Vampire Flicks: Innocent Blood (1992)

Bloodsucking Cinema is an hour-long documentary on the history of vampire movies that first aired on Starz in October of 2007, which is also where and when I first saw it. (It premiered a few days before Halloween, and while I don't think I saw it that very night, I know that I did see it one night during that specific period, perhaps on Halloween night itself.) The previous year, I'd also first seen Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film on Starz and, like with Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments, it informed me of a lot of flicks that I'd never heard of before. Bloodsucking Cinema, however, mostly spotlit movies I was either very familiar with, like the original Dracula with Bela Lugosi and the Hammer movies; many that I was aware of but hadn't seen yet, such as Interview With the Vampire, From Dusk Till Dawn, John Carpenter's Vampires, The Lost Boys, the Underworld movies and so on; or some I didn't want to see or was sorry that I had, like BloodRayne and Van Helsing. They did mention some Mexican and Spanish movies that I was unaware of and, to this day, haven't seen for the most part, but there was only one movie that I'd never heard of before which really stuck with me. That was, indeed, Innocent Blood, which was surprising to learn about. At that point, I knew John Landis for a bunch of popular comedies and, of course, An American Werewolf in London, one of my personal favorite horror movies, as well as werewolf movies, so I sat up and took notice when I heard he'd also made a vampire movie. What especially intrigued me was when Leonard Maltin said how much he personally liked Innocent Blood, describing it as, "An unsung gem among horror films," and, "Way over-the-top, but it has that sense of humor, that very dark sense of humor. Yet, it's never sort of jabbing you in the ribs, saying, 'Get it? Get it?'" There were two scenes which they showed that really made an impact with me. One was Robert Loggia, covered in blood, cradling Don Rickles after feeding on him, and when the latter's wife accused him of killing him, he went, "Nah! Ha! Resting." The other was the sex scene between the vampire and the cop, which Landis himself said he thought was, "Funny, and erotic, and, hopefully, romantic." (It definitely looked erotic and romantic from where I was sitting, I'll tell you that.)

I actually saw Innocent Blood for the first time in early 2011, when I found the old snapper-case DVD very cheap at McKay's in Chattanooga. It's a movie that I do enjoy and think is very well done, but it's not one I've revisited very often. In fact, in the fifteen years since I first watched it, I've probably only revisited it twice, unlike An American Werewolf in London, which I've watched numerous times. It has good characters and fine performances, with Robert Loggia being a real standout, a very memorable setting, effective gore and makeup effects, and does its own interesting things with the vampire mythos, which is always a plus. But, aside from it being a tad too long at nearly two hours, I'm mostly mixed on the humor. For the most part, it's actually much more subdued in its blending of horror and comedy than American Werewolf, only getting really crazy during the second half, when Loggia's character starts to get into being a vampire. There are moments that are amusing enough, especially when it goes for that same kind of juxtaposition of humor and gruesomeness that Landis did so well in American Werewolf, but none that I find laugh out loud funny. And, despite Maltin's view that it's not constantly trying to make sure you get the joke, there are actually plenty of references, with clips from various horror movies, vampire and otherwise, playing on the TV, as well as a number of notable cameos. Now, granted, they're not done in a manner to where they come off like a lead pipe to the head, but they are more blatant than Maltin seemed to think.

Marie is a beautiful, French vampire who's living in Pittsburgh, intent on indulging in her two main appetites: her thirst for human blood, and sex. As she has a moral code and will not feed on innocent people, she has gone six days without blood. Looking over various newspaper articles about crime in the city, particularly the bloody and brutal rise of mob boss Salvatore Macelli, aka "Sal the Shark," Marie decides to "treat" herself to Italian. That night, in the basement of a diner called the Oyster House, Sal brutally murders a man he accuses of short-changing him on a recent heist. In fact, a newcomer, Joe Gennaro, is initially tasked with killing the man, but when he proves reluctant, Sal does it himself, then warns Joe that the next time he's ordered to kill someone, he'd best do as he's told. Afterward, Joe tells fellow mafioso Tony Silva that he finds Sal's appetite for torture and violence disturbing, an opinion Tony warns him to never share with anyone else. The two men head home for the night, and each run into Marie. While she opts to spare Joe, she decides to feed on Tony, doing so when they later park at a spot overlooking the city. Afterward, she shoots him in the head with a shotgun to cover her bite marks and ensure that he can't reanimate. The next day, the police investigate the crime scene, including Joe, who's actually an undercover cop infiltrating Sal's crime ring. There, District Attorney Barbara Sinclair chews him out for showing up, given that anybody on the police force could be on the take for Sal. She also intends to take him off the investigation, feeling that his commitment is making him a danger to both it and himself. Joe's cover is blown when numerous reporters photograph him with Sinclair, and the photos appear in the evening edition. Furious, Sal wants Joe killed, but is himself targeted that night by Marie. After she impresses him by having enough moxie and courage to tell him off, he takes her back to his home, where he eventually attempts to rape her. She, in turn, feeds on him, but is interrupted before she can finish the job and is forced to flee. Though reported dead at the scene, Sal later awakens at the morgue and escapes. Now, Marie must hunt him down and stop him from spreading vampirism throughout the city. Along the way, she and Joe form an initially uneasy partnership that soon develops into a romance.

The beginning of Innocent Blood's production involved John Landis literally going from one vampire movie to another. Initially, he was to direct a script called Red Sleep, written by Mick Garris and Richard Christian Matheson, the latter of whom is indeed the son of the legendary science fiction writer. Describing, in a 2017 interview with Filmmaker Magazine, how the basic premise was, "Las Vegas is a city that is run by vampires...  the mayor, the police, everybody, they just work at night and live off the guests and sleep during the day. They literally feed off of the huge transient and tourist population coming in and out of Vegas," (sounds familiar, doesn't it?), Landis rewrote the screenplay with Harry Shearer of The Simpsons fame. In that same interview, he said their rewrite consisted of, "A character called the Duke of the Dark... with Liberace and Howard Hughes thrown in, and he’s the king of the vampires... It was sort of a satire on the Rat Pack, if the Rat Pack were in fact vampires, and I liked it a lot – it had musical numbers and a lot of wild stuff in it." But the heads at Warner Bros. didn't care for what he and Shearer came up with, and they instead presented him with the script for Innocent Blood, written by Michael Wolk (an obscure figure who has a handful of producing credits, including this film, and directed a couple of films he directed, but this remains his only screenplay credit). The film was originally set to be directed by Jack Sholder, who did A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge and The Hidden, and would've featured a cast consisting of Lara Flynn Boyle, Viggo Mortensen, Dennis Hopper, and Miguel Ferrer. However, Sholder backed out, opening the door for Landis, who said he liked the script, describing it in Bloodsucking Cinema as, "It's like Marty Scorsese made a vampire picture. He [Wolk] took a[n] urban mafia genre and mixed it with vampires, in a very clever way." He also said he was given a lot of freedom in making the movie, adding, "It was very risky, which I think perhaps contributed to the fact that it didn’t do well."

Innocent Blood is most definitely part of that latter section of Landis' career where his movies began to flop and big studios eventually stopped calling, be it due to just bad luck, poor timing and marketing, or maybe karma finally catching up with him after the Twilight Zone tragedy, if you want to look at it that way. Since he'd scored a major hit just four years earlier with Coming to America, I don't think it's that surprising that Warner Bros. not only gave him free reign with Innocent Blood but also a $20 million budget, even though he'd made Oscar with Sylvester Stallone, a notorious flop, in-between. For whatever reason, though, Innocent Blood was another box-office failure, grossing only around $5 million. And from there, Landis' directing career all but petered out by the end of the 90's.

We learn little to nothing about our protagonist, Marie (Anne Parillaud), other than her name, that she's French, and is a vampire. We don't know how long she's been a vampire (though some dialogue of hers suggests it's been quite a while), how she became one in the first place, or even what her last name is. At the start of the movie, we learn that she had a lover at one point, but for whatever reason, he's no longer in the picture. She says, "My choosiness about food cost me my lover," but whether that means her lover was another vampire who got tired of her inability to select a victim and left her, he was a human who left upon learning she was a vampire, or she got desperate and fed on him, is never clarified. One thing that is clear is that Marie has a moral code, and only kills and feeds on truly evil people. Thus, while staying in Pittsburgh, she begins targeting the local mafia, specifically the crime ring ran by Sal Macelli. However, her selective nature extends beyond her would-be victims' outward appearance and "occupation." When she first meets Joe Gennaro while he's undercover, she says in her narration, "He looked promising... He felt promising. But his eyes were... sad, so very sad." She then states her first rule: "Never play with the food," meaning she makes sure not to become too emotionally attached to where she can't prey on anyone, and quickly walks away from him. But when she then runs into the hot-headed and violent Tony Silva, who threatens her after he comes close to running over her, angry that she smacked his car's hood in irritation, she says, "This guy was perfect." She then acts all feminine and fragile, making him change his attitude and take a very different interest in her. She gets in the car with him when he offers her a ride, and later feeds on him when they're parked. After cleaning herself up, Marie enacts her second rule: "Always finish the food." She takes a shotgun and shoots him point-blank in the head, both to destroy the bite marks and cover her tracks, as well as destroy the central nervous system so Tony can't later resurrect as a vampire himself.

