SHE SAID:

(Originally posted on April 18, 2012)

Blood Car.  Simple, elegant, and wicked cool, eh?  After attending a director’s panel at the Sidewalk Film Fest in Birmingham, AL and hearing the director say this about his movie, “I wanted to make a movie you’d find on the shelf at your local video store.  One with tits, blood and cars.” I had to find and watch.  And I must say MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, Mr. Director.  Not only is there a car that runs on blood but there’s lots of sex–the dirty kind, the awkward kind and some of the just plain interesting variety.

Gas prices have soared in the near future, now averaging $32/gallon, so people can no longer afford to drive.  Enter one mild-mannered vegan kindergarten teacher named Archie who is working on making an engine that runs on wheatgrass.  Unfortunately he’s had no luck.  But then his luck changes when he accidentally cuts himself and realizes that (of course) BLOOD is the secret ingredient to having a happy car!  Over the course of his journey, Archie becomes….well…..let’s just say he’s less of a peace-loving environmentally friendly guy by the end.  But who can blame him?  Let’s face it, the blood to run a car has to come from somewhere right? So of course he has to be less of a nice guy!  Add in the fact that there’s a secret agency after him to get the secrets of his car and it’s no wonder he gets a little cranky.

Featuring a turn by Anna Chlumsky, as a girl who runs a vegan stand and is in love with Archie, “Blood Car” is definitely a fun ride, best suited for adolescent boys or fans of such movies as “Bad Taste”.

HE SAID:

BLOOD CAR (2007) FOUR TOP HATS

(Originally posted on May 8, 2012)

~ Strong language in this post ~

WHAT? How have I never heard of this beauty?? Blood Car was fantastically awesome! Why doesn’t anyone ever tell me anything? What’s going on around here? “China is here? What does that mean, ‘China is here’? I don’t even know what the hell that means.”  I don’t know anything. “Wire-tapping Russians??!? What year do you live in??!! You suck. That doesn’t make any god dammed sense, you mother fucker!” That first quote is from Big Trouble in Little China that I had to get worked into something before I expire and the second is a quote from this movie here – and this movie is absolutely hilarious and filled with LOL dialogue all the way around. To be sure, this totally won’t be for everyone, or maybe not even for many people, but this was right up my alley! This is filled with blood and boobs and gratuitous sex and, really, dialogue that I wish I would have been the guy who wrote it. If we wanted to address the acting, it is what it is coming from the two leads Mike Brune and Anna Chlumsky (of all people) but I thought the lady who played Denise (Katie Rowlett) really stole the show – well – her and a guy credited as Mr. Malt who cracked me up as the car jacker who busts out some paper to do some math because “Just because he’s from the hood, mother fucker, that don’t mean he can’t do math, you mother fucker!!”

So gas is $32.00 a gallon and no one drives any longer since no one can afford it but, according to the opening monologue, people still have sex in cars but they do it in junk yards – and yes they do. Our main man Archie (Brune) is a mild mannered, Vegan Kindergarten teacher who wears shirts with slogans like “Meat is Murder” and “Dolphins are Dandy” who spends his day reading to little children and his nights developing an engine that can run on wheatgrass, which he buys from Chlumsky’s “Veg Table” stand. Chlumsky’s Lorraine is all about Archie and spends her time drawing pictures of her giving him an explicit BJ but he’s more into the chick (Rowlett’s hilariously filthy talking “Denise”) who runs the Meat Stick booth next door. One night he drinks a fifth of a very nicely labeled vodka, cuts his hand, drips some blood in the motor and it fires right up! Score! The next day he drives his souped up Honda (I think) to get some more wheat juice and Denise promises him some oral satisfaction if he gives her a ride. Well, he does and she does but the car runs out of gas before the job is finished so she stops and tells him there’s more where that came from if he takes her to the drive in the next night.

Of course he’s got to find some more fuel so he builds a kind of fan in his trunk to cut up things and produce blood for the engine and then goes around killing local small animals (bawling the entire time, mind you) with his BB gun. Well the animals fail to fire the engine up but luckily poor, Old Mrs. Butterfield upstairs just died so he throws her over the balcony, stuffs her in his trunk and away he goes again. Sure enough he gets what’s promised there at the drive in, and again in the Mexican Food joint and then up his own, uh,  exitway and he even gets a little pee on him, but now he’s obsessed and has to keep producing more fuel.

That fuel comes in the form of the car jacker, a gas station attendant, a disabled veteran, a hitch hiker and three or four government agents (who are tracking him and his invention). Eventually we get to the end and I can’t finish this up without mentioning the crack-me-up closing “montage” of a sort where the government does what the government does best. This is almost a must-see-again just for that and the scene with Mr. Malt. So, this very low budget was totally awesome and I loved it, but there were a couple of things that I noticed were mistakes (like that bullet hole coming and going) but that shouldn’t take away from the hilarity here. I love things that don’t take themselves too seriously and this one sure didn’t and I can’t wait to see it again. But – this public service is here to let you know that this might not be for everyone.