The Night Has Fangs
Directed by Ted Nicolaou, written by a team that includes B-movie master Charles Band, and backed by Full Moon Features, 1991’s direct-to-video Subspecies breathed new life into the slowly fading corpse of the vampire film genre. The film tells the story of rival brothers Stefan and Radu, two vampires with very different outlooks on their eternal lives. Stefan (Michael Watson) hopes to live as much of a normal life as he can without harming humans. His grotesque, outcast brother, Radu (Anders Hove), plans to seize power from their father (Phantasm’s Angus Scrimm) and begin a reign of terror with a vampire queen by his side. That queen, Radu hopes, will be the lovely Michelle (Laura Mae Tate), who happens to be in Romania studying the local culture with her friends Mara (Irina Movila) and Lillian (Michelle McBride). The two brothers square off against one another with Michelle and her friends caught in the crossfire. Be sure to watch this wonderful B-flick that far exceeds expectations.
Despite its low budget, Subspecies clicks with the audience. There are genuine moments of horror throughout the film and the trio of Michelle, Radu, and Stefan all work well together. The film spawned four sequels (all of which featured Anders Hove as Radu) that slowly degraded in quality and one spinoff film, Vampire Journals (1997) that expanded upon the mythos of Radu and his lineage.
The film features some excellent stop-motion effects and gore and a very solid musical score. It also has a few scenes of female toplessness, something that was a token part of many direct-to-video films in the 1980s and 1990s. The locations and cinematography also prove to be much better than they should be considering the fact that this is a Full Moon film.
Be sure to check out this flick. Radu will have you pulling for him in no time despite the fact that he’s the bad guy!
Ken's Alternate Universe! 