Blood Drive: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Blood Drive: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman July 2, 2018

Note that this is an Australian release but will play in U.S./region A players.

Blood Drive may tout itself as a throwback to the drive-in grind house schlock of old, but it doesn't really capture that same superficial textural grit or organic internal madness that define the genre's finest. Creator James Roland's show is instead content to duplicate, without much heart, all of the essential components while never really feeling like anything other than a modern show with a tendency to favor a classic style with both super sexy and ultra violent bends. It crams sex, blood, and guts into the narrative because it can, not because it necessarily has any reason to do so. Story is second thought to the visceral components, which might work in an 80 minute exploitation film but bogs down a 13-episode TV season. Imperfect as it may be, though, it's good, brainless fun if one considers sex at high speeds, bodies shoved into muscle car engines that are essentially piston-driven wood chippers, and lead characters who aren't very well defined beyond their stock parts all to be fun.

Set in an alternate reality dystopia of 1999 America, Blood Drive explores a time in which polite society has crumbled, replaced by a mean, menacing landscape where water is scarce, gasoline is priced out of the average person's range, and the country has been split down the middle along what was once the Mississippi River, a divide that was the result of incessant and excess fracking. The nation has become obsessed with the "Blood Drive," a cross-country race amongst ruthless drivers who pilot automobiles that run on human blood, the engines greedily chomping at any flesh and bone served up to them. One such driver is Grace D'Argento (Christina Ochoa), a sexy femme fatale who is out to win the race an any cost. When the race's Master of Ceremonies, the mysterious and eccentric Julian Slink (Colin Cunningham), catches police officer Arthur Bailey (Alan Ritchson) poking around the bloody and sex-crazed pre-race festivities, the cop is forced into service, implanted with a charge, and paired with Grace as an unwilling participant in the race. As the two make the journey from start to finish, Arthur's ex partner Christopher (Thomas Dominique) faces his own challenges and becomes involved with a cyborg named Aki (Marama Corlett) that could both put him at odds with his one-time friend and fundamentally alter who he is.

Blood Drive seems more concerned with ticking off check boxes on its list of to-dos than it is constructing any kind of compelling program beyond the gratuitous fun on display. And it works well enough in that regard. Sex and blood, muscled men and curvy women, fast cars, and automobile engines that are literally chomping at the bit for a taste of flesh and a few gallons of performance human blood to run on are amongst the show's highlights and focal points. And there are really no others. The show is made to entertain at a carnal, essentially unholy, level. It's gratuitous and often to the extreme. It pushes towards cartoonish violence, particularly once the shock and awe wears off a bit by the second or third episode and both the show and the audience can settle into an expectant routine. There's not much deviation from the course, and it feels like after one has seen a single episode one has seen them all, which is true to an extent. There's just enough draw to other areas to keep it feeling "fresh enough" to power through most of the season, but it's a good thing it was cancelled after 13 episodes. By then there's just not much room for Blood Drive to grow and stay true to its selling points, even if the show ends with the promise of new adventures.

Much like the sex and violence, characters are pushed hard to type with little creativity out past the basics. There are not many points of interest across the roster; each of the characters are largely reduced to a collection of genre fill-types who appropriately inhabit the wardrobe and the world but aren’t exactly teeming with intricacies that might otherwise interfere with the show’s dominant driving force of, well, driving with sex and blood the figurative and literal fuel that propel the story forward. Many of the slow-downs for character exploration really only seem to get in the way of pacing, so it is perhaps wise that Blood Drive keeps its energy largely in focus and eyes and ears where it can at least entertain the masses through its grindhouse-eqsue crudities and credentials.

But beyond repetition and fairly empty characters it's the show's inability to capture that true grind house tone and flavor that is one of its core pitfalls. Even compared to contemporarily crafted throwbacks from the minds of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, filmmakers who brought the concept of the grind house cinema form back into the mainstream, back into the contemporary cinema conscience, this show lacks real grit and textural character. Certainly grind house is not just about film print texture, but even beyond the lack of convincing superficialities the show struggles to find an identity beyond gimmick, a problem that is only exacerbated the deeper into the season, and the more monotonous and repetitious, the show becomes.

Blood Drive: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Blood Drive's picture is very sharp and picks up all of the visual intricacies across its varied characters and locations. Essential skin textures, viscera and gore, cybernetic implants and elements, cars, and location details, all of which are varied and always complex, keep the show visually interesting if nothing else. It does not, at least regularly, exhibit that worn, scratchy, imperfect grindhouse-like texturing. It's decently grainy-looking, though, with generally strong clarity and capturing everything with crisp definition, but the show feels more modern than it does retro. Colors are intense, with reds particularly bold and impressively saturated. Cybernetic characters bleeding multicolored fluids offer a nice bit of intensity, attire pops as it can, and environments, though many are either earthy or murky, find a nice balance between accuracy and slightly jacked contrast. Black levels are deep and skin tones are fine, though again there's a boost to contrast at play. Source flaws are few, with occasional bursts of banding and some lower light noise the only significant drawback. This is a very good and highly complimentary 1080p image.

Blood Drive: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Blood Drive features a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless soundtrack. The presentation never wants for more power or stage presence. Surrounds are regularly engaged and the subwoofer makes its presence felt throughout, whether hefty revving car engines or a climactic rumble at the end of the show's run. Music is edgy and intense with activation across every speaker and saturation across the whole of the listening area. Quality bustling din -- chatter, ringing phones, clanking keyboards -- in a police station in episode one does well to transport the viewer to the location. Crowd depth and detail at the pre-race "festivities" and in many other gatherings/orgies is pleasingly vigorous, too, and the track never strains to offer intensive surround information at any necessary point across the 13-episode run. Dialogue enjoys full stage command, firm center placement, and excellent clarity throughout the season.

Blood Drive: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Blood Drive contains no supplemental content on any of the four discs.

Blood Drive: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

For as much fun as Blood Drive can be right off the bat in the first couple of episodes and, certainly, here and there throughout the entire run, it can grow equally dull, meandering through a wasteland of generic characters and story beats that allow the mayhem to continue but offer little incentive to become involved beyond the show's selling point crudities. Blood Drive would have worked better as a miniseries, perhaps at six or seven episodes rather than 13, condensed down to essentials-plus rather than fighting to build and hold intrigue where little, if any, exists to sustain a program of this style and at this length. Still, fans of hardcore sex and violence should find the program an agreeable escape, though probably best enjoyed in chunks rather than in one or two binge-watching sessions. Via Vision's Blu-ray is unfortunately absent special features, but video and audio qualities are quite good. Recommend to genre fanatics.