Editorials
‘Alien: Covenant’ Just Made David the Franchise’s Best Character
Before Ellen Ripley came into contact with a Xenomorph, there was David.
There are a few hallmarks of Alien movies that can be found in each and every installment, and though Ridley Scott deviated a great deal from expectation with his divisive 2012 prequel to the original classic, there were no doubt strands of that Alien DNA in his visionary Prometheus. One of the most notable of those strands was the inclusion of David, a brand new android character portrayed by Michael Fassbender.
Beginning with Alien in 1979, androids have of course been a staple of the Alien universe, with not-quite-humans like Ash, Bishop and even Resurrection‘s Annalee Call being some of the most fan-favorite characters in the saga. But with Prometheus and now this year’s Alien: Covenant, Ridley Scott has taken that android element to a whole new level. Just underneath the surface of the Xenomorph terror of the Alien films has always been that idea of creationism, but now it’s at the forefront of a bold new vision that casts an android as the main driving force behind literally everything we’ve ever seen from the franchise.
As a result, Scott has birthed a character even more interesting than Ripley.
This is your Alien: Covenant spoiler warning, by the way.
As revealed in Alien: Covenant, it was David who was responsible for creating the entire breed known as the Xenomorph, and it’s David who is the star of the whole damn show in Scott’s hybrid of a Prometheus sequel and a more straight up Alien prequel than what we got back in 2012. In their reviews of the new film, many have been bemoaning the fact that the Ellen Ripley-esque Daniels (Katherine Waterston) isn’t exactly the most interesting character to be leading the franchise down a new path, but that’s because she’s simply not the central figure in Scott’s new vision – nor is/was Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace), who is unceremoniously written out of the story in a way that seems quite intentional.
The new Alien Universe, you see, isn’t about the human characters. It’s not even about the Xenomorphs, per se. It’s about David. And Alien: Covenant is Scott’s Frankenstein story, with David in the role of the Doctor and the Xenos as his monsters.
Dating back to Prometheus, it was immediately clear that David wasn’t quite like the other android characters we had previously seen in the Alien films, as he had a devious curiosity that seemed to not exactly be in line with the way he was programmed. There’s a wonderful scene in the film where David has a conversation with Charlie Holloway, right before he infects Holloway with the Engineer-created black goo that eventually allows him to wipe out the entire Engineer race (presumably…) and then create the Xenomorph.
During the conversation, which is pivotal to understanding every subsequent action from David, it becomes clear that David has the same questions about his own existence that the human characters aboard the Prometheus have about theirs – they’re on a mission to find and get answers from their creators, while David is already face-to-face with his creators on board the ship.
“Why do you think your people made me?” David asks Holloway. “We made you because we could,” replies Holloway, dismissing the android as being an inferior machine that has no real purpose aside from serving his human creators. This clearly angers David, who knows that it is Holloway who is the inferior being. “Can you imagine how disappointing it would be for you to hear the same thing from your creators,” he responds to Holloway, shortly thereafter infecting him with the aforementioned goo and kick-starting the film’s mayhem.
Watching Prometheus back in 2012, my takeaway from that scene was that David infected Holloway because he was carrying out orders from his master, Peter Weyland – he was testing out the goo to see if it could somehow help fulfill Weyland’s selfish desire to prolong his own life, I figured. But after seeing Alien: Covenant, which sort of retroactively makes Prometheus an even more compelling movie than it already was, it’s clear that David was operating of his own volition all along.
David was created to serve, as we see in the opening scene of Alien: Covenant, but his incredible level of programmed sentience made him question that purpose right off the bat – after having a deep conversation with Weyland, David is somewhat taken aback when Weyland orders him to pour him a drink. You can see by the look on David’s face in this moment that he had forgotten for a second that he was not human. Weyland’s order reminds him that he’s been created for one purpose and one purpose only: to serve.
But unlike Bishop and the others, David doesn’t want to serve. David wants to create – a very human desire that has been intentionally removed from later model Walter, played by a much more monotone Fassbender. Davis is an android who knows that the very nature of being an android makes him superior to all human beings (“You will die, I will not,” he tells Weyland), so he develops such a level of hatred for his puny creators that he wants to completely destroy them – furthermore, he wants to (and does) destroy the creators of his creators as well. In the place of the Engineers and the humans, David wants to give rise to his own master race of superior beings that are on his level.
It just so happens that those superior beings are the “perfect organisms” we met back in 1979, firmly tying Ridley Scott’s heady ideas of creationism into the back end of the franchise that the “Prometheus Universe” was always intended to be a prequel to. And David is the linchpin of it all, his curiosity and disdain for human life leading to the birth of the monster that would go on to take so many human lives in the decades-long Alien saga.
The Xenomorphs, however, aren’t the franchise’s devils. Rather, it is David who is the Alien series’ one true Devil. And you’d be hard pressed to find a more interesting, nuanced, and utterly compelling depiction of the fallen angel Lucifer than Michael Fassbender’s David in the one-two punch of Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.
He didn’t want to serve in Heaven. So he’s reigning in Hell.
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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