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I was about half-way through my annual Christmas Gremlins rewatch when I realized it all felt extra familiar this year. Something about the central theme of society’s tendency to disastrously play around with things it doesn’t understand reminded me of the current cultural hellscape in which we all suddenly live.
It was watching Billy Peltzer irresponsibly raise his pets to the detriment of everyone around him that did it. While these days I wouldn’t be surprised to find a corner of the internet where people defend Mrs. Deagle, I’m not one of those people.
Having said that, Billy is not a good pet owner.
We know this right away because his dog – apparently allowed to freely wander the neighborhood – has destroyed Mrs. Deagle’s imported snowman. Then Billy brings that same dog to work, where it is also out of control. He seems like a nice enough kid, but I would not trust Billy to feed my gerbil.
It’s not entirely Billy’s fault, some of this is upbringing. His dad, Rand Peltzer, an unemployed and aggressively mediocre inventor, essentially steals a creature heretofore never seen in modern society and gives it to his kid for Christmas. Elated with the preciousness of the alien/oni/whatever they now possess, the Peltzer family gathers for Polaroids with it before Rand remembers there was a whole list of rules he was supposed to tell them first.
Gremlins would have been a very short movie if that camera flash had fried Gizmo to the bone then and there, though it might have worth it for the following scene where Rand is forced to explain what the hell just happened to his sobbing family.
Even after being given the rest of the rules, Billy breaks them almost immediately.
He doesn’t Mogwai-proof his room like a good pet owner would. He leaves a half-empty glass just sitting around right next to Gizmo, who for-all-he-knows will literally explode upon contact with water. When Gizmo gives give birth to a full litter after getting wet, Billy is so fascinated he takes his beloved new companion to school and willfully repeats the process which it’s worth noting looks super painful and traumatic.
In fairness, Stripe and the rest of Gizmo’s offspring do trick Billy into feeding them after midnight. On the other hand, Billy is easily duped by creatures roughly two days old.
All of this is to say Billy has no idea what he’s doing, and the entire town of Kingston Falls ultimately pays the price for his and Rand’s irresponsibility. (Lynn Peltzer gets a pass because she does all she can to clean up after her family’s mistakes, and by ‘clean up’ I mean explode said mistakes in a microwave.)
The internet was like a Mogwai once.
It was also cute at first glance, with just enough weirdness to make it interesting. You could invite your friends over and show it to them. But unlike the Peltzers, we weren’t given any rules. We brought it into our homes and played with it like the new toy we thought it was. We put in the bath and were alarmed as we found ourselves in a ‘Trouble With Tribbles’ situation. It all escalated so quickly and suddenly it was everywhere. It was still kind of fun – a never-ending torrent of cat photos and funny gifs – but like with Gizmo’s offspring, there was a mischievous aspect right there in front of us we didn’t fully understand or respect.
At first, the mischief seemed harmless. I’ll never forget the first time someone tricked me into watching a jump-scare video, and you might have been a little sick of Rick Astley, but it was a small price to pay to see that Freddy Vs. Jason trailer when it did eventually go up for real. In retrospect, Aunt Beatrice’s forwarded e-mails about beleaguered Nigerian princes might have been a red flag we missed. That’s probably when the Mogwai first started trying to hang the dog on the front porch.
Years from now, in the Future Wastes, we’ll still be huddled around a campfire composed of useless smartphones trying to figure out how the internet went from Mogwai to Gremlin. Because at some point it ate after midnight and now it’s not so cute. Now it’s teeth and claws and hate and it’s playing with the wiring in the traffic lights just for the lulz. People are violently colliding in the streets because they’re all getting different information from a source they previously assumed was reliable and everyone believes they have the right of way.
It’s affecting all of us in incalculable ways, every single day. Targeted harassment. Massive breaches of personal data. Malware. Extremist groups. Clickbait headlines. Russian bot networks. Kingston Falls has fallen into chaos and nobody knows what to do about any of it because most of us are just trying to survive the long, dark night. It’s unlikely the negative aspects of the internet will simply gather in one place for us to blow up because they would first endlessly debate whether Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is ‘real horror’ as though that were a thing.
And of course, this is what’s happened. Of course it is.
This is what Mr. Wing was trying to tell the Peltzers over thirty years ago.
“You do with Mogwai what your society has done with all of nature’s gifts. You do not understand. You are not ready.” From the first time we drove an animal to extinction to the splitting of the atom, we’ve shown the same level of care and caution to new discoveries Billy showed his poor pets. The internet may not be one of nature’s gifts in the same way a rainforest or the climate is, but the principle is the same. We usually have no idea what we’re doing with these things until it’s too late. Mr. Wing saw this clearer than anyone and that’s why Spielberg gave him only one good eye. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is Wing.
So, if someone destroys your credit score with your stolen identity, or an army of trolls ruins your Twitter mentions, or your kitchen appliances are hijacked in a large-scale DDOS attack, don’t bother checking the closets or under the bed. There’s not only a gremlin in your house, it’s already careening through your living room in a snow plow.
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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