Despite her well worked out procedure, Marie admits she made a big mistake in her decision to go after Sal Macelli himself after he annoyed her with some crass comments and insults. Allowing him to take her home for "a little late supper," she's blindsided when he serves some mussels with garlic and runs to the bathroom. Following her, Sal, confused by her reaction, opts to hit on and then attempt to rape her, during which she attacks and bites into his neck. However, before she can finish the job, he fires a shot

that alerts his driver, Lenny, who's waiting outside, and then shoots her in the midsection. The latter stuns and frazzles her long enough to where Lenny sees the aftermath of what's happened through the window and tries to break in, forcing Marie to flee. She remains in the vicinity, waiting for a chance to rectify things, when Joe shows up and chases her around, during which time Sal's body is taken to the city morgue. By the time Marie is able to get downtown, along with Joe, Sal has resurrected and escaped. Joe,

after running into two fellow officers, Finton and Morales, who attempt to take care of Marie, thinking, due to his claims, that Joe has snapped, then goes after Sal at the home of his lawyer. Marie, of course, manages to easily escape their custody and, while saving Joe from being killed by Sal and his goons, attempts to kill Sal but fails again. She and Joe then pursue Sal in a car chase, as Marie admonishes Joe for his interference. But, even though they manage to stay on his tail, when the sun rises, Marie is forced to stop the chase for the time being, knowing that Sal will have to seek shelter too. She and Joe then check into a motel to wait until nightfall to go after him again.

Because of what she is, Marie purposefully leads a very lonely existence. As she says in her opening narration, her only comforts are satisfying her appetites for blood and sex, neither of which she's had in a long time. Though she likes to think of herself as more than just a killer, getting angry when Joe compares her to Sal, there is some self-loathing about her. There are a couple of times where she becomes disgusted with the sight of her blood-covered face in a mirror, to the point where she destroys the mirror in a

rage. She also once says, in a contemptuous tone, "I died a long time ago." Furthermore, once Sal has been dealt with, she intends to commit suicide by exposing herself to the rising sun, hoping to atone for what she's done, as well as possibly to put an end to her sad existence. What stops her is Joe, who makes it clear he's willing to be the cure for her loneliness. Initially, he's both frightened and repulsed by her, though she assures him that he has nothing to fear, and that he needs her help in taking down Sal. When he eventually starts to show an obvious attraction to her,

she encourages him to follow through on it, as she feels the same way towards him. Plus, as she tells him, she's so starved for sex that there's no risk of her biting him, even passionately. When he's still hesitant, she allows him to handcuff her behind her back, though it's only to give him enough a sense of security to where he feels he can safely do it with her. In the middle of their love-making, she easily breaks the cuffs, but by this point, he knows that she won't hurt him. After that, the two of them work together to kill Sal, and afteward, Marie decides to be with Joe, saying in her narration that he made her feel alive.

When you first meet Joe Gennaro (Anthony LaPaglia), he seems to be a fairly recent addition to Sal Macelli's crime ring, one who's shocked at how sadistic and bloodthirsty Sal is when interrogating Gilly, whom he suspects of not giving him his half of a recent heist. When he warns Sal that the establishment, the Oyster House, is possibly being monitored, and that Gilly disappearing might raise some eyebrows, Joe is tasked with killing Gilly himself. He hesitates, leading Sal to do it himself, and is then warned that the next time he's told to shoot someone, he'd better do it. Afterward, Joe tells Tony Silva about how sick and unhinged he thinks Sal is, and is informed that, while he may have joined the ring with the intent of working for them as a thief, he's going to be made to use a gun sooner or later. He comes off as even more of a loose cannon when he spots a van with darkly-tinted windows parked nearby and, realizing it's some cops on surveillance, smashes their window and tells them to mind their business. But, when he and Tony go their separate ways afterward, Joe's first interaction with Marie, where he apologizes for bumping into her and offers to give her a lift somewhere she can get a warm drink, is the first hint that not all is as it seems with him, as are Marie's impressions about him in her voiceover. And the next day, when he shows up at the scene where Marie killed Tony, it's revealed he's actually an undercover detective. He's been among Sal's criminal ring for three years now, and feels he's close to being able to bring him down. However, the stunt he pulled the night before with the surveillance van (in his defense, he says it was parked too close), as well as his referring to Tony as a friend and showing up at the crime scene, possibly exposing his true identity, gets him a tongue-lashing from District Attorney Sinclair, who believes he's becoming a danger to the investigation and himself (you later learn that it recently cost him his wife, who left him). As much as he hates it, Joe is put into protective custody, which he needs when he's photographed with Sinclair, the photo hits the afternoon paper, and his cover is blown wide open.

That night, Joe is incensed when he learns Sal has been killed, which is believed to be a mob hit because Joe made him look like a fool. At the crime scene, he's perplexed by the lack of blood, and also puts it together that the killer was a woman. While looking around the vicinity, he runs into and chases after Marie, whom he quickly starts to realize isn't what she appears to be. Then, as if his night couldn't get any weirder, he hears a little bit about Sal's resurrection and escape from the morgue, and that he 

crashed a car in Shadyside. No sooner does that happen that he finds himself driving to Shadyside with Marie, after she's jumped down onto his car's roof, nearly mashing it in completely. Along the way, Joe figures that what he heard about Sal coming back to life is true and that Marie is out to kill him because she wasn't able to before. In Shadyside, his fellow detectives Finton and Morales attempt to take Joe into custody, but he instead goes after Sal at Manny Bergman's house. When he gets there, he's taken 

hostage by Sal and his goons, and is nearly given a gruesome death in the back of a garbage truck down by the waterfront. Fortunately for him, Marie manages to easily loose Finton and Morales, and saves him. But when the two of them chase Sal onto the highway, Marie is forced to pull into a motel because the sun is coming up. Though she insists that, if they work together, they can find and kill Sal, Joe still isn't sure if he can trust her. He's especially not crazy about spending an entire day in a motel room with her, but finds he has no other choice. Despite 

being extremely tired since he's been up all night, he's reluctant to go to sleep, afraid that she'll attack him, and is repulsed by being near her. Ultimately, he does doze off, and panics when he wakes up, immediately running into the bathroom to check his neck in the mirror. When he finds there are no bite marks, he does begin to trust Marie, and as he watches her sleep, he starts to realize that she is genuinely attractive. But, even when she encourages him to act on his feelings, he's too afraid of what she might do if

she gets excited. Thus, she lets him handcuff her behind her back, and they start having sex, only for Marie to easily break the handcuffs. Despite this, Joe doesn't freak out but continues on, showing that he does now trust her.

However, this gets into one of the weaker aspects of the story for me: the romance between Marie and Joe. Much like it was with David and Alex in An American Werewolf in London, it feels very sudden and rushed, especially since we're talking about two people who only met a couple of nights before, and also because one of them was freaked out by the other until he saw she wasn't going to drain his blood while they're having sex. Instead of love, it just feels like a mutual sexual attraction that they engaged in to

relieve a bunch of stress. I do think they make a good team when they hunt down and take on Sal and his increasing vampire minions during the climax, but I find it hard to buy when Joe tells Marie he loves her, and is willing to rent another room for the two of them as the sun comes up. If nothing else, at least David and Alex knew each other longer, and one didn't know that the other was a werewolf until the very end.

Because of his commitment to his undercover role, as well as his short fuse and violent acting out, Joe isn't too popular with some of the other guys at the department. That's especially true of Marsh (Marshall Bell), one of the two men inside the surveillance van that Joe attacks to keep up appearances, and who gets his face cut as a result. The two of them almost get into a fight over it at the scene of Tony's murder, when Joe accuses Marsh of being parked too close the night before. Two other detectives, Dave Finton (Leo 

Burmester) and Steve Morales (Luis Guzman), are more amicable toward him, acting as his guards while he's in protective custody. They also break the news to him about Sal Macelli's death, with Finton trying to raise his spirits by ensuring him they have enough info on Sal's men to take down the crime ring. But, when he later runs into them downtown after Sal has resurrected and fled, they believe Joe is losing it when he claims Marie is the one who "killed" Sal. He doesn't do himself any more favors when he talks about Marie biting Sal in the neck, draining his blood, and doing the same to Tony Silva, as well as blowing the latter's head off to make sure he stayed dead. And Marie herself makes Joe look even crazier when she puts on her innocent act and later accuses him of being the one who's lost it. Morales feels that Joe's determination to nail Sal has led him to invent the idea of a vampire killing him rather than a normal hitman, while Finton puts Joe in his car and threatens to cuff him if he doesn't stay put. But Joe, figuring Sal went to Manny Bergman's home, makes his way out there; Marie, meanwhile, easily manages to elude Finton and Morales. Later, during the climax, both detectives trace Sal to the Melody Lounge, a strip club where he begins turning his men into vampires. Finton is killed and later, briefly pops up as a vampire, though Joe puts him down. Morales is nearly killed himself, as he gets caught up in the fight between Marie and some of the other vampires. However, thanks to Marie and Joe, he manages to get away safely, though leery of Marie, now that he knows what she is.

