Review of Subspecies 4: Bloodstorm (1998) by Allan C — 16 Jun 2018

Anders Hove returns as the vampire Radu is the surprisingly good Full Moon Features Charles Band production. Most Band productions are rather tongue-in-cheek, but this Ted Nicolaou written and directed series took a more straight-faced approach and remained consistently good despite it's low budget and some weak acting from the supporting cast.

This fourth and final film in the series has Michelle, the heroine from the previous films, finding herself turned into a vampire and seeking help from a scientist to cure her. This, of course, leads to a confrontation with Radu, who is also having his own royal court intrigue when a vampire fledgling of his, Ash, as well as Ash's fledgling, begin plotting against Radu.

As with the others films, this was filmed during the time when producer Band owned an Eastern European castle, which Nicolaou made the most of to add scope and production value to his low budget endeavors.

The Subspecies films also benefit from a better that average story than most Full Moon Features, and this series feels more like a continuous narrative than stand alone stories or rehashes of the first film, which is the path of far too many sequels.

Overall, "Subspecies: The Awakening" and the series in general are by no means great vampire films, but they're better than the trashy direct-to-video horror film that you might expect and is well worth watching if you're a fan of low-budget horror.