Blood & Donuts
Boya Zsekely [Gordon Currie] is a vampire. He can live forever...if he chooses.
Sometimes he chooses to sleep for awhile. Last time he went to bed was in
1969, when Neil Armstrong destroyed the romanticism of the moon by walking
on it. Boya stuffed his personal effects into a suitcase, buried it in a
cemetery, then wrapped himself up in a burlap bag and went to sleep in the
ceiling of an abandoned building in Toronto. Twenty-five years later, an
errant golf ball wakes him up.Molly [Helene Clarkson] works the night shift at Bernie's 24-hour donutshop. Their
philosophy is "Any jerk deserves a well-made donut and a safe place to eat
it." Anyone, that is, except for Earl [Justin Louis], whose problems are like bacteria.
Breathe on them, and they multiply. Yet, when two neighborhood thugs,
Pierce [Frank Moore] and Axel [Hadley Kay], come into Bernie's looking for Earl, Molly takes out her
baseball bat, and Bernie sends them packing. Earl's not there anyway. He's
out riding taxi. He just dropped off Boya Zsekely at the cemetery,
commenting that the guy looked more like a customer than a visitor. [Okay,
so ask yourself how you'd feel/look waking up from a 25-year sleep.]
Lugging his suitcase, Boya rents a room at the Insmore Hotel, finds a rat
for dinner, and then goes down the street to Bernie's to ask where he can
get some fresh liver. Molly directs him to an all-night grocery store, but
he buys a kiwi donut instead and sits down in a booth.In the meantime, Pierce and Axel have found Earl and pressed him into
doing a little service for them. They're going to collect 'rent', and they
need someone to drive them there and back. When Earl hears a gunshot,
however, he hightails it out of there. While Earl sits at a red light,
rehearsing his excuse for driving off, a middle-aged lady hops in the back
seat and asks to be taken to the cemetery. Must be the tourist season.
Rita [ Fiona Reid] goes to the spot where Boya had buried his suitcase, sees
that it's been dug up, and knows that Boya's back.
Earl returns to the donutshop to have a cruller ("They're not ready
yet")...ok, a glazed...when Pierce and Axel come in. They take Earl
outside and start beating him up. Just as they're squeezing lemon juice
into Earl's wounds, Boya joins them. He tosses Axel against a fence, then
scratches his neck and licks off the blood. Pierce and Axel leave, and
Earl and Boya go back inside the donutshop. After Earl tells Boya about
all his problems, Boya offers to let him bed down in his room. After all,
Boya doesn't need a lot of room...he sleeps in the closet.Boya and Molly have been eyeing each other all night. When Molly is
scared by a rat, Boya stalks it [in a crawl that's every bit as creepy as
Dracula crawling like a lizard headfirst down the wall of the castle],
drinks its blood, and tosses it in the garbage, leaving just a hint of
blood on his lower lip. "I worked as an exterminator once," he explains to
Molly. When Molly's shift is over, Boya walks her home, then he goes home
and takes a bath while she sleeps fitfully in a scene that is probably the
most erotic as I've seen in years, and the two of them aren't even in the
same house! The next night, Boya goes back to the donutshop. While sitting at the
counter, he looks up Rita's address in the phone book. Molly notices and
asks if it's an old flame. It is, but it's a flame that burned 25 years
ago. "Just reminiscing," Boya explains. "Each time you turn your back, a
few more gone. Makes you want to withdraw." Molly understands, but "You
can't go through life afraid to connect because the thing might end,
right?" Boya replies simply, "Not 'might'."Pierce and Axel, under orders from the crime boss to teach Boya a
thing or two, come into the shop with a baseball bat, intending to rough
him up. When Axel swings the bat, Boya grabs it and breaks it in two. Then
Boya's face suddenly metamorphs into a monster with red eyes and long
teeth. It does the trick, and the boys go running. "I worked in the circus
once," he explains to Molly.
After Molly's shift ends, Boya walks her home again. This time he
kisses her, just as Rita is passing by in a taxi. She confronts Boya in a
jealous girlfriend scene from which Glenn Close could take a few lessons.
Rita is now in her fifties. Her skin is starting to sag, and she's no
longer the beauty she was when she and Boya were together. She's spent the
last 25 years stewing over what might have been hers if Boya hadn't
disappeared and begs him to take her now. He refuses, so she runs a stake
through his chest from behind. He pulls it out, says, "Don't believe
everything you hear," and goes home to take a bath.Earl, as brainless as he comes across, has figured out that Boya is a
vampire. When he sees Boya in the bathtub with a hole through his chest,
he offers to take him to the hospital, but Boya says that he heals fast.
When Earl asks why Boya hasn't drunk from him, Boya explains that blood-drinking
from humans is, for him, like donut-eating for humans. "You don't have to
submit." Although Earl and Boya have become friends and seem to really care
about each other, Earl figures that it's best to move out. Rita drops by
and finds Boya sleeping in the closet ("You're really not a day person,
are you?"), and begs him again to give her the gift. If he had done it 25
years ago, she could have kept her beauty and had all the time in the
world. Boya still refuses, so she pulls out a gun and puts it to her head.
Boya stops her from killing herself, but the bullet does graze her temple.Boya has to get out of there even though it's daytime. He races
across the street to the donutshop as his body starts to steam in the
sunlight. By the time he reaches the door, he is crawling on the ground
and his skin is charring. He manages to reach up, open the door, and crawl
inside. Molly rushes to help him. Molly has figured it out, too. She cuts
her own palm and lets him feed from her. He feeds and feeds until Molly
has to pull herself away. "I thought I could control it," Boya moans and
then passes out. Molly sits beside Boya while he sleeps on the donutshop
floor until sundown, when he wakes up and walks out wordlessly.Meanwhile, Pierce, Axel, and the crime boss have captured Earl and
are about to cut out his tongue. Somehow, Boya can sense this. He leaps
onto the fire escape and enters the room through an open window. As Boya
drains the crime boss of his blood, Earl backs out the window onto the
fire escape and falls off, landing on his back on the pavement below. Hurt
badly, Earl crawls into his taxi as the thugs take shots at him. Boya
tumbles through an open window into the taxi and helps Earl drive away.
But Earl is in a bad way. Boya stops the car and helps Earl onto the
ground. "I'm not afraid to die," Earl says, and dies.
Just then, Molly drives up in Bernie's car. Not knowing how Earl died
or how long ago, she rigs up a makeshift cardiac defibrillator out of a
screwdriver and jumper cables. After being zapped several times, Earl
begins to breathe again. Boya carries Earl to her car and, since the sun
is rising, Molly tells Boya to get into the trunk. As the trunk closes,
Molly drives off. Only after she gets back to the donutshop and opens the
trunk does she find that Boya did not get in.
At that very moment, as the sun is rising, Boya is lying on top of
Earl's taxi, allowing himself to die. [Original Synopsis by bj_kuehl.]
cult