Three years before she starred in Vampire in Brooklyn, Angela Bassett has a small role here as District Attorney Barbara Sinclair. She only has two scenes, with the first being when she chews Joe out for showing up where Tony Silva's body is found, warning him that there could be any number of cops working for Sal there, not to mention the press. She also considers taking Joe off the case, feeling he's becoming hazardous to both it and himself, but when he becomes angry and tells her why doing so at this point would be a bad idea, she assures him that they can use his testimony to put Sal away. And then, when the press converge on them, she knows she has no choice but to put on a smiling face and pose for pictures with him. Later, when the police are investigating what happened at Manny Bergman's house, Sinclair is not happy when Finton and Morales tell her that Bergman's wife, Frannie, says that Sal was there the night before, and that she saw Joey being loaded into the back of Sal's limousine. She tasks them with finding both of them, adding, "And you better hope Gennaro's still alive." She also tells them, "Try not to lose your car this time," seeing as how Marie took it. Then, Sinclair tries to speak with the barely alive Bergman, asking if he will press charges against Sal, but he says nothing, frustrating her further.

He's not a major character at all, but I'd like to briefly mention the coroner (Rohn Thomas), mainly because of how, in the few scenes he's in, he's often looking over a crime scene, studying something really ghoulish, but at the same time, having a casual conversation with someone, usually Joe. Of course, he also gives Joe some valuable info, like when he tells him that Tony Silva's body has been completely drained of blood, and also when he notes that the temperature of Sal's corpse is going up when the opposite should be happening. His most memorable moment is at the morgue, where he tells a group of reporters, "Ladies and gentlemen, you cannot rush an autopsy! As soon as we know, you'll know." And no sooner does he say that than Sal rushes by behind him, followed by the coroner's assistant and the pathologist. Like the reporters, the coroner is utterly confused at this, and has to get out of the way of the reporters when they stampede up the stairs upon realizing that Sal is still alive.

I don't think anybody who sees Innocent Blood would disagree that the movie's standout performance goes to Robert Loggia as Salvatore "Sal" Macelli. While he certainly had more than his fair share of over-the-top, crazy performances in his career, he really gets to let loose here. Sal, who has the nickname "Sal the Shark," is a monster even before he becomes a vampire. His introductory scene, where he talks with Gilly about the half of a heist he feels he stiffed him on, is something that wouldn't feel out of place in a Scorsese mobster movie or The Sopranos. After Gilly is seated across from Sal, a toaster oven is brought out and placed on the table. At first, Sal tells Gilly the benefits of a toaster oven over a microwave and other appliances, and it's very casual. He picks the oven up, notes that it was manufactured in Korea, and tells Gilly, "They're gettin' a big chunk of the electronics action. Do you know why? Because they fuckin' steal. Any fuckin' idea that ain't nailed down. You think some Korean asshole came up with the toaster oven? Well, here they are, knockin' 'em out. Where'd it come from?" Gilly doesn't understand the question, and that's when Sal drops all sense of geniality, accusing him of thinking that, because he recently took over the crime ring, certain things would escape his attention. He then angrily demands to know where his cut of what Gilly took from a truck he robbed is, and when he doesn't say the right thing, Sal bashes him in the face with the oven. He tells him, "I got a message for your guys at the warehouse... The message is, 'Don't fuck with me!", then slams the oven atop his head. And when Joe steps in and suggests they get rid of Gilly discreetly, Sal demands he do it himself. Joe, however, is reluctant to take the offered gun and shoot Gilly, prompting Sal to do it while Gilly is literally at his feet, begging to be allowed to live. His groveling only disgusts Sal, who kicks him off, and when he keeps loudly begging for his life, Sal groans in irritation, "Fuckin die," and shoots him. He then grabs Joe and snarls in his face, "Next time I tell ya to pull the trigger, you fuckin' pull the trigger!" Tony has to calm Sal down to keep him from possibly killing Joe right then and there on a whim.

When Joe is outed as an undercover cop by the press, Sal is now really intent on killing him, something Manny Bergman advises against. It's then that Sal meets Marie, as his driver, Lenny, is talking with her. Sal says to him, "I got my ass on the grill, and you can't get your mind off pussy for two seconds." When Marie, in turn, snips at him, "You dress like a pimp and talk like a goon. What makes you news?", Sal is not amused, telling her that no one says stuff like that to him. But he then adds, "You might be the dumbest

bitch I ever met, but ya got balls. You want a ride? Ya got one," and Marie opts to take him up on his offer. On the way, Sal offers an apology for his behavior in the form of a late supper at his home, which Marie is game for. All goes well, until Sal serves some takeout he was going to have earlier: mussels and garlic. This sends Marie to the bathroom, much to his confusion, but while in there, he decides to make his move. Already coming on really strong, when she resists slightly, he grabs her by the head and growls, "Don't

play Mary Virgin with me, huh?!", then pulls her up onto the sink and adds, "Come on, bitch! Take a ride!" That's when she appears to give in to him, only to bite him in the neck, causing him to stumble and fall back into the bathtub, where she attempts to feed on him. But Sal proves to be crafty enough to fire a shot as a signal to Lenny, before shooting Marie in the midsection. She's then forced to flee the scene, and because she couldn't finish the job, he later awakens at the city morgue. Confused and initially unaware of where he is, thinking he's at a hospital, he flees,

stealing a car and making his way to Bergman's home. There, he terrorizes Bergman's wife, Frannie, looking for a drink to calm himself, and when Bergman himself gets home, he tries to calm Sal. Sal begins to rave, thinking it's a plot to rub him out, and also feels an insatiable appetite, which he tries to satisfy with a piece of meat that Frannie microwaves. 

As the night goes on, Sal starts to realize the extent of his newfound abilities. First, he notices the spot where a thermometer had been stuck into him has healed up. Second, he's able to recognize when Joe has arrived at the house because he can smell him. Third, he finds he's strong enough to raise him up off the ground by one hand. Fourth, when Bergman whacks him over the head to stop him from killing Joe on his property, Sal realizes afterward that he's not bleeding. Putting two and two together, he feeds

on Bergman, knowing what will happen, and when Frannie stabs him when he tries to make a move on her, only for it not to affect him, Sal now truly starts to understand what he's capable of, and begins to revel in it. He attempts to kill Joe personally, only for Marie to intervene, forcing him to flee, and leading into a car chase. When dawn breaks, he learns the hard way that his newfound abilities come with a price, as the sun starts to burn him. Turning off the highway, he takes shelter in a meat-plant for Roma 

Meats, one of his businesses, and hides out there until nighttime. By the time he's rested up, he's in great spirits and reveling in his abilities. He catches a fly in midair, shows it to the members of his gang he's called over, and then eats it, before adding, "I can hear an angel fart." And that's when he starts converting his men, first biting Lenny (whom he heard suggesting that Sal should be replaced as the head of the organization), then heading over to another of his businesses, the Melody Lounge strip club, to continue the initiation. He now plans to 

spread his vampirism throughout all of Pittsburgh, declaring, "We got the muscle. We got the hunger. We'll crack this town, like a lobster," leading into the final confrontation between him, Joe, and Marie. 

Through it all, Loggia, who was told by John Landis that he couldn't be too over-the-top, continues to bounce off the walls, clearly having fun with his role. He has so many stand out moments and lines, such as when he's flailing around upon awakening at the morgue, seeing that there are dead bodies all around him; tries to get an outside line on a phone in the hallway and yells at the coroner's assistant when he shows up behind before running off; complains about what happened at the morgue to Manny Bergman, 

and raves that it's a set-up, before sniffing Bergman and telling him that he smells good; gets stabbed with a knife by Frannie, then pulls the knife out of his mid-section and, with a big smile on his face, says, "This shit is disgusting,"; tells Joe, before he goes to put him in the trash compactor, " I'm gonna grind you down to blood... and screams,"; screams and yells when he first gets exposed to the sun, "What is this shit?! What the fuck?!"; and roars at this homeless man on the street by the Melody Lounge who asks him for some money. One part that I love is, right at 

the end, after Sal has been blown up, you suddenly hear him yell, among the flames, "Hey, you fuck!", sounding more annoyed in pain or enraged. He then casually walks over to Marie and Joe, engulfed in flames, and declares, "You think you can kill me? Whatcha killed here is my fuckin' suit! I am the power, you fuckin' cockroach! I... am the light! I am Macelli!"

