Ghoulies/Subspecies

I was reading through some of my previous posts the other day. I know that the majority of the people that read my blog are personal acquaintances of mine, either friends or family, and likely don’t know who Charles Band is. The same can be said about their knowledge of his film companies. With that in mind, I decided maybe I should play the role of educator. In this post I will do a little blurb about each company. I will do an in depth post about Charles in the future.

Empire Pictures was the distribution company that Charles Band formed in 1983. Prior to the creation of Empire Pictures Charles band was having problems getting Charles Band International Productions movies distributed by other motion picture companies. Empire Pictures only lasted until 1988. They were forced out of business due to financial problems. Charles Band sold Empire to Epic Entertainment.

Full Moon started in 1989. Rather than pushing for theatrical releases, Full Moon has always specialized in the direct to video market. That decision has proved to be very successful for Full Moon. They are still striving 25 years later. Full Moon is known for several cult favorites such as Puppet Master, Subspecies, and Gingerdead Man to name a few.

Now that you are a little more familiar with the two film companies, let’s go over a couple of their movies.

First up is Ghoulies, which was a theatrical release by Empire International in 1985. The film became a huge success when it was released on video. The story line is the simple occult rituals gone wrong story. Ghoulies is probably best known for the promo pictures, and video box cover, with the creature sticking out of the toilet, and the tagline ‘They’ll get you in the end’. Following the success of the film, there were three sequels released. The latest, Ghoulies IV, was released in 2007.

Next up is Subspecies, which was released direct to video by Full Moon in 1991. Like Ghoulies, Subspecies spawned three sequels. Unlike Ghoulies, it also spawned a spin off, Vampire Journals. The Subspecies series was nothing more than the typical vampire story. One very cool fun fact about the movie is that it was shot on location in Romania.