Editorials
Bad Idea, Right? The Scariest and Most Toxic Friends in Horror
We’ve all got that friend. The one who convinces us to push our boundaries or take that crazy risk, even though we have a hunch we’ll probably get hurt. They’re exciting, they’re cool, maybe even supportive, but they tend to lead us down the road to trouble, only to duck out when the consequences roll around. Film has a long history of these toxic troublemakers. Looking back, the Horror/Thriller genre was practically built on the backs of these smiling devils, who lure us in with their fun-loving wiles, then lead us off the side of a cliff.
Director William Oldroyd plays with this treacherous archetype in his adaptation of Ottessa Moshfegh’s 2015 novel Eileen. At first, Rebecca (Anne Hathaway) seems like a breath of fresh air to Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie). She’s the glamorous new educational director at a boys reformatory, who encourages Eileen to stand up to her alcoholic father. But when one holiday celebration pushes their relationship to the edge, Eileen finds herself spiraling towards disaster. The friendship that once led her to empowerment might ruin her life.
Rest assured, Hathaway’s Rebecca isn’t the only toxic friend on screen; she joins a terrifying rogues gallery of vicious BFFs. As we’re wont to do, Bloody Disgusting has rounded up the faces that’ll make you second guess the next friend you bring into your life.
Chris Hargenson – Carrie (1976)
One of horror’s original mean girls, Chris Hargenson (Nancy Allen) rules the hallways of Bates High School with an iron fist. Rich and beautiful, she thrives on cruelty and spends her days torturing lonely outcast Carrie White (Sissy Spacek).
When this shy teen unexpectedly gets her first period in the girl’s locker room, Chris participates in an especially heartless prank, and then becomes enraged when she’s asked to atone for her actions. She convinces her sheep-like friends and dimwitted boyfriend to orchestrate an elaborate prank designed to humiliate Carrie at the senior prom.
Unfortunately, Carrie chooses this mortifying moment to unleash her telekinetic powers and uses the sprinkler system and electrical equipment to set the gym ablaze. Chris slips out the door just in time to watch as Carrie roasts the senior class alive. Not only do Chris’ friends pay the ultimate price for following her lead, but this cruel prank eventually winds up destroying the entire town.
David and Eden – The Invitation (2015)
The only thing worse than going to a dinner party and having to sit through a surprise sales pitch is realizing the offer your friends are extending leads to enrollment in a suicide cult. Will (Logan Marshall-Green) accepts an invitation from his ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard) in hopes of reuniting with old friends and finding a way to move past the devastating death of their young son.
Unfortunately, Eden and her new boyfriend David (Michiel Huisman), have become involved with a dangerous group obsessed with the spirituality of death. They deliver an awkward and upsetting presentation that features an assisted suicide, then invite their dangerous new friends to give their own uncomfortable testimony.
The trouble continues as David and Eden serve poisoned wine to their guests, hoping to take the whole group with them on a murder-suicide mission. The evening devolves into carnage and mayhem as Will and his friends try to survive the dinner party from hell.
David – The Lost Boys (1987)
Few people on earth can make the party lifestyle look as effortlessly cool as Kiefer Sutherland. Joel Schumacher’s cult classic follows Sutherland’s David — and his group of disaffected teen vampires, mind you — as they wander the beaches and piers of Santa Carla, California. Together, they stir up trouble, all while feeding on unsuspecting locals. New in town, Michael (Jason Patric) finds himself drawn to David, channeling his own adolescent angst into the vampire’s devil-may-care lifestyle.
Perhaps sensing a kindred spirit, David courts Michael with powerful visions and membership in his crew of “bloodsuckers.” Meanwhile, Michael’s little brother Sam (Corey Haim) falls in with a pre-teen duo of would-be vampire hunters determined to take David down. Caught up in the town’s complicated ecosystem, the brothers must find and kill the head vampire before Michael becomes a permanent member of David’s undead gang. So, win-some, lose-some in this scenario.
Hedy – Single White Female (1992)
Finding an apartment in this hellish housing market can be murder. Software designer Allie Jones (Bridget Fonda) is still reeling from a painful breakup when she realizes she must find a roommate to supplement her ex’s half of the rent or she’ll lose her coveted apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
After placing a personal ad and conducting a series of disastrous interviews, Allie meets Hedy (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a shy, young woman with a tragic past. At first, the new roommates seem like a match made in heaven, but Hedy’s devotion to Allie takes a dark turn. Not only does she intercept contrite messages from Allie’s ex, she fills her closet with a duplicate wardrobe.
When Hedy gets a carbon copy of Allie’s signature haircut, the frightened woman decides to rid herself of this clingy new friend. Unfortunately, this proves easier said than done, and Hedy will not exit Allie’s life without a fight. Struggling to reclaim her identity, Allie must evict this sociopathic “friend” before Hedy takes over her life for good.
Ben – The Innocents (2021)
Most of the toxic friends on this list may be adults, but Eskil Vogt’s chilling Norwegian film proves that children can be just as dangerous and sometimes even more frightening. Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad) and Ida (Rakel Lenora Petersen Fløttum) are young sisters spending the summer wandering around the grounds of their large apartment complex. Along with neighborhood kids Ben (Sam Ashraf) and Aisha (Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim), Anna develops telekinetic powers that appear to strengthen when the foursome is together.
Initially, the kids have fun exploring the limits of these newfound gifts, but the troubled Ben begins to use his psychic abilities to harm others. He delights in torturing animals and begins to overpower the rest of the group. When Ben’s playful games take a deadly turn, the sisters must band together to defend themselves against his invisible strength. The playground turns into a warzone as Ben decides that the only way to maintain his dominance is to take out his former friends once and for all.
Juno – The Descent (2005)
Juno (Natalie Mendoza) is definitely that girl. She’s not only incredibly beautiful and athletic, she’s a natural leader who excels at anything she tries to do. She also happens to be sleeping with the husband of her best friend Sarah (Shauna Macdonald). One year after a devastating accident, Juno leads Sarah and their adventurous friends on a challenging spelunking trip in the Appalachian Mountains. Unbeknownst to the group, she’s actually taken them to an undiscovered cave in hopes that they will explore the new system and name it for themselves.
Her plan goes awry, however, when the women stumble upon a clan of humanoid monsters who’ve lived for centuries in the pitch-black darkness, feasting on the flesh of previous explorers. If that weren’t enough, unresolved trauma rears its ugly head and the women find themselves warring with each other, in addition to the killer cave-dwellers. It would appear that Juno has finally pushed her luck too far, and her bright idea may end up costing her friends their lives.
Eileen is currently playing in select theaters. Get your tickets now.
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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