Blood Car (2007)

Sorry I haven't posted in so long. (Who am I apologizing to - Cristie? Bridger?) Nick wrote a paper about remakes of 70s movies, and so we spend a month or so sort of half-watching the two versions of "The Longest Yard," "Alfie," "The Stepford Wives," etc. Nothing I really wanted to write about - though I did get to see both "Shaft"s, and the first "Shaft" is awesome. (Did you know the photog Gordon Parks directed it? I didn't!)

Last night we watched "Blood Car," a campy low-budge film about a guy who discovers a way to make cars run on blood. We got really excited when we saw the movie in "I Love Video," because there was this awesome moment at the end of the Peter Fonda movie "Idaho Transfer" when future humanoids use people as fuel for their cars. It was totally terrifying, and by far the best moment in the movie (the rest of it was kind of boring).

This "Blood Car" is about a future in which gas costs 32 dollars a gallon, and so nobody drives. Not much commentary on possible other effects of this change - nobody talks about not being able to see relatives in distant places, dying b/c of not being able to get to the hospital, whatever; the kids are still in school, the society still basically functions. People are just annoyed that they can't use their cars.

To me, this failure to look at the problem holistically kind of indicates a lack of ambition of the part of the filmmakers - and maybe that's okay. This is just a movie about a cute, mild-mannered, skinny vegan schoolteacher who is so desperate to get laid that he kills people in order to power his car, which in turn garners him the sexual favors of a hot, unlikeable young thing named Denise.

There are funny moments, to be sure, and the concept is still basically fascinating, but a bigger-budget movie could do much darker things with the plot. (Though of course, shooting kids in the head in order to get fuel is pretty dark.)