Don Rickles, whom John Landis met back in the late 60's, when they both worked on the movie Kelly's Heroes (Landis was part of the crew), has a small role here as Sal's scumbag lawyer, Manny Bergman. He warns Sal against putting a hit out on Joe when he's exposed as an undercover cop, and that Sinclair is going to freeze his assets, encouraging him to, "Make arrangements." When Sal is seemingly killed, Bergman has a confrontation with Joe, where he has the gall to tell him, "Compared to you, my clients are

paragons of honor!" And later that night, he returns to his home to find Sal there, rifling through his house, trying to satisfy his appetite, and terrorizing Bergman's wife, Frannie (Elaine Kagan). When he meets him, he tries to make sense of what's going on with Sal, and calls some of the other members of the mob. He later stops Sal from killing Joe on his lawn, having to whack him over the back of the head with a shovel to do so, and then tries to tell him how they can proceed. But then, Sal, starting to realize what he's capable of, bites Bergman, feeding on his blood, and threatens Frannie, only for her to stick a knife in his mid-center. In fact, Frannie who'd been drinking the whole evening to cope with what she was going through, was already intent on killing Sal, but ran when she found she couldn't. Bergman is taken to the hospital the next day, where he revives as a vampire. But unlike Sal, he doesn't get to enjoy it, as a nurse in his room opens the drapes when he's behind her, causing him to burn alive and disintegrate from the sunlight. Witnessing this, poor Frannie faints, and likely dies of a heart attack.

As you've already seen, Innocent Blood goes against the classic trope of vampires not casting a reflection, and also, like Near Dark, they never sprout fangs and the very word itself is never uttered once. As became common in vampire movies starting in the 80's, there's no shape-shifting or hypnosis, but the vampires are very strong, agile, and so fast that they're basically able to teleport, and also have razor sharp senses and any wounds they receive heal quickly. Marie never flies onscreen, but a sequence 

shot from her POV when Joe corners her in a church implies that she is able to. Speaking of which, both crucifixes and holiness in general don't affect vampires here, although sunlight definitely does, and Manny Bergman's death scene shows us the pain and severity of the damage it causes. By extension, the vampires' eyes are sensitive to bright light, with both Marie and Sal often demanding the lights in a room be kept as dim as possible. What's really unique about the depiction of vampires here, though, is how there are elements that feel more akin to zombies. 

According to Marie, in order to keep her victims from reanimating after she feeds on them, she destroys the central nervous system by blowing their heads away with a shotgun. Moreover, a headshot or breaking the spine is the only other way to put down vampires, as the former is how Sal is finally killed after he's set ablaze by a large fuel explosion.

There are two notable aspects of the vampires' physicality that are unique to this film. One is their eyes, which tend to glow different colors, often reflecting their mood. The most common color is blood red, accompanied by jaguar-like screeches and snarls, whenever they're in a feeding frenzy, as well as bright green, which seems to come up when they're agitated. Marie's eyes turn various colors while she and Joe are having sex, hinting at a number of different emotions she's feeling. Another is how they

physically look. When Sal, Bergman, and the others are first changed, they really do look like zombies, with diseased-looking, gray-colored flesh (they actually remind me of how Freddy and Frank look in The Return of the Living Dead right before they become full-on zombies), but once they feed for the first time, they improve considerably and look more like regular people. We can guess that Marie went through a similar change when she first turned. And since their body temperature rises before they reanimate, and they also have vital signs, it seems to prove that these vampires, as with most modern depictions, aren't actually undead.

In addition to Robert Loggia, there are a number of actors here who are often associated with crime and mob flicks, not least of whom is Chazz Palminteri as Tony Silva. Despite being undercover, Joe is close enough to Tony where he considers him a friend, and Tony does indeed look out for him. When Sal is angry after Joe doesn't kill Gilly like he ordered him to, Tony talks him down, and then warns Joe that, sooner or later, he will have to gun someone down under Sal's orders. And while the other gangsters applaud Joe for attacking the police surveillance van and chewing out the cops, Tony tells him not to do that kind of stuff, then sends him home and warns him to get his head straight. But, despite all of this, as well as Palminteri's expected charisma (when they take Gilly down into the Oyster House's basement to meet with Sal, they walk through the kitchen, which is filled with Chinese workers, and Tony comments, "See? We've come so far down, we're in China,"), Tony is not a good guy by any means. In addition to excusing Sal's violent and sadistic tendencies, there are hints that he's quite sadistic himself. When he and Joe lead Gilly through the Oyster House, Tony stops to watch the scene in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, which is playing on TV, where the Rhedosaurus eats a policeman alive, which he really enjoys, saying, "I love that." And when he nearly hits Marie, who smacks his car's hood with her purse in irritation, he gets out and yells at her to never touch his car. But when Marie then puts on her helpless woman act, and Tony gets a look at her after his anger settles down, he changes his tune, intending to score with her later. He attempts it when she comes on to him while they're parked, and gets fed upon.

Loggia is also one of a number of people in this film who went on to be on The Sopranos. For instance, Rocco Sisto plays Gilly, the schmuck at the beginning who made the mistake of not giving Sal his cut of a heist and, despite loudly begging for his life, gets smashed in the face with a toaster oven and is then shot repeatedly. David Proval plays Lenny, Sal's limo driver, who is present when Marie appears to kill Sal, and is among the first of the gang to see him after he's been resurrected as a vampire. Watching Sal as he

chomps on meat, he tells Manny Bergman, "I swear on my mother, he was dead. And this ain't no improvement." Poor Lenny later gets shot in the foot during the shootout at the waterfront, and thanks to Sal's improved hearing, he overhears him when he tells two other members of the gang, Ray (Kim Coates) and Frank (Tony Lip), that it may be time for someone else to take over. Thus, Sal bites into Lenny's neck, turning him into a vampire, and like Sal, he quickly grows to love the benefits that come 

with being one, including his healed foot. He helps Sal turn Ray and Frank, and they, in turn, do the same to two other guys, Tommy (Vic Noto) and Vinnie (Jerry Lyden), when they show up. One guy who never gets a chance to become a vampire is Jacko (Tony Sirico), as he's killed by Marie during the scene at the waterfront. Someone else who unknowingly manages to escape being turned is Gus (Ron Roth), who runs the Melody Lounge , and is just as shocked to see Sal alive as anybody. Naturally, he allows him to go about his business, and when Joe and Marie 

show up after the place has closed for the night, Gus threatens them both with a baseball bat. That includes Marie, but she easily knocks Gus unconscious with the bat when she grabs it after he swings at her.

More akin to what you would expected in a Joe Dante film is how there are a lot of familiar genre faces who cameo here. Frank Oz, who often appeared in John Landis' movies anyway, shows up as the pathologist who finds himself faced with a newly resurrected Sal at the morgue. Tom Savini appears in a few scenes as a news photographer, and the film's own makeup effects artist, Steve Johnson, shows up as an orderly who attempts to restrain the frantic and quickly deteriorating Bergman when he's been exposed to the 

sun. Johnson's wife at the time, who happened to be 80's scream queen Linnea Quigley, runs in as another nurse as the scene goes on and gets to let out quite a scream when Bergman's burning arm comes off in her hands. Sam Raimi plays the man working at the Roma Meats factory when Sal takes shelter in there, and Dario Argento plays a paramedic who looks after Bergman when he's placed into the ambulance (I know I wouldn't want that guy's creepy visage hovering right above my face, assuring me that I'm going to be fine). Forrest J. Ackerman, who'd 

appeared in some of Landis' previous movies, including his directorial debut, Schlock, shows up as a man whose car Sal steals when he escapes the morgue. David Early, who appeared at the beginning of Dawn of the Dead as one of the two arguing commentators, can be seen among the reporters at the morgue when Sal escapes. And finally, director Michael Ritchie, who did The Bad News Bears, Fletch, and The Golden Child, appears as a night watchman down by the waterfront. As he watches Marie drive off, with Joe fumbling to get through the passenger side window, he mutters, "Son of a bitch."

John Landis is another filmmaker who, despite what you may think of him personally, does know how to make really slick, good-looking movies. And with Innocent Blood, he not only had a healthy budget to play around with but also a great cinematographer in Mac Ahlberg, who'd previously made a number of low budget movies, like Hell Night, Re-Animator, From Beyond, Dolls, and DeepStar Six, look much better than you may expect. They really took advantage of the city of Pittsburgh, making the numerous exterior nighttime scenes look really lovely

with the combination of the buildings up against the black sky, the city lights, and the frequent snowfall, and there are also some beautiful wide, sweeping shots of the city skyline, both at night and during the early morning hours. In addition, many of the exteriors look warm and even romantic, like Marie's dimly lit room at the beginning and the similar-looking motel room where she and Joe stay, while the interiors of the church where Joe momentarily traps her look downright breathtaking thanks to all of the candles in the cathedral, and the shafts of light 

coming through the stained glass windows in another part of it. There are other interiors that are shot to come off as more menacing, like the dimly lit basement where Sal interrogates and kills Gilly, and Manny Bergman's basement, where Sal bites and kills him. Direction-wise, Landis never gets too fancy or showy, but he does open the movie with a very slow pan across the city, clearly done from a helicopter, and ending on a shot looking down on the street, before cutting. There's also that scene from Marie's

POV as she's apparently flying around Joe in the church, and the slow, sensual montage of her washing the blood off herself in the church's shower room, with close-ups of her head under the water and the blood slowly going down the drain. I also like how the film cuts from the frantic action of Bergman burning up from the sunrise to the shot of the TV, where Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers On A Train is playing, showing Bruno sitting in the crowd, staring 

right at the screen, as if he's watching and enjoying this. An even more skillful incorporation of the movie clips comes earlier, when, right after Sal attacks Bergman down in the basement, Frannie walks into the kitchen and looks out the window to see Lenny and Jacko carrying Tony out to Sal's limo. Off to the side, you can hear the scene in the concert hall from the original Universal Dracula on the TV, as Lucy tells of an old toast about death, mentioning the part about, "The next to die." And when Frannie goes

downstairs with a butcher knife, intending to kill Sal, you hear Dracula's line, "There are far worse things waiting man than death," alluding to what Sal has become and what he's done to Bergman. Finally, while the movie is never really scary, Landis does manage to set up some effective jumpscares and shock moments throughout it.

