Between 1991 and 1998 the American film company Full Moon Pictures created the most entertaining, attractive, lovingly made and emotionally engaging continuing series of Gothic vampire films in the Institute's collection. The series began with Subspecies (1991), followed by Bloodstone: Subspecies II (1993), Bloodlust: Subspecies III (1994), and the film that closes this arc, Subspecies IV: Bloodstorm (1998). (Subspecies V, the much-awaited prequel, seems unlikely to ever be made at this late remove.) All feature able and stylish yet unobtrusive direction by Ted Nicolaou, who also directed FM's "Vampire Journals" (and actually reads his fan e-mail =).. The series concerns the fortunes of a strikingly cadaverous and charismatic nosferat named Radu Vladislas, and of Michelle Morgan, the American girl he initiates into the mysteries of the undead. A thousand years old, the last survivor of a 9th-Century aristocratic family (having killed all the others off himself), Radu is a revelation: not just another formula bloodsucker drawn from one of the typical templates, but a complete character, understandable and even pitiable, played with ferocious energy and deep compassion by the gifted Anders Hove. Hove's Radu combines the appearance and sinister air of Max Schreck's classic Count Orlock (and even more closely, of Klaus Kinski in the exquisite 1979 remake) with a heartbreaking loneliness and poignancy which remind one of Charles Laughton's pathetic and touching Quasimodo, and a wicked relish that is his alone. The result is a true vampire fan's vampire, a creation that deserves immortality. As for Michelle, her portrayal by Denise Duff is simply wonderful, and deserves much more praise than it seems to get. A brave and strong-willed woman, Michelle fights her developing vampirism and the vampire who made her with single-minded intensity, but even when she yields, yields with an intelligence and grace of spirit that is downright inspiring: determined that if she cannot regain her mortal life she will keep as much humanity as possible in her vampire life. She's the one who ends up in possession of the Bloodstone - with which a vampire can survive without human blood - and she deserves it. (Besides, she answers her fan mail, too. =)
