Blood Drive Episode 1 Review: The Fucking Cop

This Blood Drive review contains spoilers.

Blood Drive Episode 1

Blood Drive is set in an alternative future where gas can cost you an arm and a leg, cops count their quotas in jars of chipped teeth, and an underground reality show spins a lethal game of life or death competition. Oh, and that future will be 1999, which is probably why I recognize some of it. Club Mayhem is a place where bastards, tramps, bloodsuckers, motherfuckers, road trash, and vamps gather to danse macabre.

The show will definitely break ground for basic cable. Syfy is not going to bleep the language, not even in the titles. Episode 101 is called “The Fucking Cop,” and one of the highlights of the pilot is when two of the players fuck to build up enough adrenaline to override a self-destruct feature built into the cars to keep the riders motivated to keep pace with the fast screaming surf metal guitars that drive the soundtrack.

But first, we have to gas up. That can be expensive when oil is up to $2,000 a barrel. We meet the “innocent” Grace D’Argento (Christina Ochoa), sucking on a lollypop on the side of the road. She’s an accident waiting to happen in the dangerously broken world. She barely gets away from a pair of on-the-prowl amateur roadsters only to drain her tank to empty. Pissed off that he wasted $500 worth of gas chasing Grace’s fine red Camaro, one of the pursuers tries to make it up by grabbing some front seat rough sex with nothing but a box cutter for foreplay. Grace has no time for the forcible in out in out, she’s read the meter, has to be in town by sundown and needs a refill.

Camaros are thirsty machines, especially when they’ve been retrofitted for competitive combustion. The need consumption, but what really fulfills them is blood. Human blood. The engine looks like it has teeth and the kid who feeds it looks like minced meat by the time the gauge hovers just a shade below full. Grace is in luck, as the kid’s friend is more than happy to lend a little more than a hand to get her into town. LA is a friendly place.

Blood flows like it’s on tap in the world of Blood Drive, but the water is strictly rationed. The local cops carry plasma guns that leak waste all over the back alleys.

Let’s talk about the fucking cops. Times are bad. People are desperate. Because of some ecological disaster or dystopian greed, America is in a drought so bad that it’s a third world country. Because of new bodycam technology, LAPD officers are judge, jury and executioners of justice at the time of arrest. Everything gets added to the warrant. When a perp’s teeth fall out under questioning, it’s littering. If someone bounces on the sidewalk, that’s resisting arrest. The stealing of water is punishable by an authorized level three punishment, a half-gallon gets you a level 8.

Blood Drive on the June 2017 episode of Sci Fi Fidelity podcast at 36:25. iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

Every patrol room has one bad apple. The LA Metro police have one good one. Let’s talk about the fucking cop. Arthur Bailey (Alan Ritchson), the episode’s title character, is honorable, fair, and just a little reluctant to do some of the harder things it takes to take down criminals. It’s not that he’s scared of action. He just thinks there are certain human loopholes that trump street-level justice. And he’s not scared to go after the big guys, even if they sign his weekly pay checks. Ritchson plays this with a Boy Scout innocence, buttons down and a tight ass.

His partner, Officer Christopher Carpenter (Thomas Dominique), is a little looser but sticks closer to police protocol. That includes how cops spend their off-duty time, hanging out and drinking beer with other cops. Arthur convinces Christopher to put in a little off-duty overtime to chase a new and weird development on the streets. The drug of choice in 1999 is Red Rapture. We don’t know what the effects are, but junkies will siphon off pints of blood to cop enough credit to score. But where in LA could they peddle their wares?

Club Mayhem is an underground after-hours dive in the warehouse district. It is a marvel comic of set design and the clientele is perfect for 1999. Equal parts sideshow, dancehall, and S&M club, it is a pure celebration of all things exploitation cinema has to offer. There’s even a little Fritz the Cat vibe amidst the Death Race 2000 grandstanding.

Blood Drive is presided over by Master of Ceremonies Julian Slink (Colin Cunningham), the best friend the freaks will have in 1999, whenever that gets here. This guy knows how to party. Sure water is a luxury in the not-so-distant future, but it’s got nothing on the price people will pay to get pumped.

Cunningham created a master monster out of a million miscreants for this role. He is Dr. Frankenstein, Frank N. Furter, and a little bit of what each put on the slab. Frankenstein’s monster had knobs coming out of the side of his neck. The drivers who are picked for the Blood Drive, a high octane competitive cross-country chase, have brain bombs air-gunned into their necks that are set to blow off their heads on any diversion from the rules.

My absolute favorite scenes are in Club Mayhem. It is exactly how I remember clubs in the 1999 that was to come. The sets all around are pretty fucking cool. What with the urban sprawl and the dusty roads. But the stake in the heart of Blood Drive is driven like a stealth bomb in the base of the brain. The music, the extras in the wings, doing whatever they’re doing, which is whatever they like. The subtle censorship blips make it seem dirtier than it actually is.

Yes, the Blood Drive has rules. Drivers can’t stray too far from their cars or their co-pilots; they are forbidden to kill the other drivers and toss them in the tank. They can speed. They can drift. But they can’t go too far from the beaten path. And they can’t be late for the finish of any leg or it will cost then a cranium.

No one gets picked for the Blood Drive without a little psycho behind the eyes. The contestants include Caligula, a gentleman, a scholar, and, as a last minute addition, the fucking cop Arthur and Grace. I’m already rooting for Clown Dick and Fat Elvis. The first leg of the race is from Los Angeles to Arizona and by the time they get to Phoenix, Grace and Arthur still haven’t bonded. It’s only at the last second, just shy of the finish line when Grace demands of the Ken doll cop she calls Barbie: Do me or die. The odds are stacked against them and the only way out is a little rear end fuel injection.

Meanwhile, on the fracking floor, Chris calls for backup to take down the illegal road rage competition that starts collecting collateral damage before the engines are even revved. Chris gets teamed with a lady cop named Officer Aki (Marama Corlett). She’s not exactly sugar and spice, but when you prick her she bleeds something that looks like sherbet.

The producers and creators promises an unapologetic orgy of action, violence, sex, vulgarity and general absurdity. It delivers. It is fast, furious, and funny. But it also has heart. You gotta have Heart Enterprises in the grindhouse future of Blood Drive.