Editorials
The Weird, Wild West: 10 Great Horror Westerns
Of all the many subsets and genre mashups of horror, the horror western seems like a match made in heaven. Or hell, depending on your perspective. The isolation, the ever-present danger of starvation or brutal conditions, and the general rougher way of life in westerns make for a great foundation for horror stories. And both the western and horror genres are fond of exploring unknown frontiers. On Friday, IFC Midnight is releasing Emmi Tammi’s The Wind, a western frontier set horror film in which its lead might be dealing with a demonic presence. This makes for a perfect time to look back at some of the best horror westerns that have come before. Frontier living is harsh, but throwing horror into the mix makes it downright brutal. These 10 films are a perfect primer into the world of horror westerns.
Dead Birds
Set during the Civil War, a group of Confederate army deserters seek refuge in an abandoned plantation after robbing a bank and fleeing from the law. But this plantation is deserted for a reason- it’s home to bizarre, near Lovecraftian supernatural forces. Madness, chaos, and death ensues. Written by Simon Barrett (The Guest, You’re Next), this modest budget horror film is a hidden gem. Featuring a cast of notable actors like Patrick Fugit, Henry Thomas, Isaiah Washington, Nicky Cox, and Michael Shannon, it’s a shame Dead Birds went straight to home release as it deserves a bigger audience. Lucky for you, it’s currently streaming on Tubi, Kanopy, and Prime Video.
Eyes of Fire
This one is a deep cut that’s still stuck on VHS. Low budget and full of surrealistic imagery, Eyes of Fire is a unique entry in the horror western. Set in 1750, a preacher is accused and persecuted for polygamy and adultery, so he and a group of followers, including his mistresses, escape death by fleeing town. Their journey takes them into Shawnee territory, a hostile tribe very unhappy about the trespass. It further sets them on a collision course with witchcraft and one very haunted forest. Atypical, weird, and dreamlike, Eyes of Fire feels like a folk tale. Its super low budget shows, though.
The Burrowers
Before video game writer J.T. Petty scared the pants off gamers with the Outlast series, he helmed this 2008 horror western set in 1879. With a cast full of names like Clancy Brown, Doug Hutchison, Jocelin Donahue, and more, The Burrowers follows a rescue party in search of a family that went missing under strange circumstances from a still unexplored territory. It’s not hostile Native Americans behind the disappearances, though, but a species of monstrous underground dwelling creatures. This is the perfect merging of the two genres; the mounting tension between American soldiers and Native Americans makes for a great backdrop to the unique monster mythology that provides the supernatural terror. Too bad this never launched more sequels.
Ghost Town
If you have a soft spot for schlocky ‘80s horror, this is for you. Sheriff Langley stumbles upon a missing woman’s car on the side of the road, and in his quest to find her, he finds a nearby old ghost town literally haunted by the ghosts of its past. He’s then whisked back in time and forced to square off against the zombie-like Devlin, an outlaw who made a pact with the Devil and forever trapped the town in purgatory. Based on a story by David Schmoeller (Tourist Trap), Ghost Town is a fun Western movie that takes a literal interpretation to the ghost town.
Grim Prairie Tales
A prairie set anthology with a wraparound that features James Earl Jones as a grizzled bounty hunter with a body in tow and Brad Dourif as a man in route to meet his wife. The unlikely pair gather around the campfire to tell each other four tales of terror. Tales of revenge for desecrated burial grounds, pregnant drifters, haunted gunslingers, and a family man forced to participate in a lynch mob. Not all horror is of the supernatural kind. Like pretty much all anthologies, it’s a mixed bag. But the interactions between Dourif and Jones are amazing.
Tremors
Sure, this isn’t a western in the traditional sense, but the setting, motifs, and structure is there. Taking place in the desert town of Perfection, Nevada, the ex-mining settlement makes for an isolated setting. The town residents feel like modern cowboys, namely plucky heroes Val McKee (Kevin Bacon) and Earl Bassett (Fred Ward). Perfection is becoming a bit of a ghost town itself, in part thanks to giant underground worm creatures dubbed “graboids.” So, essentially, this is one fun-filled horror-western-comedy creature feature, but set in a modern era. It counts.
