Tuesday, April 17----Perhaps one of the many lessons to be learned from the hemmoraging of money (and reputation) that is GRINDHOUSE, the Tarantino-Rodriguez-Weinstein Brothers box office fiasco, is that if you are going to do a sleazy, low-budget exploitation film, don't spend $100 million dollars on making and marketing it. The Weinsteins, usually known for this business savvy, way overreached on this one....not fully understanding that the film geeks obsessions of their tyro directors is not exactly shared among the great unwashed. For every jump cut, fuzzy frame, bad sound and lack of continuity that GRINDHOUSE slavishly (and expensively) tried to get just right, a much smaller film with a budget that wouldn't even cover Tarantino's cappuccino bill, does.

BLOOD CAR by Alex Orr could be termed the anti-GRINDHOUSE. It hit all its notes perfectly, nailing and sending up the exploitation genre, with a dose of environmental topicality. In the film's wildly inventive plot, an everyman who is tired of rising gas prices and the obscene profits of the oil conglomerates, decides to take matters into his own hands....by building a blood car, a car that runs on blood (clearly more available than oil). In this campy instant cult film, Orr mixes buckets-of-blood horror with social commentary and even a little sex for good measure. When our hero falls for the girl of his dreams, he must make a critical decision about how much bloodletting he will do in order to keep his automobile in good running order.

The film is already providing some high octane for its writer/director, having won the Vision Award at the Cinequest Film Festival in February, and receiving strong reviews in the film trades. One could say that the film's screening here on the eve of the bloodiest mass killing spree in American history is either the height of bad luck or an example of exquisite (if unexpected) timing. Because the film is a send-up that links Americans' twin obsessions with speed and violence, the link between blood willing to be shed to get access to oil and the skipping of that step to fill up gas tanks with hemoglobin directly is not that far-fetched. Perhaps it is the philosopher in me that sees such a connection, but Orr's smart script makes it clear that in some crazy universe that such a thing in not as strange as it first appears.

For more information on the film and to view the trailer, log on to the film's website: www.bloodcar.com

Sandy Mandelberger, Sarasota Film Festival Online Dailies Editor