Innocent Blood (1992)
Making a welcome return to the horror genre Landis manages to combine some nice horror set pieces with plenty of chuckles along the way.We are very much back in the American Werewolf IN London territory, although in this case we have a French vampire in America.Anne Parillaud goes from being the sexy hit woman in Nikita to being the sexy vampire Marie in Innocent Blood.Anne Parillaud is pretty much playing the same sort of role as she did in Nikita, only this time she's killing only the bad guys.Anthony LaPaglia as Joseph Gennaro is an undercover cop trying to infiltrate the crime family of Salvatore 'The Shark' Macelli (Robert Loggia).A lot of the fun and humor comes from the character Macelli (Robert Loggia) who gets bitten by Marie and then returns from the dead.There's a great scene in the mortuary where Frank Oz as a Pathologist about to start an autopsy on Macelli, only for Macelli to come back alive and do a runner with Frank Oz and assistant in hot pursuit.Robert Loggia is not only fantastic as the undead crime lord boss but looks like he is having a lot of fun playing the part in the process, especially when he starts to turn each member of his gang into vampires.Just to prove that Landis has his tongue firmly in his cheek he peppers the film throughout with lots of genre veteran cameos, Dario Argento as a caring Paramedic anyone, Linnea Quigley as a screaming Nurse, Tom Savini as News Photographer and Sam Raimi as Roma Meats Man plus Forrest J Ackerman. Whilst not in the same league as his earlier films, and certainly nowhere near as good as the classic American Werewolf In London,Innocent Blood was a return to form which unfortunately did not last to long ,as anyone who has seen Burke and Hare (2010) will testify too. It goes without saying Anne Parillaud is extremely sexy in this.
1/2 out 0f 5