mrnunleygo If you like sexy violent gangster vampire comedies (and, c'mon now, who doesn't?), this is the movie for you. It's directed by John Landis in a mode similar to his earlier "American Werewolf in London." Anne Parillaud has winning charm as an Audrey Hepburn-Bela Lugosi hybrid (though neither of them did frontal nudity) and Anthony LaPaglia makes a fine unflappable detective. However, it's the late great character actor Robert Loggia who completely steals the film as an over-the-top Pittsburgh crime boss who discovers there are real advantages to being turned into a vampire. (If you remember him in nothing else, you'll recall Loggia as the toy company boss who dances with Tom Hanks in "Big.") It isn't intellectually deep or complicated, but it's plenty of fun. What's not to like?

gwnightscream Anne Parillaud, Robert Loggia, Anthony LaPaglia and Don Rickles star in John Landis' 1992 horror comedy. Parrilaud (La Femme Nikita) plays Marie, an attractive, French vampire who feeds on the not so nice guys. Loggia (Scarface) plays mob boss, Macelli, her target whom she bites, but fails to finish him off. Soon, he becomes a vampire and decides to turn his crime family into an undead family. LaPaglia (The Client) plays undercover cop, Joe who helps Marie stop him and also finds romance with her in the process. Rickles (Casino) plays Macelli's lawyer, Manny and there's also appearances by Angela Bassett, Frank Oz, Sam Raimi, Dario Argento, Linnea Quigley and Tom Savini. This is a good film with creepy and humorous moments, a good cast & great make-up effects. I recommend this.

Michael_Elliott Innocent Blood (1992) ** (out of 4) Director John Landis once again mixes comedy and horror and the end result is Marie (Anne Parillaud), a female vampire who just happens to have a craving for Italian men, which might work well for her since there's a Mafia battle going on. As more and more made men turn up drained of blood, a detective (Anthony LaPaglia) begins to think that it might be the work of the supernatural. INNOCENT BLOOD can only been seen in one way and that's a major disappointment. Those hoping to see another classic like AN American Werewolf IN London are going to be especially disappointed because we know that the director is capable of doing something special with this type material but the material itself is the real killer here. As you watch this movie you really can't help but get frustrated because there are so many interesting ideas that could have worked into a good movie but it seems like they were working off a first draft screenplay and one that needed a lot of re-writes. The stuff dealing with the Mafia men turning into vampires could have been interesting but nothing is done with it. The entire erotic side of Marie would have made for a much better movie than what we ended up getting. There are so many scenes in this film that just seem flat but with a little work they could have been something better. Landis perfectly nails the erotic side of things but a lot of this is due to the beautiful Parillaud constantly taking her clothes off. The horror elements aren't all that memorable, although the death scenes deserve some credit for how much blood there is. Everything with the mob is just downright silly. The film at least offers up a wide range of familiar faces including Robert Loggia, Chazz Palminteri, Marshall Bell, Angela Bassett, Luis Guzman, Don Rickles, Tom Savini as well as some directors like Sam Raimi, Dario Argento and Frank Oz. And yeah, Forrest J. Ackerman is also on hand. INNOCENT BLOOD should have been so much more entertaining but sadly it's just a forgettable waste of time.

MARIO GAUCI As some of you may know, I not only consider Landis' AN American WEREWOLF IN London (1981) the finest "Wolf Man" flick ever but it is also, hands down, the greatest horror film to emerge during the last 3 decades. Still, while I have always been aware of this one – which deals with vampires – I somehow never got around to watching it until now! I did catch Landis' two good entries in the "Masters Of Horror" series, though, not to mention the debacle that was his episode from TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE (1983).Anyway, this is typical of the era in keeping nudity (right from the start, and some of which is surprisingly kinky!) and gore (as expected from a vampire movie, we get plenty of the red stuff) at the forefront. The film attempts to give a novel spin to the well-worn theme by making the heroine something of a femme fatale (a well-cast Anne Parillaud) – complete with first-person narration, where she rather uninspiringly refers to other humans as "food" – and throwing her amidst a modern-day world of 'cops and robbers' (thus continuing the noir analogy but which does not really lead anywhere!). The latter seems to emanate from a Martin Scorsese picture, what with the first such scene involving a man being beaten in the face with a toaster, but then it leans towards the heavy-handed when the mobster (Robert Loggia), vampirized by Parillaud when he takes her home for a fling, begins to infect his gang left, right and center! The hero (Anthony LaPaglia) is an undercover cop and he instantly catches the eye of the leading lady in that she does not want to convert him to her nature, even if his pursuit of her for presumably killing Loggia (which he had been meticulously planning to personally bring down) is relentless – she even glides over him in a POV shot inside a church! Once he realizes what she is (though, apparently, the word "vampire" is never actually used!), he naturally has a hard time convincing his colleagues...that is, until corpses start coming back to life with uncomfortable regularity. Herein, however, lies the film's main problem: the vampires here hardly act like your typical bloodsucker (which, by the way, they do not simply bite the jugular but rather tear right into the neck like an animal!). When aroused, their eyes glow and they give out feral sounds (which again resemble more a werewolf or, at least a panther, as this reminded me quite a bit of CAT PEOPLE {1982}!). Besides, the deathly make-up makes them look more like zombies than anything else! Other minuses, while we are on the subject, and especially in comparison with American WEREWOLF, is that the script (not written by the director himself in this case) shows little of the earlier film's knack in blending together the narrative's two styles, to the point that the comedy and horror here seem to belong in different movies but, also, the accompanying soundtrack pales beside that of the 1981 lycanthrope masterpiece (though one appreciates the in-joke of the mob being particularly fond of Frank Sinatra, given the singer/actor's notorious lifelong association with real-life underworld figures)! That said, a number of scenes are well done (notably Don Rickles' literal hospital 'meltdown'), Parillaud and Loggia (amusingly, he does not know what he has become at first and goes apeshit when he starts disintegrating in the sunlight) are terrific and, as usual, Landis incorporates his usual touches of the fabled "See You Next Wednesday" marquee and a handful of 'star' cameos, including genre authority Forrest J. Ackerman, directors Frank Oz and Michael Ritchie, and even fellow horror-meisters Dario Argento (then filming TRAUMA {1993} in the U.S.), Sam Raimi and Tom Savini!