SUBSPECIES (1991)

 

(Director: Ted Nicolaou. Screenwriters: Jackson Barr and David Pabian, based on Charles Band’s idea.)

 

Review

In fictional Prejnar, Romania, Radu Vladislas, monstrous offspring of a twisted sorceress and a briefly ensorcelled King Vladislas, returns home and kills his elderly father for the Bloodstone, a mystical gem that contains the blood of saints—a powerful, addictive elixir.

Radu’s vampiric half-brother (Stefan, played by Michael Watson), arrives and finds his father dead. He, good, kind, and half-human, seeks to avenge his father’s death, and poses as a college student studying local “nocturnal creatures”.

Stefan is not the only new arrival in Prejnar. Three medieval-history-studying college students—Romanian native Mara (Irina Movila), free-spirited Lillian, and bookish and especially resourceful Michelle—show up and stay at a local fort near Castle Vladislas, where Radu lurks.  

When Lillian takes to her bed with “anemia” after secretly being visited by Radu, the blood-fueled sibling conflict between sensitive Stefan and his ruthless, more virile brother (as well as his devilish, pint-sized minions) ratchets into full-blown war, with all around them—including local groundskeeper Karl (Ivan J. Rado, PUPPET MASTER II, 1990)—caught up in their designs.

SUBSPECIES has an authentic Romanian feel, strong writing (a lot of its dialogue comprised of interesting Romanian bloodsucker mythology and real-life history), tight editing (credit Bert Glatstein and William Young), and great cinematography (Vlad Paunescu, whose work adds to the realistic feel of SUBSPECIES) and striking, spooky scenes. The rest of the behind-the-scenes crew nailed it as well. When combined with the strong acting of its cast, particularly Anders Hove’s shadowy, hiss-whispery Radu, all of this makes SUBSPECIES a fun, well-made take on bloodsucker tropes, one worth checking out. 

SUBSPECIES‘s other noteworthy actors include:

Angus Scrimm (PHANTASM, 1979) as the visibly ailing, spirited King Vladislas;

Michelle McBride (THE MASK OF RED DEATH, 1989) as just-do-it Lillian;

Laura Mae Tate (DEAD SPACE, 1991) as the studious Michelle, whose mutual attraction to Stefan might save them.

Followed by four sequels and a spin-off movie, its first sequel BLOODSTONE: SUBSPECIES II (1993).

 

Deep(er) filmic dive

SUBSPECIES is the first American movie to be shot in post-Communist Bucharest, Romania (called Prejnar in the film).

According to IMDb’s Trivia page, Radu’s character was inspired by Radu the Handsome, real-life sibling of Vlad the Impaler.

In Justin Beahm’s article “From TerrorVision to Subspecies: Ted Nicolaou Interviewed (Part One)” (Scream magazine, issue 56, September/October 2019), Nicolaou said that Michael Watson (who played Stefan Vladislas) recommended his GENERAL HOSPITAL co-star Anders Hove to play Radu, and Full Moon head/producer Charles Dance almost immediately cast Hove after meeting him.

Nicolaou also mentioned how Laura Tate (SUBSPECIES’s Michelle) “left the shoot two weeks” before it was completed, after she slept-walked into Nicolaou’s hotel room where she woke and freaked out. Tate’s remaining scenes were shot with a double.

Also noted in Beahm’s article: Nicolaou was a boom operator/sound guy on Tobe Hooper’s THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974). Nicolaou owned the van that Sally and her friends traveled in.

HAUNT (2019)

 

(Directors/screenwriters: Scott Beck and Bryan Woods)

Storyline

Friends experiencing an “extreme” haunted house that preys on their starkest fears discover that the terror tour is more real than they thought.

 

Review

This Eli Roth-produced movie, said by its creators to be influenced by Tobe Hooper’s THE FUNHOUSE (1981), is a fun, clever, and often scary flick, one that mostly dodges the pitfalls of many horror works. The kids touring the Halloween “extreme” terror house, with its inventive death traps, are smart, semi-likeable and brave for the most part (except for a few Plot Convenient Stupid Moments where they flee rather than finish off their easily killed tormentors). These death traps are effective, intriguing set pieces, worthwhile as the masked killer who stalk them (Clown, Devil, Ghost, Vampire and Witch), whose motivations are mysterious─it does not matter why they’re tormenting and brutally murdering these young people, it’s enough to know (for this viewer, at least) that they’re doing it. It lends an inscrutable, force-of-evil feel to their work, a vibe shared by HALLOWEEN’s (1978) Michael Myers.

HAUNT is impressive for how it trusts their viewers like to be smart. Because of this, it jumps around between characters in different parts of the seasonal horror abode, which may be a little confusing for those not giving HAUNT their entire attention. Its slam-bang, satisfying finish makes such a jump, eschewing a spell-it-out ending, which may put off some viewers who prefer familiar, filmic finishes. Rob Zombie fans may appreciate Lissie’s cover of “Dragula” over the credits crawl.

