Editorials
[Butcher Block] Takashi Miike’s Too Extreme for Cable Episode “Masters of Horror: Imprint”
Butcher Block is a weekly series celebrating horror’s most extreme films and the minds behind them. Dedicated to graphic gore and splatter, each week will explore the dark, the disturbed, and the depraved in horror, and the blood and guts involved. For the films that use special effects of gore as an art form, and the fans that revel in the carnage, this series is for you.
After years of organizing a series of dinners that gathered together horror’s finest, horror master Mick Garris evolved the idea by curating a horror anthology series for Showtime, Masters of Horror. Each hour-long episode was written and directed by those that had attended the dinners; names like Don Coscarelli, Stuart Gordon, John Carpenter, Dario Argento, Joe Dante, and many more. Masters of Horror only ran for two seasons, beginning in 2005, before Showtime opted not to renew (Garris then continued the series’ concept via Fear Itself in 2008 on NBC), but Showtime refused to air Takashi Miike’s season 1 episode, Imprint, at all. Disturbing and extremely graphic content was cited as the reason for shelving the episode.
For those familiar with Miike’s eclectic oeuvre, it’s pretty easy to imagine that he’d create something that would offend; his films don’t just test boundaries, they steamroll right past them. Dead or Alive, Ichi the Killer, Audition, and Visitor Q all featured taboo-breaking moments that induced squirming, cringing, or the gag reflex (often all three at once). His catalog is so extremely diverse, spanning everything from kid-friendly films to westerns to more traditional fare, but it’s his work in horror and genre spaces that garnered him international attention. With his Masters of Horror episode Imprint, he crafted a kaidan – a traditional Japanese scary story- based on Shimako Iwai’s novel Bokke e, kyōtē. The title roughly translates to an Okayama idiom that means “really scary.”
It should also be noted that Iwai is a woman, who played the creepy torturer lady in the episode. She was going through a tumultuous period in her life and wanted to write a story about women, particularly women with no place to escape.
What was meant to be a tragic story wound up being terrifying in the end.
Like the traditional kaidan, Imprint is a period piece. It revolves around a Victorian-era American journalist, Christopher (Billy Drago), traveling through Japan in search of his lost love Komomo, a prostitute he’d once promised to rescue and bring back to America. His search leads him to a remote brothel island where no one seems to have heard of Komomo, save for one disturbed and disfigured prostitute who claims Christopher’s love died. Distraught, he demands to know how. The disfigured prostitute proceeds to tell Christopher various stories of “truth” surrounding Komomo’s demise, each tale grislier than the last.
This means that it starts off innocently enough, save for the grotesque syphilitic brothel worker encouraging Christopher to partake in the caged prostitutes. You begin to wonder what it was that triggered the execs at Showtime to pull the ep. And then the lengthy torture sequence begins. A sequence that feels like a perfect companion to Audition, with needles driven slowly into nailbeds with brutal precision, and lit incense is used to burn sensitive areas of skin. Still, it’s a premium cable channel, so as gruesome as it is, it’s not that bad, right? The disfigured girl’s final tale presents a rough upbringing in which her mother helps other women abort their babies, and the fetuses are flushed down river. It likely didn’t help that the special makeup effects were created by Yuichi Matsui (Kill Bill vol. 1, Audition, Ichi the Killer). This, combined with incest and abuse, pushed Miike’s episode past the brink. And yet, there are still more surprises that Miike has in store for the viewer.
The irony is that despite the graphic nature of the torture, it’s understated for Miike. He consistently tried to check himself to make sure he wasn’t going over the line of what American television would allow. Garris requested some edits to tone down the controversial elements of the episode, and even then, it was deemed too disturbing for television. Luckily it made its way onto DVD with loads of extras (and it’s also available for streaming on Vidmark Channel on Roku). In terms of horror, Imprint shows a restraint from Miike that you don’t see in a lot of his other notable entries, but broaching the always controversial topic of abortion in such an overt, primitive way proved too much. It’s expected, though there’s a lot more to unpack with this episode’s story than its graphic depictions, especially thanks to Iwai’s source story.
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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