Bloodstone: Subspecies II
Tags:
bloodstone: subspecies ii | bloodstone: subspecies 2 | subspecies | subspecies 2 | subspecies II | sequel | vampire | ghoul | ted nicolaou | anders hove | denice duff | kevin spirtas | fantasy | thriller | united states | full moon
Film: Bloodstone: Subspecies II
Year: 1993
Director: Ted Nicolaou
Writer: Ted Nicolaou
Starring: Anders Hove, Denice Duff and Kevin Spirtas
Review:
This film picks up right where the last one left off. The vampire Radu, played by Anders Hove, has been decapitated and a stake in his heart. His minions though remove the stake and push his head close to his body. It is able to reattach itself and he comes back to life. It is still not night yet, so he goes into the room where his brother sleeps in a coffin. He drives a stake through his heart and takes the Bloodstone. He now can be with the woman, Denice Duff.
Duff wakes up when it is night, takes the Bloodstone and flees from this area. She gets on a train and is chased by Hove. She goes to Budapest. There she calls her sister and asks to come help her. She is distraught about everything that has happened in the past couple of days. She checks into the room to wait for her.
Hove goes to meet his mother, played by Pamela Gordon. She is a hideous creature that looks to be almost blind and in a level of decay. She tells him he is forbidden to be in the crypt that she lives in. He informs her that his father and brother are dead. She is overjoyed at this news and asks for the Bloodstone. Hove has to inform her that he doesn’t have it. She demands he kills Duff and bring the stone to her. She tells him that he can’t stay there either, he must return to his father’s castle to perform a ritual. He uses his ability to become a shadow to travel back there.
The next morning, the maids come to clean Duff’s room and find her in the bathtub. She freaked out earlier that morning when the sun was coming up and fled in there to hide. When they arrive, they think she is dead and the police are called. The man in charge of the investigation is played by Ion Haiduc. They put her in a body bag and try to take her to the morgue. She wakes up on the way as it is getting dark out. This causes them to get in an accident and she flees.
Duff’s sister arrives at the hotel looking for her; the sister is played by Melanie Shatner. She talks with Haiduc and a man from the American embassy; he is played by Kevin Spirtas. Her stuff is given to Shatner and they ask her about the Bloodstone, that they found amongst her things. She states she’s never seen it before. They start their search to find her.
This leads them to meeting with a former professor who tells them where her and her friends were studying; he is played by Michael Denish. They go out to the area and to the castle. They are under the impression it is empty, but run into Hove who demands they leave immediately. They apologize and do. Upon returning to Budapest, Shatner runs into her sister, who tells her that she needs to leave. They encounter the shadow of Hove and this causes Duff to flee again.
She goes to a rock club where she leaves with a rocker, who is played by Viorel Sergovici. She bites his neck and drinks his blood. She was given the Bloodstone by her sister and gives it to Hove. She is considering joining him as his fledging. He takes her to his mother’s crypt to rest before returning to his castle.
Denish takes Spirtas, Haiduc and Shatner to an attic he keeps full of books that were going to be burned. They find a volume on Hove’s father and the legend of the vampires. Inside they see an etching of the Bloodstone. Denish wants them to go with him to kill Hove and save Duff. Only Shatner will go though.
Will they be able to kill Hove and save Duff? Or will they become victims to these two vampires? Can they get the powerful Bloodstone away from Hove before it is too late?
I believe I tried renting this as a kid without seeing the first one and didn’t get far into it, because I immediately realized that I was missing the beginning of the story. One thing I really liked about this film is that it does pick up where the previous one left off. The first scene is the last scene from the previous film. That is a big thing for me as a story person, because if you violate that it doesn’t sit well with me. Continuity is very important. I think Hove is great as Radu and I really believe he is that character. I liked that they have him a vampire in the veins of Nosferatu or Kurt Barlow. Hove is constantly dripping blood from his mouth. He is a monster unlike the suave Draculas you see out there. I also felt the rest of the cast was pretty good for a film liked this.
There were some issues for this film for me though. The first issue being that I disliked how they brought back Hove. I feel like the director, Ted Nicolaou, didn’t originally plan on there being a sequel so he killed Radu and that was going to be it. We all know that vampires die by getting a stake driven through their heart and it best to decapitate them as well. It doesn’t make sense that just pulling the stake from his heart that he comes back to film, especially because minutes later he kills his brother in the same way and he became dust. Now if they would explain why he could come back a little, I would feel much better about it. Just seems like they violated the rules and I hate that. I liked Gordon’s character as Mummy, but I really wish we would learn about what she is. She is awake during the day, so she’s not a vampire. She is some sort of ghoul, but I want to know more about this character and I didn’t get it. For this film also being titled Bloodstone, there is less about it in this film really than the previous as well. I also didn’t like that Denish claims Duff and her friends were in the monastery studying vampires. That wasn’t true as they were studying the castle and why it wasn’t talked about much in history. The vampire story they learned while they were there.
Now with that said, I felt this is a pretty good vampire film. It is low budget, being made by Full Moon. This company was big in the late 1980’s and the 1990’s with making these types of films. As a kid I loved all of the ones that I saw. I think the acting in this film is pretty good for a film from this company. The story to this film is pretty good in that for the most part it keeps the continuity. There were some issues that I had, but none completely ruin the film and some of you might not be bothered by what I was. Now this isn’t the greatest vampire film, but I have definitely seen much worse. If you liked the original, I would recommend giving this one a viewing. You could watch this one as it does fill you in on what happened previously, but not completely necessary to enjoy it.
My Rating: 6 out of 10