Editorials
10 More Movies That Had the Balls to Kill a Child!
Last year I listed off ten horror films that had the balls to kill off kids. As I mentioned in that listicle, it’s kind of a taboo to kill a kid in mainstream cinema. That being said, if any genre is going to break the child-killing taboo, it’s the horror genre. Many, many horror films feature child death scenes. Here are ten more films that had the balls to kill off a kid!
Assault on Precinct 13
She asked for a vanilla twist, Mr. Ice Cream Man. I caught a lot of flack from commenters a couple of months ago when I made it known that I hadn’t seen about half of John Carpenter’s filmography, so I’m marathoning all of his films this month. I watched the original Assault on Precinct 13 for the first time earlier this week (I loved it) and what did I find? A child was murdered! That poor little girl just wanted her vanilla twist.
Clown
There are actually several child deaths contained in the Eli Roth-produced Clown (which finally saw a release earlier this year after years of delay), but one of the more memorable scenes is the one that takes place inside a Chuck E. Cheese-style play place. The river of blood falling into the ball pit is a rather gruesome image.
When a Stranger Calls
While you don’t actually see the children die in the opening scene of Fred Walton’s classic horror film, the description of what happened to them is no less chilling. In fact, it’s actually scarier to hear about it than to see it happen. After receiving several phone calls from the killer (Tony Buckley) asking her if she has checked the children, Jill Johnson (Carol Kane) discovers that the calls are coming from inside the house. She runs outside (and doesn’t check the children), only to learn that the killer had already murdered the children with his bare hands.
Sleepy Hollow
What’s more shocking about the fact that the little Killian boy is killed in Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow is that it was the centerpiece of the teaser trailer for the film (I still remember it giving me the creeps when it played before my screening of The Haunting in 1999). Nothing like a decapitated child to make you want to see a movie!
Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds
Feast 2 is not a good movie (no movie with the subtitle “Sloppy Seconds” could really be classified as a good movie), but it does feature a rather hilarious instance of infanticide. Greg (Tom Gulager) attempts to go save a baby from the vicious monsters, only to realize that he made a huge mistake when the baby ends up slowing him down. He promptly tosses the baby up in the air and it splats onto the concrete before being eaten by one of the monsters.
Maximum Overdrive
This one is a bit cliché to include on a list of child deaths, but it’s a classic! Stephen King’s sole directorial effort is famous for its awfulness, but it’s such a fun movie to watch. One unforgettable moment comes when a steamroller bursts onto a baseball field and rolls over one of the pre-teen players.
Alice, Sweet Alice
Brooke Shield’s feature film debut was a brief one. She gets killed in the first twenty minutes of Alice, Sweet Alice. Her nine-year-old Karen is strangled by a mysterious person wearing the creepiest translucent mask ever made. It’s a rather intense scene for a film made in 1976, but it certainly merits a spot on this list.
Battle Royale
If you want to watch a movie where a bunch of kids die, look no further than Battle Royale. They’re all roughly 15 or 16 years old, so they may not technically qualify as “children,” but they’re young enough for all of the carnage to be quite unnerving. 42 kids (21 male and 21 female) butchering each other makes for a shocking (but highly entertaining) movie.
30 Days of Night
Maybe this one shouldn’t count since the girl in question is an evil vampire, but she is technically still a child. And she does get decapitated. So I’m going to say that it counts.
The Mist
The Mist features what is one of the most downer endings in cinema history, so the fact that a child is killed in the film’s closing moments is really just a fraction of the whole. Still, it’s incredibly unsettling to watch David Drayton (Thomas Jane) load his gun before using it on his only sun. It’s not even Billy’s death that is difficult to watch (his death is off-screen). Rather, it’s David’s reaction to murdering Billy and the other three inhabitants of the car.
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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