Editorials
The Last Minute Digital Effect Added in Post-Production of ‘The Boy’ That Improved the Ending
Sitting down with director William Brent Bell and producer Gary Lucchesi on set of Brahms: The Boy II revealed a lot of key details about what’s in store for the sequel. One thing we didn’t expect to uncover, though, was a key change that occurred during post-production that completely altered the look of Brahms in the final act of The Boy. The adult Brahms, that is. It turns out that major twist, which revealed that a very adult Brahms was living in the walls of the Heelshire mansion, would’ve looked very different had it not been for one major digital effect that, up until this point, has gone unnoticed.
In talking about the collaborative process working on these films has been, Lucchesi mused, “There is something about the process of making movies. You have a screenplay; you do all of this preparation but then there are certain things that occur during the making of the movie. I wish in hindsight, now we fixed it, but in hindsight, I’d wished we’d had a conversation in the first Boy about putting the mask on his face.”
Wait. What?
It turns out that when The Boy was filmed, the sudden appearance of the adult Brahms was shot without a mask. Bell shares, “I’ll tell you about the mask because I’ve always been surprised that that never came out. You guys know Javier Botet, right? That’s who I wanted to play Brahms in the walls. That just didn’t fly.” That Bell initially conceived of Brahms with Botet in mind, an actor known for his unique, slender frame and creating nightmarish characters in The Conjuring 2, [Rec], and more gives insight as to why Brahms didn’t have a mask initially.
When Botet wasn’t available, Bell elaborates, “Then we got a guy, who was great. To me, he was kind of like a more conservative Javier. Not quite as wild and weird and tall and crazy. But he was cool. But we shot the movie, and he had no mask on. He was just a guy with a beard and he looked crazy coming out of the walls. We tested the movie and the movie tested really well; everybody liked the movie. We were asking questions about the third act, when the twist happens, ‘Were you scared by the guy coming out of the walls?’ ‘Mm, yeah, you know, but not that scared.’ Huh. And Roy Lee, who’s one of the producers on the movie, asked, ‘Did you ever think about putting a mask on him?’” Lucchesi adds, “He had worked on a movie about 10 years ago where he had done that; he’d put a mask on somebody in post-production.”
“Yeah, The Strangers. Well, they’d put a mask in post on somebody. So, we thought, wow, that’s a great idea! We were so focused on creating the doll that we’d never thought about that. If you watch the movie, the mask was never on him. We never planned that,” Bell says before expanding that it took a lot of different designs before they settled on the final version that made it into the film. “We did tests of him coming out of the walls in totally different masks. It was just like, ‘Try another one. Try another one.’ Because you just click a button and another one is on him. It was so incredible, what they did. And had we had a real mask it never would’ve looked as cool. It wouldn’t have stayed on. And what we had to do with this movie, to some degree, is if we want to see that mask well then, we have to create it, right?”
Visual Effects Supervisor James McQuaide has a much funnier take on the situation while also hinting at just how complicated this effect really was, “It was a good looking guy; she’s running away from a good looking guy. It wasn’t very scary. We went through a couple of months of trying to come up with the right design. Something a little bit rougher around the edges, more sort of homespun. We came back to the idea that of course, it looks like a large version of the Brahms doll. I think it made it much more scary, that face, than a barista at Starbucks, which is kinda what he looked like.”
“The design was the trickier part just because there’s so many cooks in the kitchen with an opinion about what it should look like. We had some really cool designs, but trying to come up with something that was organic to the movie was the place we ultimately went. But the execution was a little bit difficult because it wasn’t planned, so there’s no tracking marker. There’s nothing to really work off of. It was like 350 shots; it was a significant part of the movie. Probably 1 in 8 shots, something crazy like that, is CG mask.” McQuaide says the digital effect didn’t just stop at the mask, “And the burn at the end, you know when the mask breaks off, that’s all CG too. In the original version he was just, again, there was no damage from the fire. We had this idea that the house burned down and he carries the scars from it, as a CG element, to sort of make the movie maybe a little more substantial. So even that is CG.”
Bell still marvels at what they pulled off with this late game addition to The Boy, “Yeah, it made it so much weirder. Trying to kiss the mask, and it made his eyes more interesting. We did so much interesting development work on that, though. The mask was smaller, the mask was bigger, then darker, the mask was made out of paper mâché. To me, doing a movie like that where there was no planning, no tracking marks, and no plan to put a mask on and it was done a thousand percent perfectly, made me realize that anything is possible in making a movie if you need to change something.”
What would the paper mâché mask have looked like on Brahms? This clip shows the unused design in action:
It’s mind-blowing to think of how drastically different the final act of The Boy might’ve been without the addition of that creepy mask. As for the sequel, Brahms: The Boy II, a physical mask was created, but you’ll have to wait until the film’s release on February 21, 2020 to see it.
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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