HAUNT is a great, fresh entry in the horror genre. Worth your time, this─I’m not surprised, considering that filmmakers Beck and Woods are two-thirds of writing team that created A QUIET PLACE (2018; director/co-screenwriter: John Krasinski).

LEATHERFACE (2017)

  

(Directors: Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury. Screenwriter: Seth M. Sherwood, his script based on characters created by Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper.)

 

Review

LEATHERFACE, a prequel to THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974) and TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D (2013), opens in 1955 on the Sawyer farm (established in 1845, according to its arched gateway). The murderous family chooses the wrong victim when they lure a young woman (Betty Hartman) onto their farm and kill her. Her date, Ted Hardesty (future father of Sally and Franklin Hardesty, siblings seen in the 1974 film), calls the cops who immediately respond. Not only are the Sawyers known to the police as probable killers (something the cops can’t prove), but Betty is Sheriff Hal Hartman’s adolescent daughter.

Hal Hartman (Stephen Dorff, BLADE, 1998) and his fellow law enforcement brethren find Betty’s body but can’t prove the Sawyers killed her. Raging and grieving, Hal declares Sawyer matriarch Verna to be an unfit mother and takes her tween son (Jedidiah, “Jed”) into “protective custody.”

A decade later, Jed, renamed “Bud” by the authorities for his protection, is a ward of the ECT-brutal Gorman House Youth Reformatory. Jed is a hulking simpleton, whose only ward friends are Jackson (Sam Strike), a good-hearted and emotional young man, and Elizabeth “Lizzy” White, a pretty, sympathetic nurse.

Verna Sawyer─newly surnamed Carson through marriage─shows up with her lawyer (Farnsworth) and demands to see Jed. When Dr. Lang (Christopher Adamson, RAZOR BLADE SMILE, 1998) refuses, citing Jed’s safety, Verna tries to free Jed, who escapes without her. A violent, occasionally gory series of events follows, including a wild road trip for young Jed and his fellow escapees (psychopathic Ike and pyromaniac Clarice, who’ve kidnapped Jackson and Elizabeth) while the cops, led by tough-as-nails Sheriff Hartman, pursue them.

The underrated LEATHERFACE is tonally and continuity-true to the events of TEXAS (1974) and TEXAS 3D (2013), from its grimy, sepia-edged cinematography (the work of Antoine Sanier) to its soundtrack, to the Sawyer house, a faithful copy of their home from the original film (credit production designer Alain Bainée). Seth M. Sherwood’s screenplay and Sébastien de Sainte Croix and Josh Ethier’s editing strike a deft, Terence Malick-esque balance between TEXAS’s underlying horrors and the relative, initial innocence of its traumatized characters─this is a bit of departure for a TEXAS flick, as the rest of the films are more about traditional-horror thrills and kills. Not that LEATHERFACE completely ignores or de-legitimizes the remaining five TEXAS films─it doesn’t, and acknowledges them, e.g., by making Jed’s family surname “Sawyer,” a detail that originally appeared in THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (1986).

Its cast is equally standout. Among them: Lili Taylor (THE ADDICTION, 1995), who played Verna Sawyer/Carson with memorable, maternal intensity; Sam Strike (CHERNOBYL, 2019), who played Jed’s good-hearted, heroic fellow inmate with convincing sincerity, anger, and doubt.

While its story is not groundbreaking, LEATHERFACE’s eschewing of non-stop terror and gore for occasionally bloody drama and character-exploration is a frame-busting flick in a series that too often has fallen into familiar-with-little-variation trappings─it’s worth seeing if you’re watching it for good acting, miasmic mood, downward-spiraling characters, and identity-themed drama.

THE HILLS HAVE EYES (1977)

 

(Director/ screenwriter/editor: Wes Craven)

Review

The bleak, violent HILLS begins with the Carter family road tripping through an American desert. The Carters include: “Big Bob,” a no-nonsense, politically conservative ex-cop; his traditional wife, Ethel; their liberal daughter, Lynne Wood, mother to baby Katy and wife to also-liberal Doug. Lynne’s slightly younger apolitical siblings, Bobby─wearing an Ohio State T-shirt─and Brenda, accompany them on this politically and socially frayed adventure.

The Carters, with Bob at the wheel, stop at a middle-of-nowhere gas station where its old-man attendant (Fred), concerned for their safety, warns them to keep to the main highway. Bob ignores Fred’s advice and takes a desolate “short cut” side road, setting into motion the savage back-and-forth between the Carters and a tunnel-dwelling, cannibal family.

HILLS, which has a gritty, unsettling tone to it from the get-go, takes little time in cutting to a shocking cycle of rape, torture, murder, vengeance, and other territorial violence. Its tone and intensity is appropriate given its themes (racism, class warfare, militarism, and other social problems)─Jupiter’s cannibalistic-by-necessity clan represents the desperate poor, while the Carters are materialistically comfortable middle class.

