Angie B's 31 Horror Films in 31 Days Continues With... INNOCENT BLOOD.
INNOCENT BLOOD
(1992)
STARRING: Anne Parillaud, Anthony LaPaglia, Robert Loggia.
DIRECTED BY: John Landis.
RATED: R.
Marie is a vampire with two appetites: sex and blood. A moral killer, she only attacks criminals and is careful to prevent her latest meals from coming back. Unfortunately, when she dines on the mobster Sallie the Shark she's rudely interrupted before she can clean up her mess -- and the crime boss comes back as a monster even hungrier for power, who quickly sets to work converting his underlings into identical vampires. Marie is forced to team up with the undercover cop Joe Gennaro in order to stop the Shark, and finds a way to satisfy that other appetite of hers...
Prior to leafing through John Landis' impressive coffee table book Monsters in the Movies, I had no idea that this film existed. Landis is one of the more recognizable names in the horror industry, and of course I've seen An American Werewolf in London multiple times. Hell, I even know about the "See You Next Wednesday" joke he slips into all of his films. Yet I'd never heard of this! Shocker.
Marie is usually a pretty and petite Parisienne. But then out come the multi-colored cat eyes...
Granted, this isn't a ground-breaking or super stellar picture. It follows a ton of cliches and tropes common in both vampire AND gangster films. It's not strictly a horror film, or a comedy, and it never manages to be really successful as a horror comedy. It's just a strange little flick with plenty of nudity -- that Anne Parillaud sure isn't shy to disrobe -- liberal doses of violence and sexuality, and some pretty interesting special effects. I particularly enjoyed the scene where (SPOILER ALERT!) Don Rickles' lawyer-turned-vampire has an unfortunate encounter with the new day and almost painfully slowly burns up into a pile of ash and lava.
The cast is quite ecclectic, too. A young Anthony LaPaglia is awfully nommy as a tortured undercover cop trying to bring down the mob. Chazz Palminteri makes a memorable appearance as -- what else? -- an Italian mobster. There's a young Kim Coates (most known by Sons of Anarchy fans) who's downright delicious as gum-snapping enforcer, a no-nonsense Angela Bassett as the Chief of Police, Luis Guzman as a cop, the aforementioned Don Rickles in a relatively humor-free role... And then there's the cameos! Landis loves to have his buddies stop by for a day on the set, and it was most amusing picking out all of the recognizable genre faces. Tom Savini has a couple scenes as a tabloid journalist, Dario Argento is a nurse in an ambulance, Sam Raimi runs one of the Shark's meat-packing plants, and Frank Oz -- the guy who's responsible for bringing 50% of the Muppets to life -- even makes an appearance as the coroner.
"Hey, aren't you Frank Oz? Can you do the Miss Piggy voice for me?"
All in all, this was an average film that had some fun/hot moments. I particularly liked Marie's attack on Tony while Frank Sinatra blares, the moment Manny meets the sun, and the climactic showdown with Sallie the Shark. While it could be ridiculous when Marie "transformed" -- she had mood eyes! and she shrieked like a wildcat on steroids! -- at least the vampires in this remained relatively monstrous. There's nothing sexy or romantic in the way Marie eats her dinners, and for the first night or so of his transformation, Sallie the Shark looks unappetizingly corpse-like. No heartthrob boy band vamps in this flick! HALLELUJAH! on that count, at least.
FINAL SCORE: I'll give this vampire outing a 6 out of 10.
Click to view