Tackling a Rod Like a Princess

Blood Car Review

Blood Car

Never being one to follow the festival scene, it seems that I miss out on a lot of great entries from some promising young filmmakers. Year after year, all sorts of awards are given to new and creative films, most of which I never even hear of. One film that made a lot of noise in 2007 with awards like Official Selection and Best Narrative Feature Film, among many others, is getting a home video re-release, eight years later. The film I’m referring to is Alex Orr’s black comedy, Blood Car.

Gas prices have increased to a staggering $35 per gallon and rising, making it virtually impossible for anybody to afford being able to continue driving their vehicles. Kindergarten teacher and vegan, Archie Andrews, is working on an alternative fuel source made entirely from wheatgrass, but no matter how hard he tries, his engine keeps failing. That is, until he accidentally cuts his hand on some broken glass and inadvertently adds some blood to his wheatgrass concoction. For some unknown reason, the engine works perfectly using blood as fuel, but now Archie has to find a way to keep his supply plentiful.

With a title reminiscent of an obscure 80’s horror film long forgotten (i.e. Death Bed – The Bed That Eats), Blood Car plays out less like a horror flick and more like a twisted comedy. Sure there is plenty of the red stuff that genre fans fiend for — the film does have ‘blood’ in the title after all — but the most entertaining part of the film really comes from its comedic prowess.

With a small cast, the acting throughout Blood Car is really very good. With the exception of some of the government agents, which I could have done without, everyone really does very well here. I loved that the film starred Anna Chlumsky as the socially awkward Lorraine who ran the vegan stand, ‘The Veg-table.’ Although she has had steady work in films and television, I personally haven’t seen Chlumsky since 1991’s My Girl and thought she did great in her quirky little role. A lot of the film’s great one-liners were delivered by the superficial seductress, Denise, played impressively by the beautiful Katie Rowlett and while I got a bunch of chuckles whenever she was on-screen, my favorite performance was definitely delivered by the film’s main attraction, Mike Brune, playing Archie.

Brune’s best work was when he was actually on-screen alone, regretfully shooting animals to increase his blood supply, and later after killing two people to get to Denise for their ‘date’ on time. His crying and blubbering was very entertaining and made me laugh out loud a couple of times, keeping this bloody film to its true lighthearted nature.

Blood Car is a rather short film coming in at 76 minutes; It is a great film to watch with some buddies, especially if one of those buddies happens to be a vegan or vegetarian. Be sure to pick up a copy of Blood Car on DVD from Horizon Movies and Kino Lorber next Tuesday, March 3rd.

I give this flick 3.5 all natural, organic candy bars out of 5.

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