Landis had initially intended to set the movie in New York while shooting in Philadelphia, but decided Pittsburgh would work for the story once he scouted the area. It definitely gives it a vibe, especially during the time of year it was filmed, with the snow, the overcast sky during the daytime, and all of those freezing cold nighttime exteriors on the streets, highways, and in some cases, rooftops. There's also this notion that, as lovely as it looks during the opening and some other shots, this city really is under the control of the mob. For that matter, one of the 

first establishments we visit is the Oyster House, this little diner that the mob runs, and the basement of which is where Sal is introduced and we see just how dangerous and bloodthirsty he is. The third act and climax is set at another such establishment: the strip club called the Melody Lounge, a tacky, neon-filled joint, in the middle of a pretty sleazy-looking section of town, with topless dancers doing their thing on sections of the main floor, just an arm's length from the customers, rather than on a stage. The main office upstairs is about as seedy as you might expect it to 

be. And the waterfront, another area often associated with crime, is the spot where Joe almost gets crushed in the garbage truck when Sal and his guys capture him at Bergman's house. Speaking of which, both Sal and his lawyer live in the absolute lap of luxury. Sal's home is this big mansion, with an interior courtyard separating it from the building next to it (which happens to be a church), while on the inside there's a large living room and kitchen area just beyond the front door, with the former having a big fireplace 

surrounded by furniture with an animal theme: trophies on the wall, a bearskin rug, chairs with spot and stripe patterns, and, nearby, a large, round bed that appears to have a freaking coyote pelt on it, with pillows that have a similar spots-and-stripes pattern. And the bathroom is completely covered in marble, with mirrors everywhere. Bergman's home, while not as flamboyant as Sal's, is still a pretty high-end place, with a lovely foyer, a big living room with another roaring fireplace, and a nice kitchen. Only the basement looks a little ordinary and lower class, akin to Joe's skimpy little apartment.

One of my favorite settings, though it only figures in one scene, is that church, particularly the main cathedral, which is filled with hundreds of lit candles, as well as impressive statues and carvings, a massive altar, and stained glass windows. Another part of the church you see is an area with showers, which Marie climbs up into through a window, and there's a nearby thrift shop that she breaks into in order to get some new clothes (kind of makes me think of Kyle Reese doing so in The Terminator). Another memorable setting is the city morgue, where Sal reanimates as a 

vampire. What I find notable about this kind of setting is the weird dichotomy to it. So much of it looks like a well-maintained, spotless, official building, with marble-work in the architecture and these fancy-looking elevators with golden doors, but then, you have the actual morgue, full of grisly corpses the pathologist is busy performing autopsies on. A similar setting is Roma Meats plant, where Sal takes shelter from the sun, and is probably the single grittiest, most unsavory-looking setting in the whole 

movie. And finally, there are two settings that Marie makes into her own when she stays there. The first, during the opening, is this, initially, rather opulent-looking apartment, with a fairly big, fancy bed, vanity mirror, candelabras, and lots of lit candles, but with wallpaper that really looks as though it's seen better days, and another section off to the right of vanity mirror that looks completely wrecked, suggesting this place is actually condemned (the establishing shot of

this building pretty much confirms it beforehand). The other, the Amore Motel, is a pretty ordinary spot, with rooms that are very unremarkable, but Marie gives the one that she and Joe stay in her special touch with the drapes over the windows and all the lit candles.

In An American Werewolf in London, John Landis was able to keep the references to past movies and accepted werewolf tropes to a minimum, save for some allusions to The Wolf Man and Hammer's The Curse of the Werewolf in the dialogue, as well as Jack hand-waving away David's question about if he'd need to shoot himself with a silver bullet as something that doesn't apply to "real life." Unlike The Howling from the same year, you don't see any of those movies playing on television, nor do you see an image of Lon Chaney Jr., or even some actual

drawings and literature relating to the werewolf legend. Innocent Blood, however, pays a lot more direct homage to the past, as you see both the original Dracula with Bela Lugosi and the first Hammer Dracula playing on TV at different points, in addition to other old movies like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Phantom of the Rue Morgue, and Stranger On A Train. The actors who appear onscreen during those clips are even listed in the credits as if they were actually involved with the movie, like Lugosi, Peter Cushing, and Christopher

Lee. (I have a feeling that's why Landis specifically showed Hitchcock's cameo in Strangers On A Train, so he could have him listed among the cast of one of his movies. And yet, Farley Granger, who also appeared in that scene, and was the movie's actual star, doesn't get a credit, even though Robert Walker does later on. Hell, even Dan Quayle, a clip of whom appears briefly when Joe changes the channel from Horror of Dracula, gets credited, but not Granger!) While I personally don't mind it, and like I said 

earlier, the way they make use of the clips from both Dracula and Strangers On A Train are rather clever, the film does linger on them a bit, like when Tony stops to watch the Rhedosaurus munch on the police officer, or when Finton is engrossed in the climax of Horror of Dracula. That's also why I don't agree with Leonard Maltin when he said he felt the movie is never going, "You get it?", because it feels like it does sometimes. And I also find it ironic that they would make use of two classic vampire movies in a movie where the word itself is never even said (though, I guess they would've felt much more out of place in Near Dark).

An American Werewolf in London was also, from the get-go, clearly a horror film that happened to have a lot of humor to it, with Bobby Vinton's version of Blue Moon playing over the opening credits, David and Jack's banter when they're introduced, and the Chess Player at the Slaughtered Lamb telling his joke, as well as some of the other character moments in that scene. Innocent Blood, however, may start with a very majestic love song over the opening credits, followed by Marie lamenting in her narration about how she was starved of blood and sex, as she walks around 

her room completely naked and looks through newspaper clippings, going on about how she was having trouble finding food, but after that, the comedic elements take a backseat for much of the first half. Right after the opening, we get, in succession, Sal's brutal introductory scene, Marie running into and feeding on Tony, Sal meeting and later attempting to force himself on Marie, only for her to bite into his neck, and Joe encountering and chasing Marie around the vicinity. There's certainly humor sprinkled throughout, such as how much Tony 

loves that one moment from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms; Sal's small talk about the toaster oven with Gilly, which you know is only a prelude to a nasty fate Gilly is about to suffer; the moments with the coroner at both of the crime scenes, as he pokes around the bodies while casually talking with Joe, and the scene where Finton is absolutely engrossed with Horror of Dracula. And when Joe first encounters and chases after Marie, the sequence is both tense yet also funny, with how he freaks out

when she scares him on the church's roof, and when she throws him across the street, pins him down, tosses away his gun (which hits one of the church's windows behind her), and yet, he still has the balls to tell her, "You are under arrest." With her eyes glowing green, she tells him, in her deep, inhuman voice, to stay away from her or she'll kill him, and when she leaves, he lies there and says, "God. Just when I thought I understood some shit." But for the most part, it feels like a straightforward meshing of a horror movie with a crime flick.

As Landis himself said while talking about the screenplay, this movie, especially the first act, often feels like the kind of gangster flick you'd expect from Martin Scorsese, with the brutal violence and the constant F-bombs. That scene where Gilly is brought to the Oyster House and led down to the basement, where Sal is waiting for him, immediately tells you he's not long for this world, and, again, knowing this makes the casual small-talk Sal has with him about the toaster oven uncomfortable. Sure enough, it eventually gives way to Sal screaming at Gilly,

demanding to know where his half of the truck heist is, and smashing him in the face and head with the oven, as Gilly begs for his life, before shooting him. Afterward, you have the scene on the street where Tony tries to give Joe a gun, telling him that he will have to kill somebody sooner or later, and Joe, in turn, attacks a police surveillance van, screaming and cursing at those inside. Then, the next day, when Joe talks with Sinclair at the scene of Tony's murder, you learn he's been undercover in Sal's crime ring for three years and feels he's close to bringing him down,

while Sinclair feels his commitment to the charade could jeopardize the investigation, as well as his own health. She also worries that he could blow his cover by showing up at the crime scene, given how there may be cops there on the take, not to mention the press. And, sure enough, Joe is photographed with Sinclair, it appears in the paper, and Sal, enraged at this, wants him killed immediately, while Joe is put into protective custody. Even on the vampire side of things, Marie's feeding on Tony and Sal are both quite

brutal and bloody, and the lead-up to the latter is an uncomfortable scene of intended sexual assault, which would've been even worse if we didn't know Marie was more than capable of defending herself.

