Movie Info
Movie Name: Bloodstone: Subspecies II
Studio: Full Moon Entertainment
Genre(s): Horror/B-Movie
Release Date(s): May 26, 1993
MPAA Rating: R
Radu’s got mommy-issues…
Radu (Anders Hove) has been reborn and killed his brother. Now Michelle (Denice Duff) is on the run with the bloodstone, and Radu wants it back. Michelle is adjusting to her new life as a vampire and contacts her sister Rebecca (Melanie Shatner) for help. When Rebecca arrives in Europe to find her sister missing and possibly dead, she teams with embassy employee Mel (Kevin Spirtas), a detective Marin (Ion Haiduc), and an anthropologist Nicolai Popescu (Michael Denish) to seek out Michelle…but Radu wants Michelle too, and Rebecca could be his perfect bait!
Directed by Ted Nicolaou, Bloodstone: Subspecies II is a direct-to-video vampire horror film. A sequel to Subspecies from 1991, the Full Moon Entertainment movie was low-budget and poorly received.
Full Moon movies were a big thing in the mid to late ’90s. The video market boom was going on, it was cheap to make and get videos, and Full Moon took total advantage of it. They would put out movies in rapid succession and spread through different series. Subspecies II continues the series and starts to turn it more into a story with multiple parts rather than a rounded sequel.
I’m a little over the top, over-makeup woman!
The movie essentially goes for the second part of a trilogy in style. The film introduces a bunch of aspects like Radu’s mother, Michelle’s bloodlust, and her sister Rebecca’s attempt to save her. It just continues to load on characters and there isn’t much of a plot (except Radu wants the bloodstone for really an unknown reason since he doesn’t seem to use it much). It is a lot of vampire melodrama (something that was popular at the time due to Anne Rice). It also is the type of movie where characters set out to slay vampires just before sunset instead of waking up early to do it.
The movie recasts Michelle with Denice Duff and brings in her sister Rebecca played by William Shatner’s daughter Melanie Shatner. The movie adds a rather generic boyfriend-eque hero named Mel played by Kevin Spirtas (who just leaves near the end of the movie), a goofy professor Michael Denish who is the obvious sacrifice, and a bumbling European detective in Ion Haiduc…Anders Hove continues to eat up his scenes through overacting and is joined by the over the top mother character played by Pamela Gordon.
William Shatner’s daughter plus a couple of bad vampire slayers…
The special effects and look of the movie continue to be rather cheap and basic. It appears that the movie had a smaller budget than the first Subspecies (which is a problem) and the visuals are a step down (and they weren’t high anyway).
Bloodstone: Subspecies II almost feels like filler. You are watching it, you know in your mind that Full Moon is already making a sequel, and in horror fashion, you know that the bad guy isn’t going to die…all aspects of those thoughts are true. This negates suspense or thrills and since the suspense and thrills are generally lacking the Full Moon archives, that hurts the overall film. The events of Bloodstone: Subspecies II are followed immediately by the events of Bloodlust: Subspecies III in 1994.
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