Redistributing The Wealthy: Blood Salvage (1990)
My dear readers, while it does seem a bit gauche to make unsolicited references to one’s own resources, I must confess that my sweet Penny Dee and I live in relative comfort compared with the sorry lot many are forced to endure. Being so fortunate, we feel it is only proper to put a few things aside here and there so they might be handed off to those whom the fates have shown less favor. There is one particular organization that we use to facilitate our charity and I am told the good they do out and about in the community simply cannot be beat. Were it not for their sterling reputation, I might find cause to wonder about their methods, as they do come around at the most irregular hours and can be awfully fussy about what type of donations they accept. To be entirely candid about the matter, I find myself scratching the old scalp over how the needy will be provided for with locks of our hair, clippings from our toenails and information about our birthdates. But this deficit of imagination on my part is obviously a product of never having never wanted for many material things and it is hardly my charge to question those engaged in the difficult business of professional munificence. All this is to say, in a somewhat roundabout way I suppose, is that it really does gladden me greatly to feel as though I am giving something back.
Jake engages in a little Christian charity
Jake Pruitt (Danny Nelson) knows all about helping those in need. As the driver of a tow truck, he aides those who have found themselves in a state of automotive dismay. But Mr. Pruitt’s true calling is as an unlicensed surgeon and black market organ dealer. He feels that some of the fancier folks he meets in his primary line of work are not as deserving of their innards as those who are less financially fortunate. And so he does his best to amend this perceived injustice, scooping up various healthy specimens and carving them up so that their organs might help those in need. Despite what seems to be an entirely home-schooled approach to vivisection, Jake has developed such superlative surgical skills that he is able to stave off death in even his most heavily harvested stock and keeps a barn full of partially disemboweled patients just in case the need for a specific part should arise.
More recently, Jake has turned his altruistic eye on April Evans (Lori Birdsong), a wheelchair-bound teenager and aspiring beauty queen. He fancies that Ms. Evans, though considerably younger than himself, would make a fit bride and mother to his adult children. Jake, ever the rugged individualist, decides to avoid the typical conventions of courtship and instead drugs and kidnaps the entire Evans family before offering a formal proposal of marriage. He also generously offers to cure April of her paralysis using spinal fluid harvested from her little brother. But April is a rather fiery, independent sort and when treated to the prospect of being the elder Jake’s betrothed, she insists she would prefer to remain handicapped and unwed.
Some patients are beyond even Jake’s considerable surgical skills
Though I take no pride in being generally ignorant on a subject of some importance, I must confess am by no means a “wiz” when it comes to matters of state and to be completely candid, as someone who mostly deals in violence and horrors, I find politics to be a little distasteful. Nevertheless, I do my level best to keep up and I cannot help but notice there is a powerful surge of interest in rectifying the economic inequality that hobbles many a citizen in this nation of ours. In addition to being a brilliant surgeon, Jake is obviously an advanced political thinker, as he was clearly well ahead on this subject long before the current trend took hold. While some advocates of socialism are merely concerned with a redistribution of wealth, Jake takes things a step further by suggesting a redistribution of the wealthy. Obviously, many such grand, utopian notions have faltered in practice but one cannot begin to fault Jake for his starry-eyed idealism. And I must say it is quite something for a film that is approaching its 30th anniversary to be so searingly relevant in our contemporary political climate.
Blood Salvage runs 98 minutes and is rated R.