According to Craven (and IMDb), the film was inspired by three things. The first was the fifteenth-century, Scottish legend of Sawney Beane and his feral family (a wife, fourteen children) who attacked and chowed down on unlucky travelers. Eventually, the Beanes were caught, judged as crazy and executed when they were found. The second was a real-life encounter Craven and his wife had in the state of Nevada, when three locals shot an arrow in his direction; when he protested, they told him they could murder him, leave his corpse in a mine, and get away with it. The third: HILLS is a partial homage to Tobe Hooper’s 1974 movie THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, which HILLS is spiritually akin to (some of Jupiter’s family’s belongings seen in HILLS were props taken from TEXAS).

HILLS has great behind-the-scenes crew and players. Cinematographer Eric Saarinen (DEATH RACE 2000, 1975) imbues HILLS with a harsh, dirty tone, perfectly suiting director/screenwriter Wes Craven’s blunt editing and restless POV shots, giving HILLS further edginess.

The actors who gave form to the Carters/Woods include: Russ Grieve (FOXY BROWN, 1974) as “Big Bob” Carter; Virginia Vincent (THE RETURN OF DRACULA, 1958) as Ethel, his fussy wife; Dee Wallace (THE HOWLING, 1981) as the fiercely protective and maternal Lynne Wood; and Robert Houston (THE HILLS HAVE EYES PART 2, 1984) as the action-oriented Bobby Carter.

John Steadman (SUMMER OF FEAR, 1978) played Fred, the grizzled gas station attendant with a profound sense of sorrow, caution, and fear.

James Whitworth (PLANET OF DINOSAURS, 1977) played Jupiter, barbaric patriarch of his Roman mythology-monikered clan. Horror icon Michael Berryman (ED GEIN: THE BUTCHER OF PLAINFIELD, 2007) played the opportunistic and sometimes terrified Pluto. Janus Blythe (THE HILLS HAVE EYES PART 2) played the not-as-feral-as-her-kin Ruby.

HILLS is a taut, sharp, nasty, and landmark work, one that inspired a Craven-created 1984 cinematic sequel, as well as a 2006 remake and its 2007 sequel. The first HILLS is worth your time if you can appreciate unsettling, sexually and violently graphic exploitation pieces that embody and transcend the primary genre(s) they’re often lumped into─while there’s no explicit nudity in HILLS, its brief assault/sex scenes are disturbing (though not as off-putting as those seen HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, 1986).

SLEEPWALKERS (1992)

 

(Director: Mick Garris. Screenwriter: Stephen King.)

Review

Two half-feline/half-monster shapeshifters─”sleepwalkers”─move into a small town (Travis, Indiana), so that one of them, sick, can feed on a virgin. These sleepwalkers, Mary Brady (Alice Krige, SILENT HILL, 2006) and her vain, seemingly adolescent son (Charles Brady, played by Brian Krause, PLAN 9, 2015), insinuate themselves into the lives of the townspeople, especially the virginal Tanya Robertson (Mädchen Amick, TWIN PEAKS, 1989-91), whom Charles sets his oh-so-charming sights on. But the Bradys’ well-established and oft-executed plans go sideways in a violent and moderately gory way.

Stephen King’s screenplay, not based on any of his published stories or novels, is a silly, fun, and loopy ride, a mix of 1950s science fiction-horror, shapeshifter terror, familiar King settings and elements (cats, small towns, etc.), with late 1980s and early 1990s elements (e.g., Charles’s heavy metal guitar-wank motif) blended in.

It’s an entertaining flick, if you can appreciate its inherent silliness and occasionally icky EC Comics homage roots and often goofy, oddball characters, played by some fine actors, not the least of whom is Clovis the Attack Cat, who really hates sleepwalkers, especially Charles.

Beyond Krige, Krause and Amick, these players include: Cindy Pickett (DEEPSTAR SIX, 1989) as Mrs. Robertson, Tanya’s mother; Lyman Ward (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY’S REVENGE, 1985) as Mr. Robertson, Tanya’s father; Glenn Shadix (BEETLEJUICE, 1988) as Mr. Fallows, a scheming teacher; Dan Martin (NIGHTMARE CINEMA, 2018) as Deputy Andy Simpson, Clovis the Attack Cat’s driver and staff member; Jim Haynie (JACK’S BACK, 1988) as Ira, the town’s sheriff; Ron Perlman (CRONOS, 1993) as Captain Soames, one of Ira’s cynical deputies; and Rusty Schwimmer (CANDYMAN, 1992) as a housewife, seen at the start of this fast-paced film.

Film and book geeks may delight in SLEEPWALKERS’s numerous cameos: Stephen King as “Cemetery Caretaker”; Clive Barker (HELLRAISER, 1987) as a dismissive in-the-field “Forensic Tech”; Tobe Hooper (THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, 1974), an in-the-lab “Forensic Tech,” Joe Dante (THE HOWLING, 1981), another lab “Forensic Tech”; Cynthia Garris (CRITTERS 2, 1988) as Laurie, Hooper and Dante’s fellow “Lab Technician.”

SLEEPWALKERS may prove a worthwhile flick if you’re a fan of King’s MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE (1986) and CREEPSHOW (1982, another EC Comics homage), and don’t mind oddball silliness and characters, with corn on the cob on the side.