Gasoline, Ethanol, Blood.

After being on my Ziplist for what seemed like FOREVER, Blood Car finally arrived in my mailbox this week. Blood Car is a flick that was at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival last year, but I was unable to attend due to a wedding. Yeah I know… the nerve of these people! I’ve told my friends not to get married in September/October – my busiest movie months – but do they ever listen? Anyway, I’d heard from some people that DID go that it was good, so I finally got to see for myself.

Blood Car is set in a future where gasoline is so expensive; no one can afford to drive anymore. Archie (Michael Brune), a young teacher, strives to develop a wheat grass fuelled engine. One night, he accidentally adds his own blood to the formula and his car engine comes alive! Now, with women lining up to be taken for a ride, he has to resort to extreme measures to keep his car running.

I have to say that Blood Car won me over early; like before I even pressed play. With a DVD menu like THIS –

- they were already ahead of the game. Blood Car is the epitome of the term ‘exception to the rule’. It feels like an elongated short, but never seems stretched out like low budget features often do. The bare bones appearance of the production, rather than being a detractor, almost comes off as charming at points. What really makes Blood Car work though, is that it is actually funny. There are several laugh out lines and some sequences that are just so absurd, all you can do is laugh. There are so many oh no you didn’t moments like the prolonged scene where Archie is wandering around town with his pellet gun looking for animal ‘fuel’. Blood Car also features the now grown up Anna Chlumsky, who I kept having to remind myself wasn’t Mena Suvari.

The music is a weird mix of classical and contemporary that seems like it may have been thrown together, but again somehow works. And for a movie called BLOOD Car, there isn’t a gratuitous amount of gore. This is yet another thing you would think would be a problem, but isn’t. Also, there’s not a lot of time spent explaining things either. Things just ARE, hence said absurdity. The creators were clearly aware of where viewers would expect the story to go and deliberately circumvent that by making the conclusion as ridiculous as possible.

When I was watching the behind-the-scenes stuff, someone mentions the date being August 20, 2007. That means they were still shooting two months before the finished movie screened at After Dark. That’s some quick post work guys! I know that a first cut was done at that point, but that’s still pretty impressive.

You know, I was kind of hoping Blood Car would blow, thus erasing my lament of having to miss it last year. Alas, no such luck. It would have been really cool to see it with an audience and hang with the filmmakers. I rank it among the best of the ’07 After Dark crop, probably third behind Alone and Mulberry Street.