But when Sal resurrects at the morgue, the movie's tone becomes much more over the top, as he runs out of there, looking like a ghoul, with both the pathologist and the coroner's assistant chasing him, all in full view of the press. While news of him still being alive begins to spread all over the city, he drives over to Manny Bergman's home, trashes the place while looking for something to drink, then starts chomping on any piece of meat he can find, much to the shock of Bergman, Frannie, and the members of his gang who come over. And like I said before, once

Sal starts to realize what he's now capable of, Robert Loggia really amps up the craziness, with how freaking happy Sal is to see Ray and Frank at the slaughterhouse, the ravenous way he acts towards the topless dancers at the Melody Lounge, telling them they look good enough to eat, and the giddiness and feeling of power he has during the climax. At the same time, you have this unusual twist on the buddy cop scenario when Marie and Joe team up to take him down. Much of that consists of Joe having to come to terms with Marie not being human, which runs the

gambit from fear and repulsion to, once they become lovers, amusement at her capabilities. He also finds himself in some rather uncomfortable predicaments, like when Marie jumps on top of his car's roof while he's in it, and he jumps on the hood while she's driving, only for her to stop and then hit the gas with enough momentum to send him through the busted windshield (by "busted" I mean "nonexistent," as she smashed away all the glass beforehand) and into the passenger seat. Later, when she rescues him from

being killed by Sal and his men, he only gets halfway into the car through the passenger side window, due to being handcuffed behind his back, and asks her, "Would you please help me in the car?" And when they first check into the Amore Motel, the sight of Joe in handcuffs seems to give the manager some unsavory ideas, given the way he looks and chuckles at Joe.

Like American Werewolf, there's much juxtaposition of humor with utter ghoulishness, like the reanimated Sal running around the morgue, freaking out at the sight of all those half-autopsied corpses, and the reactions of everyone who sees him, and the scene where Bergman reanimates in the hospital, only to be destroyed by the sunlight, which is both horrific because of how slow and hideous his death is, but funny because everybody is acting so over-the-top, especially Linnea Quigley when his arm comes off in her hands. Those, I think, are the most effectively 

funny moments. Also, the climax being set at a strip club feels very John Landis, making me think of the porno theater in Piccadilly Circus in American Werewolf. But, while there are some other effectively funny moments, I don't think Innocent Blood matches that film in terms of humor, as there were some parts there that made me burst out laughing. One thing it does share with it, unfortunately, is a similarly abrupt ending where, before you know it, you're suddenly watching the credits. It's not as sudden and jarring as American Werewolf, which is one thing about that

movie I've never cared for, and there is something charming about how the ending credits are done like a sitcom, with the actors' names appearing atop shots of them, but it again feels like Landis didn't know how to end the story, so he just kind of stops it. And at least American Werewolf ends when David is killed, so it does leave off with a resolution, but here, you're expecting to see Marie and Joe either have one final conflict over Marie wanting to kill herself and Joe trying to stop her, or watch the two of them come up 

with a way they can be together, despite Marie being a vampire. But instead, it ends with Joe dismissing her need to kill with a joke and preparing to check them into a hotel for another day of avoiding the sun, while Marie, in her voiceover, has a final line, "He made me feel... alive. And I thought, 'Why not?'", that's very vague in its meaning. Maybe others feel differently, but it comes off as half-cocked to me.

In creating the makeup effects for Innocent Blood, Steve Johnson had to come up with both the newly reanimated, undead vampire makeups and contact lenses, as well as the gore effects. While the former look really good on characters like Sal, Manny Bergman, and the various mobsters who get indoctrinated during the climax, the lenses are more of a mixed bag. The glowing effects, accomplished by shining lights directly on them, look really good, and Bergman's are especially well-designed and 

menacing, but when you see them in close-up, the pupils often make the characters look as though they're cockeyed. The rest of the makeup work, though, is very well done, like the corpses in the morgue and all of the bright red blood from the vampire bites, with the actors often covered in it for much of their screentime. The most spectacular example of effects work period is when Bergman is destroyed by the sunlight, which involves his flesh bubbling and cracking, nasty burns developing, smoke billowing off of him, his arm

coming off and falling apart when it hits the floor, and his skin cracking and charring everywhere. On the visual effects side, you have some nice matte paintings of the city skyline in some shots, like at the end, when Marie walks down the street, heading towards the sunrise, and also some shots that composited her high up the cathedral. But when Sal is set on fire at the end, the actual fire stunt effect is impressive, but the effect they used for the close-up of Sal's burning, charred face, with fire all over him,

looks funky and weird. It's not an early digital effect but, rather, I think, several different film elements laid over one another, like maybe a shot of Robert Loggia with burn makeup and superimposed flames. However it was done, it just looks off, especially when it's in motion.

Following Sal's introduction and his murdering Gilly, the first major scenes are when Marie feeds on his and Tony Silva's blood. After she runs into Tony and manages to charm him into giving her a ride, they drive across the bridge, she puts on a CD of Frank Sinatra's That Old Black Magic, and they stop at a park overlooking the city. Once they park, Tony takes off his gloves, while Marie removes her coat, revealing the lovely dress she has on underneath. They then start making out, with Marie straddling 

him in the driver's seat, and she undoes his collar and starts kissing his neck. He stops her momentarily, suggesting they get in the backseat so he has room to, "Get himself in motion," but she goes back to his neck. She bites and he pulls her back, angrily asking, "What are you, some kind of a freak?!" He gets his answer when her eyes turn red and she snarls at him. She then chomps into his neck and whips her head back and forth like a wild animal, as he screams. Soon, the screaming stops, and the only sound is Sinatra's singing, as Marie finishes her meal. Seeing 

her blood-splattered face in the rear-view mirror, she rips it down and smashes it, then uses something she had in a bag to wipe her face. Later, once she's cleaned herself up, she steps out of the car, pulls a pump-action shotgun out of the bag, and fires it at Tony at point blank range in order to finish the job. She then closes the door and walks off into the snowy night.

When Sal takes Marie back to his house, only to whip out some mussels in garlic, she's immediately repelled and runs to the bathroom. She opens the barred window for some fresh air and realizes she's made a mistake. That's when Sal walks in, turns on the lights, and corners her against the sink. She's both repelled by the smell of garlic on his breath and recoiling from the bright lights, while he gets impatient and grabs her, pulls her up onto the sink, and mashes his mouth 

against hers. She seems to get into it, wrapping her legs around him and kissing his neck. But then, she snarls and bites into him. Sal screams in pain and fumbles back, trying to wrench her loose. He falls into the bathtub and there, Marie continues ripping into his neck. Sal manages to remove a gun from a holster hidden under his pants leg and fires a shot to alert Lenny, who's waiting outside. He then places the gun beneath Marie's midsection and shoots, blowing a hole through her. She yells and recoils, but then merely smacks the gun out of Sal's hand, as he 

appears to die. Outside, as Lenny tries to break in, Marie climbs out of the tub, holding the wound in her midsection, then, like before, angrily smashes the mirror when she sees her blood-splattered reflection. Lenny looks through the open window and sees Sal in the tub, as well as Marie. Horrified, he runs back around to the front and shoots the door handle, while Marie rips the faucet out of the sink and throws it at the window, smashing the glass. By the time he gets inside and bursts into the bathroom, Marie is gone, and he nearly gets sick at the sight of Sal's body in the tub.

Following Joe's confrontation with Lenny and Manny Bergman at the crime scene, he has a look around the vicinity and, walking over to the church next door, climbs up to its roof. He finds some blood on the edge of a chimney there, as well as a discarded high-heel shoe at its base. He bends to get a closer look at it, when he hears some rustling, and Marie pops up from behind the chimney. She roars at him, causing him to fall back, and she runs and jumps off the edge of the roof. Shocked at this, he climbs down there and walks

around to the front of the church, noticing that the two doors are ajar. He walks into the cathedral, and searches it with his small flashlight. When he goes into the back, he takes out his gun, when Marie suddenly flies around and above him, before heading out the front door and back onto the streets. There, she runs to the side of another part of the church and climbs up a pipe to a stained glass window, which she smashes through. Following her trail, Joe comes upon a tied up German shepherd, who's clearly barking

because Marie passed by him. He lets the dog go and follows him, while Marie, who entered a shower area, washes the blood off of her. The dog leads Joe to the spot where Marie climbed up the side of the building, and he looks up to see the window she broke into. After the dog's owner shows up and takes him (he nearly gets shot when he comes up behind Joe and startles him), Joe climbs up the pipe, enters the shower room, and finds a trail of bloody footprints leading out of the building. He follows the trail back out onto the streets, to a thrift store, which he can tell 

Marie broke into. He walks inside, drawing his gun, unaware that Marie, who changed her clothes, is behind him, hanging down from the ceiling by a pipe. Just as Joe finds her discarded dress, she jumps down and runs out the door. When he follows her outside, she grabs him, throws him across the street, pins and disarms him, and then warns him to stop following her, before running off.

