Blood Machines
Their ship a biomechanical Gargantua of colossal weaponry controlled by an erratic and unreliable artificial intelligence, Captain Vascan and his engineer Lago have tracked their quarry to the planet Apus 7 where they intend to salvage the wreck of the downed ship for parts or scrap, but instead they find it is defended.
Initially dismissing the women as scavengers, they beg for the life of the ship, saying it can still be healed but Lago opens fire regardless; barefoot in the sand they prepare to mourn their ship, but as an eclipse occurs overhead the essence of it is reborn, launching itself into space, Vascan (Anders Heinrichsen) and Lago (Christian Erickson) following with one of the women, Corey (Elisa Lasowski), as their hostage.
Pursuing the glowing naked iridescent woman through nebulae and space warps, her destination is a space graveyard of the debris of a thousand ships, and taking Corey with him Vascan confidently enters the central construct, but the apparently dormant ruins are only waiting to be triggered.
Taking many of the images of their music video for synthwave artist Carpenter Brut’s Turbo Killer, screened alongside their feature at the Glasgow Film Festival, Blood Machines from Seth Ickerman (writing and directing partnership Raphaël Hernandez and Savitri Joly-Gonfard) expands the fast cars, guns, gas masks and dancing girls and lifts it not only offworld but to a distant universe lit in the all the shades of red, purple and violet.
A cosmic opera tragedy powered by the limitless energy of eighties pop rock videos, the easy country which recalls Dark Star soon gives way to a driving futuristic soundtrack provided by Carpenter Brut, while the design of the ships and hardware is the descended from the wild imagination of Jean “Moebius” Giraud, the lo-fi physicality of the ship flung into a realm defying sensory comprehension.
The central computer a blend of Metropolis‘ Maria and Logan’s Run’s box, the three segments of Blood Machines may foreground the overwhelming style over substance as tenuous as interstellar gases, more Heavy Metal than the literary adaptations of Love, Death & Robots, but it is a ravishing and entrancing jaunt to the far reaches of the universe.
The Glasgow Film Festival continues until Sunday 8th March
