hotel in the United States. I’m not exactly sure how you rate the degree of haunted-ness a building is, but I digress. Before becoming a hotel, the building was a medical facility, complete with a psychiatric ward and a morgue. The 12th and 14th floors are reportedly the most haunted because they used to be the hospital and surgery floors, respectively. Perhaps some of the dead are still roaming the halls?
The Place D’Armes Hotel – New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans is actually home to quite a few haunted hotels, but the Place D’Armes has one of the most tragic histories. Before the hotel was built, the grounds were home to a school building that unfortunately burned to the ground in the 1700s, killing several students inside.
The Hollywood Hotel Roosevelt – Los Angeles, California
Open since 1926, The Roosevelt is the oldest continually operated hotels in Los Angeles. It is most well known for the number of celebrities who stay there, even after they die. The two most notable supernatural guests at the hotel are Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift (Tom Cruise’s uncle). Then there are the reports of mysterious phone calls in the night and random “cold spots” in the hotel. Spooky.
Langham Hotel – London
Thought to me the most haunted hotel in London, the Langham Hotel is also home to Room 333, otherwise known as the most haunted room in London. There have been several sightings of various ghosts in the building over the years. Some of the more notable ones are a German nobleman who threw himself out of a window, a doctor who murdered his wife and killed himself, a man with a gash on his face, a butler with torn socks and another ghost who likes to shake beds. These guests have an affinity towards the aforementioned Room 333, but they have supposedly been spotted all over the hotel.
Dalhousie Castle – Edinburgh, Scotland
The Dalhousie Castle grants its guest views of some of the most beautiful countryside in Scotland, but it also houses the ghost of Lady Catherine of Dalhousie, the daughter of the previous owners of the castle. You see, her parents forbid her from seeing a young boy that she fell in love with so she locked herself in a room at the top of the castle and starved herself to death. Guests at the castle have been known to see her grey figure wandering around the turrets and the dungeons.
Hotel Chelsea- New York City, New York
Hotel Chelsea is filled with ghosts. It is considered to be one of the most haunted places in New York (again with that ranking system). A couple of notable celebrities have died there, which is where all the ghost stories come from. First up is writer Dylan Thomas, who died of pneumonia in the hotel in 1953. The most famous death is that of Nancy Spungen (girlfriend of Sex Pistols bass guitarist Sid Vicious). She was stabbed to death in her hotel room and there have been multiple sightings of her and Sid’s ghosts over the years. Unfortunately, the hotel closed for renovations in 2011 and has yet to reopen.
RMS Queen Mary – Long Beach, California
This haunted hotel is a boat. Yes, a boat. It’s awesome. The RMS Queen Mary is a retired ocean liner that sailed primarily on the North Atlantic Ocean from 1936 to 1967. It is now permanently moored at the coast of Long Beach, California. After it docked, rumors of hauntings began to spread around the city. Cabin B340 is rumored to be haunted by the spirit of a person who was murdered in the room (at the time it was Cabin B326 but it was renamed after the ship was refitted following World War II). Sounds of ghost children can be heard in the nursery. All in all, there have been no less than 49 crew members and passengers have died on the ship during its initial run. Board at your own risk!
Hawthorne Hotel – Salem, Massachusetts
It’s really just Room 325 in Salem’s Hawthorne Hotel that gives paranormal investigators the chills. Word on the street is that the bathroom lights and pluming like to turn on of their own volition an ghostly hands touch guests at night. . The ghost of a woman can supposedly be seen in Room 612 as well. It probably doesn’t help matters that the hotel is built on the grounds of a former apple orchard once owned by Bridget Bishop, one of the first women to be executed to the Salem Witch Trials. Guests at the hotel have reported smelling rotten apples in the hall, which probably doesn’t get the appetite going.
1886 Crescent Hotel – Eureka Springs, Arkansas
The last hotel on the list is the Crescent Hotel, reportedly one of the most haunted places in the United States. A reported eight spirits haunt the halls of the hotel. These spirits include (but are not limited to): a nurse who worked in the building when it was a hospital, Dr. John Freemont Ellis (also an employee of the former hospital), an Irish stonemason who fell of the roof and a small boy who died from complications from his appendicitis. A perk of staying at this hotel is that they offer a ghost tour for free!
Which hotels do you want to stay at the most? Let us know in the comments below!
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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