Vampires
Another neo-western horror movie, this time by John Carpenter. One of the most common recurring themes in western movies is that of revenge. In Vampires, vampire hunter Jack Crow is hellbent on revenge against the vampires that wiped out his entire team in an ambush. That he’s a killer for hire checks off another box of common western tropes. Oh, and it’s set in the southwest. This was Carpenter’s way of tackling a western disguised as a horror movie, and its better for it. At least in the sense that it’s gritty action and a major departure from the gothic vampires we’d grown accustomed to. It’s fast-paced, entertaining, and it has bite.
Ravenous
Bearing similarities to the case of the Donner Party and set during the 1840s at a military outpost in California, Antonia Bird’s quirky tale of cannibalism is an all-timer. The arrival of a mysterious, frostbitten stranger arrives at the outpost with tales of how his travel party were stranded by snow. When the outpost dispatches a rescue party, well, they find themselves prey to a sadistic cannibal instead. Quirky humor with an equally quirky score to match, Ravenous charms with its eccentricities and unique spin on Wendigo folklore. The cast is absolutely stacked, too; Guy Pearce, Robert Carlyle, David Arquette, Jeremy Davies, Neal McDonough and more star.
Bone Tomahawk
The bold feature debut by S. Craig Zahler spends its time lulling audiences into forgetting there’s any horror at all in this western. When unseen attackers swoop in one night and steal horses and a few town residents, the town sheriff (Kurt Russell) sets off with a small search party to rescue them. The journey getting there is filled with injury, harsh conditions, and ruthless raiders. None of it prepares them for the vicious troglodyte clan they’ll have to battle for their lives and the lives of the townsfolk they’ve come to save. Zahler uses violence and gore like an art form, and if you thought you were desensitized to it all Bone Tomahawk proves otherwise.
Near Dark
“Howdy. I’m gonna separate your head from your shoulders. Hope you don’t mind none.” Severen (Bill Paxton) is one mean, scene-stealing vampire. So is the rest of his nomadic clan. Poor midwestern cowboy Caleb, he had no idea the beautiful drifter that came into his life was a vampire. After being turned by her, he’s reluctantly forced to join her bloodthirsty family as they travel across the country in an RV, leaving a path of destruction and dead bodies in their wake. Katheryn Bigelow’s neo-western blends horror with western and biker movies, and the result is one of the most savage vampire movies of all time.
Auteur Filmmaking is a term that gets thrown around a lot these days in reference to big name directors like Quentin Tarantino and even Wes Anderson, but the truth is that film is a collective medium, and no one person can be responsible for every single aspect of a particular production. However, the smaller a film’s budget, the bigger the individual impact of every creative decision behind it – and the easier it becomes to identify a genuine auteur.
This isn’t necessarily a judgement of value, as blockbuster filmmaking comes with its own challenges and a good movie remains a miracle regardless of how big the crew is, but I’ve always been more interested in soulful b-movies produced by handfuls of passionate artists than blockbusters backed by creative armies.
That’s why I love exploring low-budget franchises that never left the hands of their original creators, as you really get to know the artists involved with these flicks and can accompany their evolution over a period of time. With that in mind, I’d like to invite readers to join me in this multi-part series as we look into a vampire saga helmed by one of the most fascinating auteurs of the 1990s. Naturally, I’m referring to Ted Nicolaou’s criminally underrated Subspecies!
The Birth of an Unlikely Horror Franchise
A proud graduate of the University of Texas’ Film program, Nicolaou got his start in the industry as a sound technician working on Tobe Hooper’s original Texas Chain Saw Massacre. From there, the filmmaker would go on to work for notorious indie producer Charles Band, the founder of both Empire Pictures and Full Moon Productions. According to Nicolaou, Band would usually contact him with an offer to direct a feature after more prominent filmmakers, such as the late, great Stuart Gordon, had already refused, meaning that his projects tended to have lower budgets and more inexperienced crew members.
The plans for Subspecies began almost immediately after the fall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, with screenwriter David Pabian turning in an initial draft of the film after a Romanian producer contacted Band and explained that Romanian tax incentives could cover the cost of film production there so long as Full Moon took care of the post-production process. Since Stuart Gordon was unwilling to travel to Romania, Ted Nicolaou ended up taking over the picture.
