#subspecies movies

[borninwinter81]

Quick and simple t-shirt mod

My Subspecies shirt arrived, and thankfully its a good quality one, not a dropshipper or an Ali Express resell. It actually despatched from the UK in spite of the pricing being in dollars, so I think it might be print to order and they just send the order to a printer in whatever country the customer is in. Link for the site here, they have a few other horror shirts but seem to mostly sell merch for the Australian extreme metal band, Portal - I would highly recommend this band to anyone who likes bizarre, avant-garde, experimental or just fucking weird extreme music.

Anyway, I almost always mod my shirts to make them a little more interesting. I crop them because although I'm pretty slim I have hyperlordosis (a slight inward spinal curvature) that makes certain clothing including long shirts look really unflattering on me. If I crop a shirt to my natural waist it looks way better, though sometimes if the design is large I have to make a decision between losing part of it, or having it look unflattering. Not a problem with this one thankfully, the design is printed pretty high on the shirt.

I also usually cut out the neck and cut the sleeves off. Partially to show more of my tattoos but also because I prefer the way it looks. If I leave the sleeves on it, it tends to be a skinny-fit shirt.

After that I would usually cut and weave the sides or the back (there are many tutorials for different ways to do this online), but for this shirt I had the idea to add eyelets and laces. The shoulder stitching tends to come undone when you cut out the neck and sleeves of a t shirt so I needed some way of securing that part back together anyway, and they're nice and visible there.

Eyelets are cheap, and inserting them is super easy - just make a hole with something sharp. Though I have a leather punch, for this kind of thin stretchy fabric I usually use my scratch awl, but you can easily do it with scissors. Eyelets come in a pack with a tool for setting them in place, and you need a hammer to hit them a few times. Make sure you're on a very sturdy surface as you need plenty of resistance to get them nice and secure. A concrete floor is best.

I just folded the fabric in half to get the middle ones in the right spot but you can measure the spacing if you have more to put in.

I had boot laces to hand because I always save them if I get rid of a pair of old boots, but you could use pretty much anything you have available- ribbon, lace, even long strips of the t shirt fabric that you cut off.

I laced them up, tied them very tightly and then covered the knots in fabric glue to make sure they don't come undone. Then I trimmed them to the right length, and as they're synthetic (so, plastic) I used a lighter to melt the ends slightly to make sure they won't fray.

I had the bright idea to also singe the knots, forgetting of course that the glue would be flammable so the whole knot caught fire, but thankfully I reacted quick and blew it out straight away! At least they're very unlikely to come undone now, but please be extremely careful if you choose to do anything involving a naked flame!

I was going to add more eyelets down the sides to make it tighter, but I don't have enough left, and actually it's fairly tight already. I also may do something to the back as there's no print there and it looks a little plain, but for now I'm very happy with this.

[unpopularhorroropinions]

Subspecies' Radu is wasted on his franchise

I say this lovingly, believe it or not. The Subspecies series is one of my all-time favorites. It's the first vampire movie to ever actually be shot in Romania, practical effects are amazing, the lighting in the sequels is gorgeous (the first movie, though, unfortunately shows its budget), and it's a throwback to the Gothic vampires of old with a few interesting twists. BUT IT'S SO CHEESY. Which brings me to the reasoning for the title. Spoilers for 25+ year old movies ahead.

Radu, the malevolent antagonist throughout the series, looks very much like your average evil vampire, and acts like it, too, reveling in the suffering of his prey and hatred for the human race. But as the series goes on, it becomes clear that he's ultimately a sad, lonely individual who has been spurned by both his mother and his father, the former who hates him and smothers him; the latter who fears him and denied him his birthright. He's seen centuries pass by, and likely embraced evil to cope with the pain of his prolonged existence (I'm saying all this excluding the prequel from my headcanon, mind you, because I found it to be fairly weak and filled with retcons).

He starts out proud of his vampirism, belittling his brother Stefan for showing feelings of an almost human nature (please get the reference) and threatening to make the three women his "consorts". At the end of the first movie, he haughtily boasts, "You can't kill me Stefan! Nothing can!" before Stefan lops off his head. Come the sequel, he is brought back by his minions, the eponymous plot-irrelevant creatures who really would have looked better if Ted Nicolau had just used actors like he'd originally planned. He then kills his brother and stomps on his bones while screaming "BASTARD! BASTARD! BASTARD!" at him, his coat noticeably coming loose from his shoulder all the while and his elongated fingers (which were prosthetics in the first, but replaced by a glove from the second onwards) wobbling. At the end of the movie, he threatens Michelle that he'll "desecrate [her sister] in ways that will haunt her forever" if she doesn't surrender to him.

