WTF Did I Just Watch?: Blood Car (2007)

When I first saw the poster for Blood Car I thought to myself, “This is going to be rad.” I mean, look at it – it’s like Mad Max and Death Race had a low budget blood-baby.

Here’s the IMDB synopsis: In the near future, gas prices are at an astronomical high. One man is determined to find an alternate fuel source. That alternate fuel source turns out to be blood…HUMAN BLOOD.

Directed by: Alex Orr

Starring: Mike Brunn, Anna Chlumsky, and Katie Orr (then Rowlett)

Sounds perfect, yes?

Then I watched the trailer:

Well, at this point, I felt like it could really go either way. Although that man eating the chips – just fucking don’t, how ’bout. I almost yeeted the whole idea right there – you can do that, can’t you? Yeet an idea? Idk, there’s something about that particular bit that just makes my nerves shriek (that’s a thing that can happen, right?).

But Anna Chlumsky is in it, and I liked My Girl, so this could still be okay.

But here’s the thing: I watched the whole movie, and I couldn’t actually decide if I liked it or not. It was just so incredibly bizarre. Some of the acting was good (hello, Chlumsky), some was not so good (I see you, pretty much everybody else).

The concept is fun. I mean, gas prices are routinely insane for all sorts of idiotic reasons while as a world we continue to try to make alternative energy sources as inacessible as possible, so it’s not like the premise is terribly outlandish in that respect.

And it’s got a lot of squirty blood, so that’s always a plus. And the mechanics of the blood tank are pretty bitchin.’

Archie kills me though, and not in a good way. He’s such a pointed example of what is wrong with our world. He’s wishy-washy. It’s infuriating. I mean, he’s vegan, but….he’s okay with you know, the umm…actions necessary to run a car on human blood. Granted, he had been trying unsuccessfully to make it run on wheatgrass juice before accidentally discovering that blood makes a much better fuel.

He has a thing for Lorraine, the vegan juice girl until he has the blood car going. Then, as swiftly as he nopes out on the sanctity of life, he nopes out on all his other ideals and starts in with the meat stand girl, Denise – and she’s kind of the worst. D

Also, why are there just these two opposing stands right next to each other with nothing else around? They just sit like 6 feet apart in a big dirt field.

This is a low-low budget movie. At times it feels like it was no-budget. The camera work and lighting are occasionally terrible, the writing goes back and forth from not-very-good to outright awful, but inspite of these huge marks on it, it isn’t a terrible movie. It’s blessedly short at only 75 minutes, so it doesn’t really run long enough to be annoying or offensive.

Even if money were on the table I couldn’t tell you if I enjoyed this movie. I think it just kind of broke my brain. I think I finally understand that idiotic “it’s bad-good” thing that I’m always railing against IRL.

So here’s what you’ve got:

a sunny-day vegan

an all the time vegan

a sexually aggressive beef temptress

a car that runs on blood

proof that wheatgrass is pointless

plenty of blood geysering

lots of people getting shoved into lawnmower-bladed trunks

a really upsetting dude open-mouth eating chips

You can catch this movie that defies coherent thought on Prime or EPix.