Bloodtype Online

    A DVD release of this movie has been a long time coming, so I was very excited when I received this bad boy in the mail to review.  I remember really liking this movie when I was younger, but hadn’t seen it in maybe 15 years.  Still the movie holds up pretty well, so lets get to the review. 

    If you haven’t seen the movie it plays like 4 episodes surrounded by a wrap around story to open and end the movie.  The movie opens with a couple of guys driving down a lonely road in the dead of night.  Right away you can tell that this movie is going to be something different, because well-known comedic actors Dan Akroyd and Albert Brooks play these small roles.  To kill time they start to play a game where they try and stump each other by humming theme songs to old television shows.  Of course they get around to talking about the Twilight Zone television show, which leads them into a discussion of a couple of the most famous episodes (including the famous Burgess Meredith broken glasses episode).  This leads to a discussion of what is scary, which itself leads to the first big “scare” of the movie.  Then the audience is treated to the famous Twilight Zone intro courtesy of the before mentioned Burgess Meredith.   

    The first of the stories is the most famous, or really infamous of the four.  This is not for good reasons either.  It stars acting veteran Vic Morrow as a middle class white guy who has a real problem with minorities.  The opening scenes of Morrow’s character in the bar are very uncomfortable and effectively set up what happens to him.  As soon as he leaves the bar he finds himself in occupied Europe, branded as a Jew, and running from Nazis.  Then he jumps to the KKK trying to lynch him, and then ends up in Vietnam with American soldiers trying to kill him as the enemy.  The flow of this segment seems just a bit off and for good reason.  During the filming Vic Morrow and two child actors were killed in a helicopter accident.  I know that director John Landis took a lot of heat for using what they had finished to try and still tell the story, but the performance from Morrow is so powerful that I’m glad he did.   

    The second story is my least favorite of the movie.  It tells the story of an old folks home that is visited by a mysterious stranger, played by Scatman Crothers.  Thru a simple game of kick the can he reminds them what it is to be young, in body and spirit.  Everyone learns to appreciate who they are and how much time that they have left.  Other than a wonderfully subtle performance from Crothers I really don’t have much to say about this one. 

    The third story is a retread of a famous Twilight Zone episode from the original series.  A woman traveling across the country runs into a little boy (literally) who takes her home to meet his family.  She discovers that he is not your average child and that his family is terrorized of him and the powers that he possesses.  This is the second most entertaining story from the film and features an all-star cast of genre regulars.  You have Dick Miller (Gremlins, and a ton of Corman films), Billy Mummy (Lost in Space, and as a child the star of the episode that inspired this segment), and the great Kevin McCarthy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers).  Of the episodes this is the most fun you are going to have.   

    The fourth, and my favorite, story is another retelling of a famous episode.  John Lithgow takes the role originally filled by William Shatner as a terrorized passenger who sees a gremlin ripping at the engine of the plane he is on. Of course no one else sees the creature that is threatening to bring the plane down, so everyone thinks the man is just very disturbed.  Eventually he gets the gun from an air marshal and takes matters into his own hands by shooting out a window and trying to kill the creature.  Even though he fails he manages to distract the creature long enough for the plane to start it’s approach to the runway.  This is the only episode that is in any way scary or creepy.  But for some reason this and the original episode with Shatner has always scared the hell out of me.  Plus the ending of the episode where the repair crew discovers the claw marks on the engine is one of the coolest endings that I’ve ever seen, and has stuck with me all of these years.   

    I’ve waited a long time to have this movie on DVD and I’m glad that I own it.  I was disappointed by the lack of any special features.  But with the baggage that this movie brings with the on set deaths and the directors sort of distancing themselves from it I don’t expect to see a special edition coming out anytime soon.  Bottom line I recommend that everyone pick this one up for his or her collections. 

***

-John "El Juan" Shatzer