Editorials
The Horror of the Ticking Clock in ‘Dead Rising’
Time Pressure is defined as a form of psychological stress that occurs when an individual has less time available than they would need (or deem necessary) to complete a task, job, or some sort of process that involves results. This lack of time can be either real or perceived, and when confronted with this lack of time, an individual gains a certain sense of tunnel vision—complete the task at hand while other things can fall by the wayside. Frank West from Dead Rising knows a thing or two about time pressure.
The core conceit in Dead Rising—beyond beating zombies to death with the literal manifestations of consumerism—is a running clock. Frank West, the game’s core character (and an absolute granite slab of a man), has 72 hours before an escape helicopter arrives to solve a mystery about a zombie outbreak in a mall. This mystery snakes and shifts in ways that always keep Frank, and the player by extension, ever on the move. The clock is always ticking, literally. Frank has a watch that the player has to frequently check to make sure they are on track to get everything done in time. With thousands of zombies lurking through the mall—and some evil humans to boot—the scariest thing in Dead Rising turns out to be time itself. You can’t bludgeon time with a golf club or beat it with your fists. It never stops, it is always moving, and it always feels just out of reach.
Video games often let players control every aspect of time—fast-forwarding through it as they see fit with the ticking clock only ever making a rare visit in certain missions or crucial moments. But Dead Rising is built on that ticking clock. Every aspect of the game is inherently tied to and affected by time. Every step is played in tandem to the tick of the clock. The watch on Frank’s wrist is less a watch and more of a shackle that binds him to the heavy and inescapable thing that is time itself. He has 72 hours to solve the mystery of a zombie outbreak, save the survivors in the mall, and then escape via rescue chopper. But things go wrong like they often do in horror games, and horror in general. Timelines go fraught and things come down to the wire. Survivors die, Frank gets set back, he doesn’t make it to some sidequests in time—they expire—and he has but little time to finish certain main missions. This tension is built into the game but it is also up to the player to some extent. I probably spent way too much time messing around, exploring the mall, and just killing zombies with lots of random items in the mall. Through doing so, I missed core side missions and found myself with hardly enough time to make it to some core missions.
That feeling of time rapidly expiring between points A and B is deeply stressful. That stress is built out of the horror trappings of the game, but also out of the baggage we bring to the game in regards to time. Ever just barely made it to a job interview? You know that feeling, Dead Rising knows that you know that feeling, and it ratchets that tension up to 11. Through doing so, every action is both deliberate and tinged with that feeling we all know from horror films where something is right on the main character’s trail—just nipping at their heels and barely out of reach.
Frank West is a broad man who can hold his own against hundreds of zombies and humans turned evil, but Frank’s hands cannot pummel what turns out to be his cruelest enemy in the game—time. It is always at his heels and it hangs over him and the player like a shroud. When time becomes a game mechanic that cannot be fundamentally changed, then the player can either embrace the flow of it or constantly try and exploit it. And that is the core tension in Dead Rising. The zombies are merely circumstantial, and the true horror born out of this wrestling with time is more existential than any sort of “in the moment” terror. There are no true jump scares or stomach-drop moments unless one forgets about the time mechanic completely and then realizes too little too late that they’ve thoroughly screwed themselves over. Thus this existential fear burrows rather than occurs again and again and again. It is not stop-and-go. The existential threat of time itself is always there, no matter where Frank West is. Even the safe rooms cannot save him from time; it is that invisible following beast that one can never outrun yet is rarely caught by. Time becomes a vengeful parasite, an enemy even, that Frank (and the player) simply have to make peace with.
When we make peace with the fact that we cannot control time, a certain serenity might begin to rear its head. But that peace is often shattered when external forces render time an enemy yet again. Things might be going well and then Frank gets stuck fighting a boss. Time continues to pass. That old familiar stress sets back in. The boss zombie bleeds and dies and the area becomes awash in its viscera, but time is right there just above it all and out of reach. The clock ticks a doomful tick and it will do so forever.
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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