ZombieDog’s rating: Bloody fun!

ZombieDog’s review: What you have to understand about the ’70s and ’80s is that it was a time of flavors. Everywhere you went, every store, every city, every offramp, every mile that you drove away from your home was another step into the unknown. Today, every highway exit you take has the same five fast food restaurants as the previous 50 exits. Back in the day, visiting bookstores and music stores in different cities was not only exciting, it was a straight up act of discovery.

During the ’80s we started seeing video rentals and got to know some of our favorite movies strictly by their cover. It was a time of abundant creativity, but more than that, I think it was the cultural renaissance of my time.

To further prove my point, look at the fantasy artists of the era. They were basically unleashed and producing epic levels of creative art. Especially look at the poster for 1983’s Deathstalker. Even the Lord of the Rings series was unable to create such an awesome looking monster. The kid in me desperately wanted to see this art reflected in film. What’s worse is how the monster in Deathstalker looked on-screen. As it turns out I just had to be a little bit patient. (Flash forward 40-ish years.)

Blood Machines is a 2019 production by the streaming service Shudder. This AMC-owned company has produced such hits as The Walking Dead, Preacher, and Silo. Similar to those, Blood Machines is a futuristic fantasy adventure. This movie drops us into a universe without any clues at all as to what is happening as one spaceship chases a clearly damaged one, which crash-lands onto a planet. The other ship lands shortly after, and we learn that these are bounty hunters tracking down a rogue AI.

The aspect of this film that jumps out immediately is how stylized it is. Every frame is straight out of a comic. The comic that this most reminds me of, is an adult comic called Heavy Metal. There have been movies based on the comic already, but the scuttlebutt was that they were trying to make more. I do believe this is an independent production, however it’s pretty clear that its influence comes from adult graphic novels from this genre. Blood Machines is brutal, sexual, and above all immersive scifi.

Shortly after the bounty hunters land, they are overpowered by what appears to be indigenous peoples who believe the AI is a living entity. There must be something to this, because the AI (taking the form of a completely naked woman) does succeed in escaping from the ship and leaving the planet. Using the commotion of the escape, the bounty hunters regain control and capture one of the indigenous people in the process. A quick jump back into their ship, and the chase continues through space to what appears to be a giant junkyard.

It’s important to point out that the use of style alone doesn’t necessarily increase the quality of a movie. Ultraviolet (2006) was definitely riding the coattails of The Matrix and its cutting-edge style, just without the story to go with that style. Blood Machines not only offers unique stylization, it pairs well with its storyline. To be fair though, the comics of that time and even now were heavy on surrealism and didn’t feel the need to necessarily conform to established storytelling tropes. In this particular case, it means that not all of your questions will be answered.

I know this movie will not be for everybody. I love to see this level of creativity that breaks the monotony of the past 20 years. The reason why I am writing about this is because I am starting to see more and more creative endeavors that push the boundaries of storytelling into uncharted areas. I do believe technology has finally caught up with people’s imaginations. It has been tried before. The center frame of the image above is Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer 6. There was a good faith effort to turn his work into an adult animated film with 1983’s Fire and Ice. It was a decent effort, but it simply didn’t capture the rawness of Frazetta’s work.

The special effects in Blood Machines somehow emulate both retro and futuristic at the same time. The soundtrack is heavy metal synth and it totally works. The real beauty is all of the effects, the ships, and everything else, has a weight to it. For example, when the ship lands on the planet, it’s raining pretty hard, and we both see and hear the rain flowing off the ship. I know it sounds like a small thing, yet it adds to the reality of the moment in a very visceral way.

So, is Blood Machines any good? Yes and no. I would say if you’ve never been exposed to these adult fantasy magazines, you might find some of the stuff distasteful. Heavy Metal never pulled its punches, which is probably why it attracted such high-level artists.

Even if you’ve never been exposed to this media, if you’ve ever seen a movie poster which was conspicuously absent from the film, then I think you might understand the odd thing I’m longing for. Architects deal with the reality of as designed versus as built. I would imagine the special effects artist deals with the same problem — as conceptualized versus as realized. What I hope becomes a trend in filmmaking, and creative works in general, is that artists are able to represent the true creativity they have in their minds which are bound by any limitations.