Sal's body is brought to the morgue, and when the coroner's assistant wheels him in, there's a loud belch. The assistant insists to the pathologist that it came from Sal's corpse, but he doesn't really believe him, as the two of them hoist the body onto a table. The pathologist opens the body bag and grabs a bone-saw, which he has to stop to plug in. When he turns back around after doing so, he's startled to see Sal sitting up. Upon being told he's not in a hospital, and pulling out the thermometer that's still sticking out of his side,

he freaks out at the sight of all the corpses around him and fumbles for the door on the other side of the room. The coroner's assistant comes back in and, seeing what happened, nonchalantly tells the pathologist, "Well, stop him!"; the pathologist, in turn, says, "You stop him!" Outside, in the hall, Sal gets on a phone, trying to get an outside line to Manny Bergman, then runs when the assistant, who stupidly suggests he just lie down, shows up. He runs outside into the building's lobby, in full view of the

press, and is followed by the coroner's assistant and the pathologist. The latter, seeing the reporters, briefly stops and looks like he's going to say something, but decides to forget it and keeps on running. Sal makes it to an elevator and, when he takes it down and arrives on a bottom floor, walks right by the security guard, who's too engrossed in watching Phantom of the Rue Morgue on TV at his station to notice him at all. Outside, two men stop their car, get out, and look in the trunk, and Sal waltzes in, climbs into the driver's seat, and drives off. As he goes down the street, 

various cars have to swerve out of his way to avoid his erratic driving. The coroner's assistant and pathologist make it down there, as the one man says, "That's my car!"

Meanwhile, Joe heads back to his own car, unaware that Marie is watching him from a ledge high up in the church. After finding he got a parking ticket, he learns that Sal crashed his car in Shadyside, and gets into his driver's seat in order to join everyone else who's heading there. Just as he puts Marie's shoe, which he still has, on the dashboard, she jumps down from her ledge and lands on his roof, caving it on the backside and blowing out the back window. Before 

Joe knows what happened, she yanks him out, throws him into some nearby trashcans, and gets into the car. She smashes out the window, while he gets in front of her and yells at her to stop. She drives at him, prompting him to jump on the hood, and he again orders her to stop the car. While she does, she then hits the gas again, flinging him into the passenger seat, and immediately asks him, "How the hell do I get to Shadyside?" On the way, while driving across the bridge, Marie pulls over and has Joe drive, as the 

bright headlights from the oncoming cars are too much for her eyes. They then reach Shadyside, and the spot where Sal crashed, but when Finton and Morales refuse to believe Joe when he tries to warn them about Marie, they place him in custody. Undeterred, he decides to find Sal on his own. Using a police radio to learn Manny Bergman's address, he then slips away from the scene. Marie, noticing this, asks Finton and Morales if it's possible for her to "powder her nose." At Bergman's home, Lenny and Jacko have arrived and are shocked to see that Sal is 

"alive." Sal then smells Joe's scent nearby, and proceeds to smash the kitchen window and climb through it. At the same time, back at Shadyside, Finton tells Morales that Joe left the scene, and when they check the restroom that Marie is supposedly using, they find it empty, as she climbed out the window. All Morales can do is yell, "Fuck!"

Joe sneaks around Bergman's property and looks through a window that turns out to be to the bathroom, where Frannie Bergman is getting drunk to cope with the crap she's going through. She gasps when she sees him and he quickly backs away, only to run right into Sal. He grabs Joe by the throat and lifts him up, intending to choke him to death right then and there. While Lenny and Jacko are content to watch him do it, Bergman tries to talk him out of killing a cop on his property. He has to whack Sal

across the back of the head with a shovel to get him to stop. After he drops Joe, who's now unconscious, Bergman talks Sal into coming back into the house. Lenny and Jacko, meanwhile, find a pair of handcuffs in Joe's back-pocket and cuff his hands behind his back. Down in the basement, Sal bites into Bergman's neck, and after Frannie comes down and finds what's happened, she stabs Sal in the gut and runs off. Sal merely removes the knife and heads back outside to join Lenny and Jacko. The two of them carry Joe 

over to the limousine and put him in the trunk, unaware that Marie is watching from atop a nearby tree. She also sees Frannie run out of the house, as a police car, which happens to be driven by Finton, comes down the street. Seeing Sal step outside, Lenny runs to the limo's driver side, while Jacko gets Sal's attention, points at the approaching police car, and tells him to come on. Sal suddenly appears right next to him, says, "Hurry the fuck up," and gets into the backseat. Initially confused, Jacko climbs in and the limo drives off, while Frannie flags down Finton. He 

gets out of the car and rushes into the house with Frannie, while Marie takes the opportunity to steal his car and chase after the limo. She hears Morales trying to contact Finton over the walkie-talkie in the passenger seat, but she just tosses it out the window. 

The limo drives down to the waterfront and after parking, Jacko and Sal get out and open the trunk. They find that Joe has regained consciousness and he promptly kicks Jacko in the face, giving him a bleeding lip. Sal grabs Joe, lifts him up out of the trunk, and lets him know what's about to become of him. They show him when they activate the compactor in the back of a nearby garbage truck and it destroys a metal desk, reducing it to little more 

than a husk. Sal then tells him, "We're gonna take this nice and slow. So, why don't ya take your shoes off, get comfortable?" He and Jacko lift Joe up and place his legs into the compactor, which Lenny activates. Marie arrives nearby, and sees that Joe's legs are about to be snapped off by the edge of the compactor. Just as it comes down towards him, Marie drives straight at them. Seeing her, they drop Joe to the ground and open fire on her, with Sal rushing at her as he shoots. He bounces across her hood and roof, then 

falls off to the side. His gun flies through the air and lands beside Joe, who manages to get a hold of it, despite still being handcuffed behind his back. Marie drives at Jacko and bounces him off her hood, while Joe manages to shoot Lenny in the foot when he turns his gun on him. Marie gets out of her car, rushes over to, and snaps Jacko's neck before he can get back up. Seeing this, Sal rushes to the limo and drives away in it. Marie fires at him, while Joe yells that he wants to take Sal in alive (despite everything he's just seen, I might add). She shoots the trunk and the back 

window, but fails to hit Sal. She runs back to her car and prepares to chase after him, barely giving Joe time to climb in through the passenger window. He's still trying to get in while she drives off onto the highway, while Lenny lies on the ground, crying, "He shoot my fuckin' foot! Oh, shit!"

Both cars drive onto the highway, weaving around traffic, but even though she manages to keep up with Sal, Marie sees on the horizon that dawn is starting to break. She veers off to the right, across two other lanes, confusing and scaring Joe, and also causing a bunch of other cars to swerve to avoid hitting her; Sal, meanwhile, keeps on going straight, through the Liberty Tunnels. Marie pulls into the Amore Motel parking lot and pulls up in front of the main office, 

her hood literally steaming. Elsewhere, Sal thinks he's gotten away, but when he exits the tunnel and is exposed to direct sunlight, he begins smoking and burning. Panicking, he veers over to the left, causing several cars to crash into each other at the mouth of the tunnels, with a large cargo truck coming along and plowing into one of them. With nowhere else to go, he pulls into the parking lot of the Roma Meats factory, crashing into the side of a parked truck. Still smoking, he gets out and enters the building, entering the large freezer, full of slaughtered pigs hanging 

from meat-hooks. The lone man working there that morning sees him walking around outside through his office door's window and walks out there to meet him. Sal mainly ignores him and walks further into the back. He decides to hang out there, and has to yell at the guy to leave him be, as well as to turn out the lights. Once he's alone in the dark, he lets out a contented sigh and lays down on a slab, using a big piece of meat as a pillow. And given his expression, it's apparently quite comfortable, too. Despite what he said, the man does call someone when he's back in his office (likely Lenny, explaining why he's there later).