Contrast this attitude with the third movie, Bloodlust (my favorite of the bunch), where he's back from the dead again and now holds Michelle in his captivity. While he is still unquestionably evil, it's clear that he's very much in love with her. That, for all his misanthropic tendencies, he is desperate for connection. Desperate to feel loved. Unfortunately, his perception of love is warped. He wants to force Michelle to shed the last traces of her humanity so that she can love him in return, which is an extraordinarily shitty thing to do. But he does seem to have learned a few things about basic kindness and mercy, allowing her to watch the sunrise with him (when Michelle asks him what can kill a vampire, he responds, "Many things"; on paper, this comes off clunky, but it also shows that he's come a long way over the past few nights, when not long ago, he bragged that nothing could kill him), letting her say goodbye to her sister with no strings attached, and even shows what seems to be genuine remorse for being the monster that he knows he is. Even in the fourth movie, which is the most frustrating to watch in the entire franchise, he's kind enough to give a homeless man a coin in exchange for his robe, telling him to buy himself a new one.

A few things that make Radu such a great villain: as Maven of the Eventide pointed out, he's given an in-depth backstory, which is a rarity for many vampires. Even Dracula himself didn't have an elaborate backstory, and there's only ever speculation on who he might have been. The Vlad story was just added in later. He's also well-developed in ways you wouldn't expect in a B-movie. Goes from being an aspiring badass vampire lord to being a bit of a pathetic downtrodden momma's boy who just so happens to be evil to, well, still pathetic and evil, but also sympathetic to the point where his painful and gruesome death in Bloodlust comes across as tragic. Even when he's pissed off at Michelle for spurning him and expresses a desire to kill her (supposedly; it's difficult to tell how serious he was about wanting to kill her, could have just been trying to avoid showing weakness to Ash), he still shows a few traces of decency and compassion. It really says a lot that he works better as a sympathetic villain than Dracula does in Coppola's adaptation.

The prequel, while only maybe a slight improvement over Bloodstorm, at least manages to continue the trend in making him a tragic villain. In some ways, it does even better. He doesn't have any of his hammy, overacted moments that he did in the first four movies, he's not portrayed as some pathetic momma's boy, and the tragedy surrounding his abominable birth and his induction into the band of crusaders, along with the centuries of loneliness that pass him by, are all played in such a straightforward manner. He's played as much more of a cruel sadist with the passage of time, but still, you feel sorry for him, as he's continually abandoned, betrayed, left to suffer, to where he's left with little more choice than to embrace the evil he was destined for at birth.

Now, to get back to the title of this post, what I mean is that for all his depth as a character, and for all the charm of the series that I love unironically, he's still stuck in a B-movie franchise that to this day remains obscure next to the likes of Hammer Horror, Universal Monsters, Anne Rice, Blade, or the post-Twilight wave of vampire fiction. As such, he'll never rise to the same level as any of them in terms of popularity. Which... I'm ultimately fine with. It's just a shame that he'll never really reach that potential.

[theclumsysuccubus]

I exist solely to create the worst Subspecies fanart of all time

[kingbuffy]

My pre-order for Subspecies 5 came in the mail!!! I'm really interested in what it's gonna be like considering it's been over 20 years since the last movie. I'm no critic when it comes to this series though, all I care about is how fun it'll be.

[classichorrorblog]

10 Overlooked 1990s Horror Movies To Consider For October/Halloween

[fanofspooky]

Scream King - Angus Scrimm

[irina-irina-irina]

Subspecies (1991)

[one-with-the-tree]

The way my suspension of disbelief is instantly ruined when a movie uses the incorrect wolf subspecies for the location where the movie is set.

[mater-argento]

[zaat]

The Subspecies creatures in Subspecies (1991) dir. Ted Nicolaou

[borninwinter81]

Being part of a niche fandom is:

Ordering a t-shirt to be sent from the US to the UK, with no idea whether the site is even legit, because its the only shirt you can find with artwork you like.

Link here in case by the tiniest possible chance anyone sees this who also wants one.

Bonus pics of Radu from last night's re-watching of the first movie. Yes I did just take photos of the screen!

[brokehorrorfan]

Full Moon has released a full-scale replica of the bloodstone from the Subspecies franchise. Cast from the screen-used prop, the light-up statue measures 8.5" high, 7" long, and 5" wide.

Limited to 300, it costs $299.95. A certificate of authenticity signed by director Ted Nicolaou and producer Charles Band is included.

[slimewalk]

[zachfett]

Subspecies (1991) Directed by Ted Nicolaou Cinematography by Vlad Păunescu

This is my favorite Full Moon movie, by far. I love Radu Vladislas' raspy voice, the soundtrack, the atmosphere, and the criminally underutlized red minions. Great stuff. I ended up watching the entire series in a week, though I have quite a few gripes with those and none of them come close to how great the first one is.

There is however one film in the series/universe that I'll be posting Halloween night because it was surprisingly good, and the main actor shares an uncanny resemblance to a certain popular streamer..

[butw0rldenough]

Subspecies, 1991

[isabeauwolf]

What musical score or instrumental piece has stuck with you since you saw the movie?

Here's mine!

Yes, I know most of them are from Vampire films, but can you blame me? XD