Official trailer
Innocent Blood deserves its 6 as a fun, messy, tonally chaotic horror comedy that fuses the vampire film with the mob movie and never quite balances the two, but has enough energy and a strong enough hook to remain entertaining.
John Landis, who had reinvented the horror comedy with An American Werewolf in London a decade earlier, returns to similar territory with the story of a French vampire in Pittsburgh who feeds only on criminals, until she accidentally turns a mob boss into a vampire and unleashes an undead crime lord on the city. It’s a clever premise executed with gusto and a complete lack of tonal discipline.
I have a real soft spot for this movie and no illusions about it. A French vampire eating Pittsburgh mobsters is exactly the kind of premise I’ll show up for, and for stretches Landis gives me what I came for. Then he wanders off into a romance or a gag or a gore effect, and I spend the next ten minutes waiting for the film to remember what it was doing.
The film can’t decide if it’s a horror film, a comedy, a crime thriller, or an erotic drama, and it lurches between all four. This tonal incoherence is its main flaw and, oddly, part of its scrappy charm. It’s never boring, frequently entertaining, and too unfocused to be good, a likable mess that deserves a mild recommendation on energy alone.
The Mob-Vampire Mashup
The film’s premise is its strongest asset. Marie, a French vampire, has a personal code, she feeds only on bad people, namely Pittsburgh’s mobsters, treating the criminal underworld as her ethical hunting ground. The conceit of a vampire who preys on the mob is fun, and the early stretches, as Marie picks off gangsters and the mob grows alarmed at the mysterious deaths, generate real comic and horror energy from the collision of the two genres.
The plot kicks into gear when Marie feeds on the crime boss Sallie but is interrupted before she can ensure his death, and he rises as a vampire himself, a ruthless gangster now armed with supernatural powers and the intent to build an undead criminal empire. This is a strong engine, the vampire and the mobster as natural predators now literally turned into monsters, and Robert Loggia clearly relishes playing the undead crime lord with gleeful menace.
The mashup of mob movie and vampire film is the reason to watch, and when the film commits to it, it works. I think the early stretch of Marie picking off gangsters is the best part of the picture, and I wish Landis had built the whole film on that rhythm.
Landis and the Tonal Chaos
John Landis brings his characteristic energy and his characteristic lack of discipline.
The film is packed with the director’s trademark touches, cameos from famous directors, a soundtrack of ironic needle-drops, sudden shifts from comedy to gore to real eroticism. Landis clearly had fun making it, and that enjoyment is infectious even when the film is going off the rails. The American Werewolf in London director knows how to blend horror and comedy, and flashes of that skill appear throughout.
But the film never achieves the tonal control that made American Werewolf a classic.
It swings wildly and often jarringly between tones, a tender erotic scene followed by broad comedy followed by graphic horror, with no clear sense of what the film wants to be from moment to moment. The mob-movie material, the horror, the romance between Marie and an undercover cop, and the comedy all compete instead of cohere. Landis throws everything at the screen, and while some of it sticks, the overall effect is scattered instead of satisfying.
Tone is where Innocent Blood loses me. I don’t mind a horror comedy that swerves, since American Werewolf swerves constantly, but Landis used to know which way he was swerving. Here I can feel him changing his mind from scene to scene.
The Cast and the Energy
The film is carried partly by its cast’s commitment. Anne Parillaud, the French star of La Femme Nikita, plays Marie with a real exotic presence, though her uncertain English limits her.
Anthony LaPaglia is solid as the undercover cop drawn into her world, and Robert Loggia is the film’s MVP, chewing scenery with obvious delight as the vampire mob boss, bringing a gleeful menace that energizes the back half. Don Rickles appears as a mob lawyer, one of several quirky touches.
Loggia is the reason the back half works for me at all. He plays a dead gangster like a man who’s just been handed the promotion of his life, and I grinned through every scene he’s in. Parillaud I found harder to warm to, mostly because the English dialogue seems to fight her.
The film’s energy is its saving grace. Even when the tone is incoherent and the plot meanders, Innocent Blood moves with a scrappy enthusiasm that keeps it watchable. The gore effects are enthusiastic and practical, the pace rarely flags, and the film’s sheer willingness to try anything gives it a chaotic charm. It’s the kind of film that doesn’t fully work but never bores, carried over its weaknesses by the evident fun everyone seems to be having.
That energy isn’t enough to make it good, but it’s enough to make it likable.
Is Innocent Blood worth watching?
I give Innocent Blood a 6 as a fun, messy, tonally chaotic horror comedy with a clever premise, a vampire who preys on the mob until she accidentally creates an undead crime lord. John Landis brings real energy and a strong genre hook, Robert Loggia is a gleeful standout as the vampire gangster, and the mob-meets-vampire mashup works when the film commits to it. It loses points for a complete lack of tonal discipline, swinging jarringly between horror, comedy, crime, and romance without ever integrating them.
It’s a 6 because the premise and Loggia deserve better than a 5, and the tonal mess keeps it well away from a 7. I wanted Landis to pick a movie and make it. He made four instead, and I liked pieces of all of them.