Following Bergman's death at the hospital from exposure to sunlight, and Marie and Joe's sex scene, Ray and Frank arrive at the meat plant, where Lenny takes them in to see Sal. Feeling rejuvenated and full of energy, he shows just how sharp his senses are now when he tells Lenny that he heard him suggest that someone else may need to take over as head of the organization. Telling Lenny that he loved him like a brother, he bites into his neck and lifts him up off of the floor. Horrified at this, Ray and Frank try to slip out, but Sal, his eyes red and his face covered with

blood, tells them, "Don't you fuckin' move!" This stops them cold, and he finishes feeding on Lenny, letting his body drop to the floor. He tells them put to him in their car's trunk, as well as fetch him some clean clothes. Once nighttime comes, Marie and Joe leave the motel, in a car that the latter hot-wires, while Sal and the others arrive at the Melody Lounge. Under Sal's orders, Ray and Frank open the trunk in the middle of the street, and are shocked to find Lenny alive inside. Lenny seems just as shocked, and Sal helps him out and leads him and the other two 

inside the club. There, Sal tells Gus to call Tommy and tell him to get over there. On the way up to the office, Lenny smashes the cast on his foot that got shot, realizing he doesn't need it anymore. Up in the office, as Lenny hungrily eyes them, Sal tells Ray and Frank of his plans to take Pittsburgh in a way no one ever has before. Then, Lenny attacks Ray, forcing him down to the floor and biting him in the neck. Frank tries to shoot him, but Sal grabs his hand, forces him to drop the gun, and bites him as well, telling him,

"Welcome to the family." While Marie and Joe search for Sal at his various businesses across town, Tommy arrives at the Melody Lounge, along with Vinnie. They're let into the office by Lenny, and Sal introduces them to Frank and Ray, as they sit nearby. Vinnie says they already them but Sal insists, "You don't know them like this." That's when Frank and Ray's eyes glow, revealing that they're now vampires, and move in on Vinnie and Tommy. 

While Marie and Joe decide to next check the Melody Lounge, Finton and Morales arrive there first. It turns out they have an informant there, and when they walk in and stop at the bar, she tells them that Sal is upstairs. However, Gus notices this, and calls and warns Sal. When the detectives rush upstairs and enter the office, with their guns drawn, they find Vinnie and Tommy lying back in a pair of chairs, their throats ripped open, while Ray and Frank casually sit on the couch, waiting for them to reanimate. The 

detectives order them to get on the floor, but they only smile at them with their blood-covered mouths. Morales then asks where Sal is, and he jumps down from the ceiling behind them, grabs their arms, and says, "Anywhere I wanna be," before forcing them to drop their guns. Outside, Marie and Joe arrive, but Joe finds the place is locked up. However, Marie simply rips the handle off the door and they head on in. Inside, they're confronted by Gus, who refuses to say where Sal is. He also threatens them with a baseball bat, including Marie, who smiles and softly 

says, "I'm a girl." He swings and she grabs the bat, then effortlessly knocks him out with its handle. Joe comments, "Some girl," and the two of them head upstairs. Marie comes across Ray right outside the office and grabs him from behind, slams him against the wall, then disarms him and throws him down the stairs. He ends up slamming into Joe down there, and quickly pins him to the floor. Joe realizes that he's been turned, as Ray, his eyes glowing yellow, says in a deep voice, "I'm gonna eat your face like a 

chicken," and spits out his chewing gum. Joe reaches into his coat, pulls his gun out of its holster, sticks the barrel into Ray's mouth, and shoots, killing him. Upstairs, Marie enters the office, brandishing Ray's gun, and finds Finton on the floor, dead. Then Morales, who's bound and gagged in a rolling chair, backs up across the floor, letting out some muffled screams, as he's cornered by Vinnie. Vinnie turns and looks at Marie, and she prepares to shoot, only for a now vampiric Tommy to pop up behind her and throw her against the wall. Downstairs, Joe realizes he's out of bullets, so he grabs Gus' bat.

Morales finds himself literally caught in the middle of a vampire fight, with Marie behind him, snarling and roaring at Vinnie and Tommy in front. Joe comes in as Marie flings Tommy across the room, then quickly rushes over and snaps his neck. Vinnie tries to attack Morales again, but Joe rushes up behind him and whacks him in the back of the head with the bat. He turns around and snarls at him, only for Joe to whack him in the face, breaking the bat. He also breaks some of Vinnie's teeth, much to his annoyance, as they fly out of his mouth. But then, like Tommy, Marie comes

up behind him and breaks his neck. She then ungags Morales, who's panicking because she's also a vampire, but Joe assures him that Marie's okay. He unties him and tells him to call for backup, then takes Finton's gun from his corpse, while Marie heads up to the roof. There, Sal, along with Lenny and Frank, makes his declaration about taking over Pittsburgh. Marie shows up and promptly draws her gun, scoring a headshot on both Lenny and Frank, with the former falling off the roof and landing through the canopy above the club's entrance. Unfortunately, she runs out

of bullets before she can do the same to Sal. While he has her cornered up against the door, she reaches behind her back and rips out the doorknob. She tries to stab him with its rod, but he manages to hold back her arm, while pulling out his own gun and, like before, shooting her in the midsection. Joe gets to the roof and shoots Sal several times in the torso, which does nothing. He runs to the edge of the roof and jumps on top of the club's neon sign. Marie implores Joe to get after him rather than worry about her and 

he reluctantly does so, while Sal jumps down to the street. He then walks across it, but stops to look up at Joe and yell some insults at him in Italian, unknowingly stepping right in the path of an oncoming bus, while a taxi comes at him from his other side. The taxi swerves, while the bus comes to a stop behind Sal and he's smashed into its front. Inside the building, Joe rushes downstairs, only to be confronted by a now vampiric Finton. However, he quickly shoots him in the head, putting him out of his misery.

Getting back to his feet in-between the vehicles, Sal angrily yells, "Fuck!" He then smashes the windshield, climbs up into the bus, grabs the driver, screaming, "Where the fuck did you learn to drive?!", then slams him through the window behind him and throws him out the passenger door. He smashes out the window and gets back onto the street, when Joe and Marie confront him. He dares them to do something, when Joe notices how the bus is leaking fuel, as is the crashed taxi. He takes out his cigarette lighter, flicks it, and throws it down at the fuel stream.

The fire quickly makes its way up the fuel, towards the vehicles, but Sal, despite seeing this, just stands there and laughs. Both vehicles then combust in a massive explosion, engulfing them in flames. After briefly shielding themselves from it, Marie and Joe watch the fire, trying to see if this finally took Sal out. Naturally, it didn't, as he emerges, completely covered in flames, and casually walks up to them, saying they did nothing but ruin his suit. But just as he declares how powerful he is, Joe puts one in his forehead, and

his burning body immediately crumbles to the ground. Joe kick away his charred, severed head, and then turns to see Marie walking down the street. He runs after her, and when he asks where she's going, she answers, "To watch a sunrise." That's when he realizes she intends to kill herself, but manages to convince her to stay with them, as the movie ends with them checking into another hotel for the day.

Elmer Bernstein, who'd scored a number of John Landis' movies since Animal House, had initially done a complete score for Innocent Blood but his work was ultimately rejected. In his place was Ira Newborn, who'd not only worked with Landis before, having acted as a musical director and producer on The Blues Brothers and scored Into the Night, but had also scored nearly all of John Hughes' films as director, like Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and Uncle Buck. His music for Innocent Blood is most definitely effective, with light, airy, and somewhat melancholic music for Marie, as well as a very subdued but beautiful love theme for her and Joe, which I think is based around Night, the song that opens the movie. My favorite part of the score is this jazzy, saxophone theme for Sal, which you hear whenever he's being driven around town, giving off this feeling that he's the guy who really runs Pittsburgh. A really clever bit that Newborn does with the music is an extension with how that clip from Universal's Dracula is used in the story. After Dracula says his last line in the scene at the concert hall, you hear Franz Schubert's Unfinished Symphony play on that movie's soundtrack, but as Frannie heads down into the basement, Newborn adapts that piece into the actual score. He also does it when Manny Bergman awakens as a vampire at the hospital, and I thought it was clever way of hearkening back to the significance of Dracula's line in the context of this film. And Newborn's music for the action and chase sequences isn't all that memorable, but it does work in the moment, which is what's important.

As the movie opens, you hear this big, smooth, romantic love song called Night, performed by Jackie Wilson, and the context of the song, about a woman you only see at night, is just perfect for a love story involving a vampire. There are also two Frank Sinatra songs on the soundtrack: That Old Black Magic, which Tony has on CD and which plays during his drive with Marie and when she's feeding on him, and I've Got You Under My Skin, when Sal takes Marie to his home, and when Sal and the guys first walk into the Melody Lounge, you hear a song by Prince called Gett Off playing over the loudspeakers. I'm pretty sure you also hear a song by Rythm Syndicate called Sexitivity at some point during that scene as well. I know for sure that another song by them, called I Wanna Make Love To You, plays during the ending credits.

I doubt it will ever be as iconic and well-regarded as An American Werewolf in London but, regardless, Innocent Blood is a good film and shows that John Landis really does have a knack for making horror movies that are gruesome and dark, yet still have a sense of humor. It has a really good cast and memorable characters, with special mention going to Anne Parillaud and Robert Loggia; a well-utilized setting of Pittsburgh in the dead of winter; great cinematography and direction; very well done makeup and gore effects; a lot of memorable and entertaining sequences, especially during the latter half; some interesting takes on vampire mythology in the screenplay; a good music score and soundtrack; and the film, overall, makes for an interesting blending of horror, humor, and a gangster flick. However, the romance between Marie and Joe isn't pulled off that well, not every instance of humor is a home-run, some effects, like the vampire contact lenses, look a bit wonky, and the ending is really abrupt, with little sense of resolution to the remaining conflict. I do still recommend it for vampire fans and lovers of horror-comedy, but don't expect something amazing.