Review of Innocent Blood (1992) by Stuart K — 05 Aug 2013

Directed by John Landis, whose career went into an unstoppable and sad slump in the late 1980's/early 1990's. After the critical mauling he got for Oscar (1991), he attempted to try and recreate the success of An American Werewolf in London (1981) with this horror-comedy, which mixes vampires and the Mafia.

Some of it works, some of it doesn't, but it could have been much better. In Pittsburgh, French vampire Marie (Anne Parillaud) survives thanks to a moral code, which sees her getting her blood from criminals who operate in the city, however she lands herself in a whole heap of trouble when she sucks the blood of Salvatore 'The Shark' Macelli (Robert Loggia), the top Mafia boss in Pittsburgh.

While Marie usually kills her victims, she's interrupted before she can kill Macelli, which leaves him as one of the undead, and he uses this power on his henchmen, making them into the living dead.

But, it's up to undercover cop Joseph Gennaro (Anthony LaPaglia), who learns the truth about Marie, to help put things right. It is a very silly film, and Landis as usual casts directors in cameos, here it's Frank Oz, Sam Raimi and Dario Argento.

But it's not as bad as what people say, and it does have some good monster make up on display, which you don't get in films these days, but it does feel forced in places.