Editorials
‘Final Destination’ Expertly Blended Supernatural Thrills and Slasher Brutality [You Aughta Know]
Hello, true believers, and welcome to You Aughta Know, a column dedicated to the decade that is now two full decades behind us. That’s right, it’s time to take a look back at one of the most overlooked decades of horror. Follow along as I do my best to chronologically explore the horror titles that made up the 2000s.
It was the first Saint Patrick’s Day of a whole new millennium and while many were certainly out partaking in a night (or two or three) of inebriation, Destiny’s Child was soulfully suggesting that their honey was cheating on them and a slew of titles lost to the tides of time were at the top of the charts; I mean, does anyone remember Bruiser on television or Tough Cookie as their go-to read? Yet in theaters, a film that would usher in a wildly successful franchise was being introduced. Taking bits and pieces of the successful new age slasher formula created by Scream, a tale of death and dread that was equal parts teen scream and X-Files was coming our way. That’s right, we were headed towards our Final Destination.
Originally titled Flight 180 and written with a much shorter script, Final Destination was the brainchild of Jeffrey Reddick, once written in a more condensed format and conceived as a possible episode of The X-Files. Having read a story about a woman who cancelled a flight after her mother had a gut feeling to not board, and the subsequent flight going down, the idea of skipping death was tapped into and expanded upon. Reddick had an existing relationship with New Line Cinema, having previously pitched them a prequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street that they liked, and he was convinced to flesh out the idea and try and sell New Line on it as a full length film. Obviously, it worked.
New Line loved the idea, tapping into the very popular teen-based format of the time as well as riding along with some of the standard blueprints of a slasher film, but also injecting it with a large amount of dread. Reddick was brought in to create a full length draft of the screenplay before writing team Glen Morgan and James Wong were also attached, with Wong tapped to direct. It would end up becoming quite a power team behind the scenes, with Reddick going on to write in the genre for years, and Wong and Morgan both working on a series of other horror features, including Black Xmas, Willard and even the third entry of the Final Destination series.
Now we all know the story, right? Alex, played by teen heart throb Devon Sawa straight out of Idle Hands, has a premonition that the plane their high school class is on to France is going to explode and after an altercation, seven passengers are removed and thus survive the explosion. Now, Alex is slowly realizing that they were meant to die and Death isn’t keen on glancing over that fact, now hunting the survivors down and killing them in various freak accidents.
Now the Final Destination series is well known and beloved in the community but as far as franchises go, it’s akin to Saw; although many are fun and even good films, the pressure to create more intense, dynamic and large-scale set pieces was on and sometimes, among those moving pieces, the charm was lost. Final Destination stands alone in its franchise (although the fifth would become a bit more rooted) because it is the most tethered to reality. Exploiting the common fear of flying and creating an excellent death dream sequence, our movie’s most extravagant scene is still something that is a commonplace fear among a massive amount of people. Where our sequel would arguably set up the most effective premonition scene, entries after would be just as big, if not bigger, but became less and less realistic, losing themselves in the scale of things instead of that common bond of fear amongst the multitudes of its viewers.
Final Destination really did everything exactly right for the time. They brought in a cast of attractive and talented up and coming teens to play the central characters. Sawa was a household name by this point, whereas Ali Larter, who plays Clear, had just been pushed into the teen eye because of Varsity Blues. Kerr Smith was in the middle of Dawson’s Creek and Sean William Scott was coming out of the massively successful American Pie. For some added horror credibility, they cast Candyman vet Tony Todd to play, get ready for this spectacularly badass and comic book-ish name, William Bludworth; a mortician who essentially represents the human manifestation of Death. And they leaned heavily into the idea of Rube Goldberg machines to create clever death machinations.
Now! Get ready! Here is why this movie is so damn clever, so smart, so freaking sincere with its body count: they created death from normalcy. The things you surround yourself with on a daily basis became your murderer in the world of Final Destination. Like those random stories you read where someone was killed by all the right dominoes falling into place.
How god damn brilliant is that? It’s so unsettling, so dreadful, so sly. Production designer John Willet deserves so much credit for the amount of unease the film creates, and it is because of his very basic skewering of the norm that the movie grabs onto your heart and holds on the whole way through. Washed out colors, nothing ever being completely squarely in scene, forced perspective both vertically and horizontally. These tricks were used to create that tension in us without blatantly calling for it. It’s genius.
Playing it out like a slasher also does wonders for the film. We feel like we’re watching that same game of cat and mouse but instead of a masked assailant, we have a primal force of the universe at work here, that somehow feels both completely ethereal and nearly tangible. As the scenes set up, we become precog detectives, turning the gears in our head to spot the clues and discover what schematic Death has laid out before our heroes meet their untimely demise. Reddick, Wong and Morgan all-too-cleverly had every single audience member wondering: would I catch the signs? Would we hear the creepy song, see the warnings, catch the clues? Suddenly we aren’t trying to figure out who the killer is because we already know it’s everyone’s ultimate assailant: Death. Now we’re just trying to figure out the “how” of it all.
Final Destination still holds up incredibly well. It blends supernatural horror and slasher horror in a way that hadn’t been done since A Nightmare on Elm Street and has scarcely been done since. Producing four sequels (and with a fifth reportedly on the way), the initial installment still stands true as a iconic staple in the horror halls of fame.
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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