However, while the financial incentives meant that this Romanian-American co-production could look and feel much more expensive than it really was, with Nicolaou scouting for locations in advance and selecting real castle ruins to be featured in the movie, the director was soon faced with an incredibly difficult shooting process. In interviews, Nicolaou would later describe the experience as something of a nightmare, with language barriers and the generalized distrust of capitalist outsiders sabotaging many of the team’s plans for the film.
In fact, the script, which had already been altered by Band, ultimately had portions of it rewritten by both Jack Canson and Nicolaou himself in an attempt to adapt the story to their unique limitations.
Radu Is One of Horror’s Greatest Underrated Villains
In the finished film, which was released directly to video in 1991, we follow a pair of American anthropology students, Michelle (Laura Mae Tate) and Lillian (Michelle McBride), as they reunite with their Romanian colleague Mara (Irina Movila) in her native land. The group intends to study the folklore surrounding the secluded town of Prejmer, but their research is cut short by the return of Radu Vladislas (Anders Hove) – the evil son of a vampire king (Angus Scrimm) who had previously established a truce with the region’s human residents. It’s now up to Radu’s human-loving half-brother Stefan (Michael Watson) to protect the girls from a fate worse than death as the power-hungry vampire seeks to control a magical artifact known as the Bloodstone.
Right off the bat, you may have noticed that the film’s premise sounds decidedly old-fashioned when compared to other vampire movies from around the same time. While the 1990s saw the rise of cool-looking bloodsuckers with badass elements borrowed from Westerns, as well as the sexy aristocrats of Anne Rice’s stories, Subspecies has a lot more in common with Nosferatu and the Hammer Horror series than any of its contemporaries.
This is both a blessing and a curse, as the film falls victim to overly familiar genre tropes while also standing out as a rare example of a ’90s vampire flick that isn’t afraid to flex its muscles as a Creature Feature. In fact, I’d argue that the presence of age-old clichés is a small price to pay when confronted with one of the most compelling vampire antagonists in all of cinema.
Named after Vlad the Impaler’s real-life brother, Anders Hove’s Radu is such a fascinating character and the main reason why Subspecies is still worth watching 35 years later. From his animalistic mannerisms to the joy he feels in simply existing as a chaotic creature of the night, and that’s not even mentioning the iconic makeup that almost certainly inspired the undead from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Radu is a hypnotic presence harkening back to a time when audiences didn’t mind purely evil villains that couldn’t be redeemed through tragic backstories or sex appeal.
Gothic Atmosphere on an Indie Budget
Of course, the film’s Romanian setting and authentic art direction do a lot of the heavy lifting whenever Radu isn’t around. From the masked festivals of the village to the visually interesting selection of local extras, Subspecies’ multicultural elements help it to stand out when compared to similar flicks from the ’90s.
That being said, Nicolaou’s unique eye for special effects and exciting action sequences – as well as Vlad Paunescu’s excellent cinematography – make the movie a delight for fans of expressionist cinema and old-timey gothic horror. While the crew is obviously dealing with limited resources, many of the flick’s blemishes (such as the odd stop-motion demons that serve Radu) end up feeling more like charming idiosyncrasies than actual flaws.
I’d argue that the only real issue here is pacing, as there are long stretches of film where the protagonists are simply bumbling around without realizing what’s really going on around them. Thankfully, the gorgeous visuals and surprisingly effective soundtrack usually make up for this. Besides, how can you dislike a movie where shotgun shells are loaded with rosary beads and our lead vampires duke it out in a dramatic swordfight that would feel out of place during the golden age of Hollywood?
Your overall enjoyment of Subspecies will mostly depend on whether or not you find low-budget corner-cutting and janky practical effects charming rather than distracting, but I know I’ll keep coming back to this Full Moon feature again and again in the future.
That being said, while this first movie is worth revisiting by its own merits as the birth of an indie horror icon, I’d like to invite you to join us as we look into the cult sequel Bloodstone: Subspecies II soon.
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