Editorials
Spike TV’s Failed Attempt to Bring Stephen King’s “The Mist” to the Small Screen [TV Terrors]
Horror and science fiction have always been a part of the television canvas, and constant attempts have been made over the years to produce classic entertainment. Some have fallen by the wayside, while others became mainstream phenomena. With “TV Terrors,” we take a look back at the many genre efforts from the 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s, exploring some shows that became cult classics, and others that sank into obscurity.
This month we revisit the short-lived small screen adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Mist.”
- Aired in 2017
- Aired on Spike TV
In the age of modern television where every network has sought their own hit genre series in the vein of “The Walking Dead” and “American Horror Story,” tapping into Stephen King’s massive oeuvre for content is just common sense. King has no shortage of short stories, novellas, and massive epics to keep his own streaming service afloat. Sadly, while tapping his writing for content is a good idea in theory, it doesn’t always translate into a surefire hit.
2017 was a tumultuous year for Stephen King content and his fans. On the one hand we got brilliant adaptations like It: Chapter One. On the other hand we got… Spike TV’s “The Mist.” Premiering on the now defunct Spike TV in the summer of 2017, “The Mist” TV series seemed like a great idea at the time. The premise for “The Mist” felt episodic anyway; we’re shown in the finale of the story that the carnage has spread almost worldwide, so we could have had something equally cold and relentless like “The Road” meets H.P. Lovecraft.
In early 2017, the series adaptation landed onto the network with a flurry of viral marketing and exclusive peeks at what promised to be a chaotic extension of the Frank Darabont-directed movie, but its own entity. Spike TV did a bang up job of hyping the series, providing cryptic television ads of the show for the first half of the year. They even allowed viewers to watch the first two episodes on Spike TV’s website, uncut, and with limited commercial breaks. I took advantage, of course.
Set in Bridgeton, Maine, we meet Kevin (Morgan Spector) a somewhat passive man who’s married to Eve (Alyssa Sutherland), his wife who is hiding some kind of mysterious past. They have a daughter named Alex (Gus Birney) who is suffering from her mother’s overbearing behavior. Things take a turn for the worse when during a party Alex is drugged, raped, and blamed. All of this occurs before a mysterious gargantuan mist makes its way into town. When it does quickly consume every crevice of civilization, they’re all split apart, forced to hide in various locales with the mist blocking any and all access between them.
To say “The Mist” was a botched television effort is an understatement. “The Mist” is not just terrible, but it almost seemed to set out to make the viewer miserable. The movie had very solid implications toward the mist being more about the blackness of humanity, and how religion may have been a part in Mrs. Carmody’s survival. But the titular mist presented in the series, we learn gradually over every episode, may not be some kind of portal from another dimension. Instead in the series it’s some kind of otherworldly fog that can judge people based on their sins past and present, and their ideas of morality. The producers work hard to make it abundantly clear that this isn’t the movie. That becomes a fact when Mrs. Carmody herself appears in the very first episode for two minutes and quickly suffers a horrendous death by the mist lurking outside.
The mist almost becomes a non-entity in some episodes where it literally has nothing to do in the show except become a flimsy catalyst for characters to act monstrously moronic. Other times it can literally do anything, including tack on clunky religious symbolism. In one scene a survivor has a bug crawl under his skin only for it to morph out of his back, wings fully spread, presenting a weird angelic image. There’s also the town’s shady priest Father Romanov who, in an attempt to flee, sees the four horsemen of the apocalypse appear in the mist.
The mist does whatever the current episode needs it to, and never has any real rules or limitations to it. And forget all of the vicious wildlife we saw in the movie. The Gray Widowers, the Arachni-Lobsters and the Behemoth are nowhere to be found. Instead now the mist can inexplicably dig into the minds and psyches of its victims and can conjure up scenarios involving their sins, regrets, and horrible secrets. The various characters within the throes of the mist have to either confront these beings, or else suffer its wrath. To what end the mist is conjuring these visions, is anyone’s guess, as it just seems to enjoy messing with these townies.
Is the mist sentient? Is it the product of a portal accidentally opened, or is it the end of humanity and the beginning of judgment day? Kevin struggles to make it to his wife and daughter, and along the way meets up with the unnamed soldier, and a criminal attempting to overcome her past drug abuse. All the while Alex and her mom are stuck in a large mall with other town folks, including the man that might have raped her. It only takes a little over a week for the survivors inside to begin fighting for space and food. Along the way we get to know so much more about the characters than we need to, while their season arcs are played out with ridiculous twists and lingering questions.
Who raped Alex? Who is this soldier? Why should we care? By the fourth episode I was sick of hearing about Alex, her evil best friend, as well as mom Eve’s shady past, and wanted some kind (any kind!) of interesting turn of events. The series jumps back and forth from glacially-paced storytelling to downright absurd plot holes and leaps of logic.
“The Mist” opened with strong ratings initially, and as it dragged on, the viewership dropped more and more. Spike inevitably just axed the whole series after ten episodes and almost no backlash. With the big brand change from Spike TV to the Paramount Network and the complete format reboot, the network cut out a lot of the former series from Spike TV, including “The Mist.”
At least we’ll always have Frank Darabont’s vicious monster movie classic.
Is It On DVD/Blu-Ray/Streaming? Although Spike TV is long gone (including the show’s website), you can still stream full, uncut episodes online through various services like Amazon Prime Video, iTunes, Netflix, and Google Play.
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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