Editorials
‘The Haunted’: The Childhood Terror That Adapted the Smurl Haunting 34 Years Before ‘The Conjuring’
When I was nine years old, I saw a movie on television that would have a lasting effect on my life. That film was The Haunted – a made for TV movie about a family who suffered the effects of a demonic infestation in their house. I had a friend over and we were eating pizza when we saw a commercial for the movie, which announced that it would be starting in just a few minutes. We decided to ditch our plans of watching TGIF reruns and watch this instead. Our parents were out and we had been left to our own devices, so what better way to spend a Friday night than by watching a movie that most certainly would have been off limits if the parents had known anything about it?
The 1991 made-for-TV horror movie tells the purportedly true story of Jack and Janet Smurl and their family. In the late 1970s, they move into a duplex in West Pittston, Pennsylvania with Jack, Janet and their children occupying one side, and Jack’s elderly parents occupying the other. They experience a few strange occurrences surrounding the move – tools and other items suddenly going missing, hearing family members call out for one another, only to realize that the person speaking was nowhere nearby.
Eventually, that calms down and the family is able to enjoy life in their new home.
A few years later, the occurrences start up again, but this time, they are impossible to ignore. Janet hears knocks in the walls and whispering when she is alone in the house, a chandelier falls and almost kills one of the children and both Jack and Janet experience the physical sensation of a presence touching them. When the Catholic Church is no help, they reach out to noted demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren (Stephen Markle and Diane Baker), who would later be the focal point of James Wan’s The Conjuring series.
This year’s The Conjuring: Last Rites, in fact, tells the story of the Smurl family haunting.
This movie scared the living hell out of me. My parents were pretty strict with what I watched, so I hadn’t had a lot of exposure to horror, and this was the most intense thing I had seen to date. There is a particular scene that has stuck in my mind ever since – Janet is alone in the living room and she sees the demon manifest itself as a dark, billowy shadow. It is faceless and formless, but you get the distinct impression that it is watching her. Regarding her. After a few moments, it crosses the room and disappears when it reaches the wall. That scene terrified me. In my young mind, ghosts wore sheets or maybe were transparent versions of the people they had been in life. This was something completely otherworldly. I remember lying awake in the nights following the viewing, staring through my open bedroom door and into the well-lit hallway, where I was certain I would eventually see the shadowy figure appear.
As impactful as this movie was, it wasn’t something that I could easily revisit as I got older. Made for television movies are a corner of horror that is not as readily available as theatrical films, especially when they came from the era before streaming video. I remember scouring our local video store to see if I could find it on VHS, but had no luck. When Shudder added The Haunted to their always stellar list of offerings several years back, I immediately took the opportunity to revisit it. I was immediately transported back to my family’s living room, experiencing the first scares of what would become a lifelong love affair with horror cinema and ghost stories.
I am thrilled to report that The Haunted really holds up over 30 years later. Sure, it might not be on same level of intensity as modern horror, but it can still hold its own. Like any good haunting story, pacing is important, and here, director Robert Mandel makes good use of the slow increase in ghostly activity in order to set the stage and hook the audience. It flows smoothly, is carried well by the cast (led by Sally Kirkland and Jeffrey DeMunn), and has some legitimately creepy elements. The scene that frightened me as a child remains one of the most impactful moments in the film. The effects are simple, but surprisingly effective. Every shadow stands out, every whisper can be heard and the sound design brings some well-timed bass hits that really give the scary moments an unearthly quality. It’s one that I would definitely recommend – particularly if you are a fan of The Conjuring films and can’t wait for Last Rites this September.
In fact, looking back on it, The Haunted had a much bigger impact than just a few sleepless nights. It was the first time of many that my path would intersect with stories of Warrens. Several years later, I was in the library and I saw the book by Robert Curran that this movie had been adapted from. I checked it out and took it home (to this day I still can’t understand why my dad, a staunch Catholic and hater of anything horror-related) let me do that. But I was able to reacquaint myself with the terrors of the Smurl Haunting and the work of Ed and Lorraine. When I was in college, I caught an episode of A Haunting on the Discovery channel that focused on another of the Warrens’ cases, known as “A Haunting in Connecticut” (not the 2009 movie, but based on the same story). Years later, James Wan announced that he was developing The Conjuring, a movie that would be based on one of the case files of the Warrens. As we all know, the film was a massive success and went on to spawn sequels, spin-offs and a new universe of horror stories.
I find it fascinating that Ed and Lorraine Warren have been a part of the modern horror scene for so long. Their cases had been a part of the landscape long before Wan developed his film series, and will no doubt continue to be a part of it for years to come. Whether you believe in the history of these events or not, it’s clear that these stories have made an impact. They have inspired a number of filmmakers and storytellers, and their cases have been responsible for keeping countless horror fans terrified and hiding under their covers at night – in 1991 and in 2025.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on June 7, 2019.
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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