It’s not what you think.
When a bit of insanity has another bit of insanity added to it, sometimes the mix comes out quite odd. Blood and Donuts (1995) is the story of the awakening of Boya, a vampire dating back to the 1800s, and the reason he hides away periodically from the world:
He’s clinically depressed.
His friends grow old and die off, when he’s stressed he can turn into a monster, and while he’s as immune as any mythological vampire to the general weaponry of the age, he’s also just as vulnerable to the Sun. And he misses the old fireball in the sky.
Between the depression and the knowledge that his immense powers have made him not-human, an outsider looking into a condition that he loves but can only temporarily return to – I mean, damn, he keeps scrapbooks! – his future, so apparently bright to others, is deepest black to him.
Trying to staple a body to the hood of the car a la Mad Max.
We need bigger staples, he said.
She said, Shut up and drive!
Thrown back into life by a golf ball, life happens to him: a taxi driver and a donut shop clerk come to know him, and as they try to save each other from impetuous mobsters, each time Boya must make a move, things die. He hardly dares move for fear that he may kill those that he loves.
Humanity.
It helps that the supporting characters have their own lives they’re living, their own burdens to share, but this is about Boya and his life existence, and the importance of shared struggle in making life worth living.
It makes for a disquieting story with abrupt changes in rhythm, and Hollywood would never want to own up to this (no fears for Hollywood’s virtue, this is Canadian), but it feels organic, if not necessarily much fun.
