Okay, back to Full Moon, I've done Trancers, I've done Robot Jox and its 'sequels' but these have all been Sci-Fi and Full Moon are much more famous for their horror movies and one of their most famous franchises was the Subspecies series, so much like Trancers, I'm now going to work my way through the entire franchise. Enjoy!
The franchise lasted from the year I was born until 1998. The director is Ted Nicolaou, if you're more familiar with the low budget scene, you've probably at least seen his name around - he directs every film in the series. This film was based on an original idea by Charles Band himself and one of the screenplay writers was Jackson Barr who would that same year write Trancers II and two years later would write Robot Wars - as you can probably tell, I'm not a huge fan of this guy, I don't think his ideas are always terrible, although Robot Wars was insanely stupid, I just don't think his ideas ever translate very well to film and that is a problem when writing screenplays is your job. The series was shot on-location in Romania and Nicolaou used a mixture of stop motion and rod puppets to get a specific look for the Subspecies creatures that he envisioned and this choice has been highly praised by critics. That being said, high praise was something the film never really got anywhere else, most people won't deny their entertainment value but you won't a lot see many critics actually saying these are any good. With that out of the way, let's dig in!
Just to get this out of the way, Subspecies references those little demon things on the poster. What do they have to do with anything? Nothing. I mean I know that as the Trancers series went along it got more and more contrived to eventually incredibly stupid to keep the trancers around but they were at least central in the first film. Not here though, Subspecies is literally just named after one of Radu's powers and one that is neither particularly useful or one he uses a whole lot, you could have called this film, 'long nails' and got the same effect.

That isn't to say the story is perfect, however, Karl is a character who rants at Stefan about how he and his father should have killed Radu years ago. What we don't learn though until later in the film is that Karl has known Radu's location all along and since vampires sleep during the day in this film, his whole argument about not being able to get in close enough to stake him is bullshit. He should have killed Radu years ago while he slept, what a hypocritical bastard. And I know Radu ends up not being in his coffin but they never explain why he isn't there, if Karl had done it sooner this wouldn't have happened, everything bad that happens at Radu's hands is ultimately Karl's fault.
All jokes aside, I think the biggest problem with the story is that there is no sense of pace at all, nothing really gets much build up, it just kind of happens. I mean it's nice when a film just bloody gets on with it, but there is no pay off if they film doesn't at least tease us a little first.
Radu himself is easily the highlight of the movie. He has that horror icon feel like any of the other greats. Although to warn you, he really isn't like the vampires we have grown used too, he is revolting and really quite frightening. For all the bullshit people say about Edward Cullen, lots of other famous vampires are culprits of exactly the same things he is criticised for, Angel, Jerry Dandrige, Selene - I could write this list forever because this shit has been going on forever. So I found it truly refreshing that Radu was 100% monster. Luckily to balance it out for the ladies though Radu has a brother, Stefan, who with his haircut, looks closer to the Angel/Edward/Jerry vampire. You know what else Stefan has in common with Edward? A forced romance that really makes no Goddamn sense, yay!

Although despite my love for Radu, I think his brother Stefan wins points for being the worst vampire ever, for getting trapped in a completely normal net. Can't he just tear through it? Or transform to get out of it? Or something? I mean you go through the process of setting up that vampires are a bitch to take down, then treat us to a scene of a vampire rolling around in a net. And it honestly says a lot about Radu, I suppose, that he ends up losing to this guy.
The whole hand puppet stop motion special effects thing...has aged horribly. I mean sometimes it doesn't look that bad but for the most part it's pretty awful. It isn't even the effect itself, well not always, sometimes it's just how goddamn cute the subspecies look which completely pulls you out of an otherwise pretty solid horror film. Sad really because that was where most of the praise went, well between that and the location. And about that location, oh God it's the Band family castle for Trancers 4 & 5 get away, get away!
Outside of the special effects Subspecies is a very interesting film visually. Nicolaou directs this film excellently, it isn't just the setting, there is just so much great imagery. Although the film is never truly scary as such, Nicolaou just knows how to create some truly great atmosphere thanks to some extremely clever staging. I love the way Radu moves, the scenes with Radu in the festival, the use of shadows, it's just an awesome looking movie and it really proves that if you know what you are doing, huge budget or not, you can make a beautiful looking movie - yeah I bet you never expected me to call one of these films beautiful, huh?! And of course I won't forgive myself if I don't at least credit Vlad Paunescu the cinematographer for this film. Great job guys, you put in more effort than you needed too and it pays off.

There isn't a whole lot of action in this movie, since this is pretty specific about being a horror film but I must say that I'm glad about that, because when the action starts... I mean the last fifteen minutes of action or so is okay, it isn't bad, but nothing spectacular either.
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So do I recommend it? Look, generally I only really talk about what could have been, when the film itself is bad and Subspecies is great. It's true, I would have done the story differently but whatever, Subspecies is a great film that I think every horror fan should check out. Why isn't Radu a horror icon up with the other greats? Definitely not a vampire movie for Twilight fans, though! Although I like both so what do I know... Also, a vampire is defeated by a net, soak that up folks, soak it up...
Think About It!
-Locke
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