The First Four Subspecies: Blood, Shadows, and the Bargain Bin Apocalypse

Imagine, if you will, a world where vampires don’t shimmer, don’t brood with sculpted abs, and don’t whisper poetic nihilism into the ears of sad-eyed teenagers. Instead, they *lurk*—all jagged teeth, shadowed grottoes, and the kind of Eastern European dread that smells like moldy VHS tapes and regret. This is *Subspecies*, the most gloriously deranged straight-to-video vampire saga that Full Moon Features ever unleashed upon the late-night horror ecosystem.  

The first film (*Subspecies*, 1991) introduces us to Radu Vladislas, a Nosferatu-meets-‘80s-metal-roadie bloodsucker with fingers like rusted daggers and the personality of a cryptkeeper who’s been snorting ground-up tombstones. He’s after the Bloodstone, an ancient relic that drips eternal blood and grants unholy power—a MacGuffin so beautifully unnecessary it might as well have come from a lost *Castlevania* cutscene. There’s also his goody-two-fangs brother Stefan, a love story nobody asked for, and some American college girls who exist primarily to scream, run, and make questionable life choices.  

By *Subspecies II: Bloodstone* (1993), things go full *Dark Shadows* by way of Cinemax After Dark. Radu is back—because of course he is, nobody stays dead in these movies—and his obsession with converting Michelle, the protagonist, becomes less “eerie gothic seduction” and more “restraining order waiting to happen.” This entry leans hard into mood—fog-drenched Transylvanian castles, flickering torchlight, and enough shadowy corridors to make a Hammer Horror fan weep with joy.  

*Bloodlust: Subspecies III* (1994) follows directly, and by this point, Radu is basically a slasher villain with aristocratic delusions. More Michelle drama, more eerie castles, more bloodstone nonsense. It’s a fever dream of vampire politics and low-budget excess.  

Then there’s *Subspecies IV: Bloodstorm* (1998), where things get *weird*—as if they weren’t already. Radu’s resurrection count is at least *three* by now, Michelle is fully traumatized, and the film doubles down on soap-opera-meets-ghoul-punk energy. The tone is both elegiac and grimy, like an Anne Rice novel rewritten by a Romanian biker gang.  

The beauty of *Subspecies* isn’t in its coherence or even its plot—it’s in its atmosphere. These movies drip with gothic decay, shot on location in Romania, giving them an authentic weight that most low-budget horror never achieves. It’s a series that feels like a half-remembered nightmare you once had after passing out in front of *Tales from the Crypt* reruns and waking up to a *USA Up All Night* marathon.  

If you grew up haunting video stores, flipping through sun-bleached VHS covers with lurid promises of *forbidden horror*, then *Subspecies* is your church, your pulpit, your communion of cheap thrills and atmospheric terror. It’s horror with dirt under its fingernails and fangs stained with synthetic blood.  

Not art. Not garbage. Something stranger. Something... eternal.  

#### Final Verdict:  

If you love your vampires elegant and brooding, stay away. But if you want your bloodsuckers *feral*, your castles *crumbling*, and your horror *bathed in the glow of a dying tube TV*—welcome home.