Following the naming convention of Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), Bloodstone: Subspecies II starts with a Hellraiser-esque scene where the decapitation head of Radu connects back to his body and reforms him. Radu then slays his brother Stefan with a stake, who quickly decomposes. Both effects are great and set the movie up nicely. Radu wants to kill Michelle—the pixie cut hero of the first movie, now turned luscious vampire—but is foiled by that pesky sun. Michelle manages to escape with the mighty bloodstone to Bucharest.
Radu is still a menacing creature, with his fangs and long fingers and nails. He has the same voice as Eddie Redmayne’s character in Jupiter Ascending (2015), but here it actually works. Director Ted Nicolaou and cinematographer Vlad Paunescu play a lot with shadows when he is in the scene to show his otherworldliness, similar to what Francis Ford Coppola did in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992). It’s not them stealing, though, because they also did it, to a lesser extent, in the original Subspecies (1991).
Radu gets help from his mummy mommy, a Crypt Keeper-like creature, as he seeks the bloodstone from Michelle. Enter her sister, Rebecca, who comes to Romania after Michelle pleads her for help—Rebecca is played by Melanie Shatner, the daughter of William Shatner. Rebecca gains possession of the bloodstone and is desperate to find Michelle and help her. That action is mixed with the fact that Michelle is a vampire and desperately does not want to be one. She hungers for blood but can’t go through with harming a human.
While not as good as Subspecies (1991), Bloodstone: Subspecies II manages to keep the same great vibe and feel of the first film. It looks good, well shot and color graded with some beautiful scenes. The acting is solid, the effects cool, and the story works, although it does bear resemblance to the one in Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf (1985).
