A truly eye-popping viewing experience, this 50 minute French-made film was the “feature” debut of director/screenwriter/editor/production designer/visual effects supervisor Raphaël Hernandez, a.k.a. Seth Ickerman, and composer Carpenter Brut. This pair announced their visual and musical aesthetic back in 2016, with the celebrated four minute music video TURBO KILLER, a veritable Euro comic come to life that involved a spaceship, a dancing model, a hallucinogenic car chase and lots of upside down crosses (a motif that recurs in BLOOD MACHINES), all set to a highly ambient synth score.
BLOOD MACHINES, a.k.a. TURBO KILLER 2, was largely crowdfunded (which would appear to explain what has to be a record number of Associate Producer credits), and as of May 21, 2020 can be found streaming on Shudder.com.
The film is divided into three inter-related portions. In “Mima” we’re introduced to the Mima, a sentient space cruiser fleeing a warship. Both crash-land on the desolate planet Apus 7, with the Mima’s all-female crew attempting to siphon power from the other ship, whose robotic operator, a C3PO-like figure named Tracey, is malfunctioning. A fight ensues on the planet’s dusty surface, with the Mima’s crew winning. Ultimately, though, the Mima expires, entailing a ceremony performed by one its crewmembers, a woman named Kari, that involves the Mima’s soul, in the form of a gravity defying nude woman marked by an upside-down cross, getting sucked out of the ship. “Am I the only one who sees a naked girl in the sky?” asks the warship’s commander Baskin.
In “Corey” the inhabitants of the warship, having regained the upper hand, take Kari hostage and, after repairing Tracey, blast off. In space they have to contend with a sea of debris, which one crewmember likens to a “huge cemetery” and another a “vast dump.” The ship docks on one of the larger pieces of debris, where a naked woman visitor joins the ship.
In “Tracy” Baskin is subdued, and killed, by Kari, who turns out to be in league with the mysterious visitor, and possesses heretofore unknown supernatural abilities. From there the gals manage to hypnotize Tracy, and the now-undead Baskin, to do their bidding…
This film is a visual stunner that looks like nothing else, despite a number of outright steals (or “homages”) from past movies (ALIEN, BLADE RUNNER, SILENT RUNNING, STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE and DARK STAR are all referenced). The neon-hued imagery is astounding, particularly in the terrifically organic H.R. Giger-esque space ship design and the use of CGI, which is among the finest, and least intrusive, you’ll ever see. There’s excellent sound design, too, by Marius Leftarache, and, of course, a nifty electronic score by Carpenter Brut that fits the imagery like the proverbial glove (and has led to the film being termed a “musical” by the imdb).
But we mustn’t forget that this is a science fiction film, meaning I’ll have to air a complaint that tends to recur when discussing such fare: the lack of any real humanity in either the conception or the characterizations. None of the characters are the least bit interesting, having been evidently conceived solely in terms of their visual appearance (the frequently nude female characters in particular), and this factor isn’t helped by the bad actors playing those characters, who are called upon to mouth heavily accented, oft-incomprehensible English dialogue.
A feminist conscience can be discerned in the fact that the heroes are all female, as is the robotic Tracey, but that would be giving this puddle-deep film far too much credit. No, it’s not a fully successful work by any means, but it is an excellent try.
Vital Statistics
BLOOD MACHINES
Logical Pictures/Shudder
Director: “Seth Ickerman” (Raphaël Hernandez)
Producer: Frederic Fiore, Alexis Perrin, Yannick Bossenmeyer
Screenplay: Seth Ickerman, Paul la Farge
Cinematography: Philip Lozano
Editing: Seth Ickerman
Cast: Elisa Lasowski, Anders Heinrichsen, Christian Erickson, Natasha Cashman, Walter Dickerson, Joelle Berckmans, Noemie Stevens, Alexandra Flandrin, Marion Levavasseur, Garance Silve, Vera Lavender