Horror comedies were nothing new but they had invariably been goofy and innocuous and had relied on broad comedy and even slapstick. They had been very kiddie-friendly. Innocent Blood isn’t the least bit kiddie-friendly. This is not family entertainment. This is blood-drenched full-on horror but combined with sophisticated witty black comedy and vampire sex.
Marie (Anne Parillaud) is a cute French lady vampire finding life in the big city in the U.S. to be a bit of a challenge. She hasn’t fed for quite a while and she’s very hungry. She’s also sex-starved.
Marie has solved the ethical problems posed by vampirism in a rather neat way. She does not drink innocent blood. Her victims are very bad people and by killing them she’s doing society a service as well as feeding herself. It’s a win-win!
At the moment she has turned her attention to a syndicate of mobsters. Specifically, the mob led by Sal Macelli (Robert Loggia). These are very hard very violent men but they’re no match for a vampire.
Joe Gennaro (Anthony LaPaglia) is an undercover cop who has infiltrated Sal Macelli’s organisation but now everything is out of control and his cover is blown. And Macelli is dead anyway.
Macelli is dead but he’s now a vampire. He’s even nastier as a vampire than he was as a gangster and he has plans to lead a vampire mob that will control the city.
In the midst of all this chaos Gennaro finds an unlikely ally. She’s an odd but cute French girl named Marie. He thinks she’s a murderess. It takes him a while to get used to the idea that she’s a vampire. And it takes him even longer to realise that they are going to have to be allies. Gennaro is no match for a bunch of vampiric hoodlums but Marie is not just a vampire, she’s an old vampire. She’s more powerful than Macelli and she knows how the whole vampire thing works. She knows the weaknesses of vampires.
Gennaro and Marie are not sure that they can trust each other but the sex is really really great and after a good old steamy bedroom romp they decide they can be friends.
Much mayhem follows.
Surprisingly all the disparate elements in this movie come together effectively. This is full-blown horror with plenty of violence and gore. It’s a tough violent gangland tale. There’s some inspired black comedy but Landis is careful never to cross the line into goofiness. And this movie is never camp. There’s plenty of erotic heat. There’s an offbeat love story. But these elements are kept in perfect balance. Landis knows what he’s doing and he’s in complete control.
The acting is generally very good. It’s fun to see Don Rickles as a crooked lawyer - he’s amusing but it’s not an out-and-out comic performance. Robert Loggia goes way over the top as Macelli but that’s the right way to play it and he’s truly scary.
Obviously this movie was always going to stand or fall on Anne Parillaud’s performance and she turns out to be an inspired casting choice. Her French accent makes her seem exotic and an outsider. You don’t want a vampire with a Brooklyn accent - that would lead to goofiness. Anne Parillaud makes her lady vampire suitably enigmatic. Parillaud is beautiful but not conventionally pretty - she doesn’t have a Barbie doll look. She looks like a sexy dangerous lady vampire. This movie came out the same year as her star-making turn in the superb La Femme Nikita (1990).
One thing I like is that although Marie has her ethical inhibition about not taking innocent blood she doesn’t indulge in a whole lot of angsting about it. She’s sincere, but she doesn’t revel in moral grandstanding. And while that aspect could have made it into a species of vigilante killer movie that aspect is not pushed too far. Marie is a vampire, not a cop or a social worker.
The practical effects are done well. There’s enough gore to satisfy those who like that sort of thing. Landis keeps things moving along (I don’t agree with those who think this movie is too slow). There’s some sex and quite a bit of nudity.
A lot of people disliked this movie. I suspect that those who were unaware that the vampire movie had moved on and had been comprehensively reinvented during the 70s and that the traditional elements of vampire lore had long since been consigned to the dustbin disliked the movie because those traditional elements are lacking here. No crucifixes. No wooden stakes through the heart. No vampires sleeping in coffins. What’s great is that Innocent Blood is not only a non-traditional vampire movie, it doesn’t try to ape the revolutionary vampire movies of the 70s like Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos, Jose Larraz’s Vampyres or Jean Rollin’s Lips of Blood. It’s its own thing.
Innocent Blood is hugely entertaining and original. A great vampire film. Very highly recommended.
Landis was going for a visually dark shadowy look and thankfully the Warner Archive Blu-Ray retains this.
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