Innocent Blood (also known in some regions as A French Vampire in America) is a 1992 American blackcomedy horror film directed by John Landis and written by Michael Wolk. The film stars Anne Parillaud as a beautiful French vampire who finds herself pitted against a gang of mobsters led by Salvatore Macelli (Robert Loggia) who eventually becomes a vampire and schemes to build a criminal syndicate of vampires.
Marie is a vampire in modern Pittsburgh, with a moral code that limits her bloodsucking to the criminal elements of society. After feasting on mafioso Tony Silva, she shoots him in the head with a shotgun to cover up the bite marks on his neck and to prevent him from coming back as a vampire. Undercover cop Joseph Gennaro visits the crime scene but is taken off his assignment of infiltrating the crime family of Salvatore "Sal the Shark" Macelli and put into protective custody by District Attorney Sinclair for being seen at the crime scene by the media.
The next night, Marie seduces Sal, who takes her back to his mansion for "dinner". She is warded off when Sal serves garlicmussels, and she tries to escape through the bathroom window but finds it barred up. Sal attempts to rape her but Marie overpowers him and drains his blood. Before she can finish him off, Sal's limousine driver, Lenny intervenes and she is forced to flee. Gennaro investigates the scene and follows a trail of blood to a nearby church, where he finds and chases Marie. When Gennaro gets back to his car, Marie finds him and demands that he drive her to the morgue where Sal was taken. Sal, now a vampire, awakens in the morgue and steals a car to drive to the home of his attorney, Manny Bergman, being seen by police and reporters in his escape.
Outside the morgue, Gennaro leaves Marie with his colleagues Detectives Dave Finton and Steve Morales and goes to Bergman's house to pursue Sal. Marie escapes from custody and follows him. At Bergman's home, Sal drinks Bergman's blood and Gennaro is captured by Lenny and Jacko. The three mobsters take Gennaro to the docks and attempt to kill him using the compactor of a garbage truck. Marie arrives, saves him and kills Sal's men but Sal manages to escape. Gennaro and Marie attempt to pursue him but the sun rises and Marie has to retreat into a motel. Sal hides in a meat factory that he owns. Bergman is transferred to a hospital but after becoming a vampire, he is burned alive when a nurse opens the window and lets the sunlight in. In the motel, Gennaro and Marie confess their feelings for each other and have sex.
The next night, Sal travels to a strip club that he owns and begins turning his men into vampires like him. Gennaro and Marie begin searching Mafia hangouts for Sal. Finton and Morales track him down to the strip club but Sal's men kill Finton. Marie and Gennaro arrive in time to save Morales and kill Sal's men by shooting them in the head. They chase Sal out onto the street, where he causes a collision between a taxi and a bus. Gennaro kills him by igniting him with the leaking gas tank of the bus and then shooting him in the head. Marie can no longer handle being the monster she is, and attempts to commit suicide by the sunlight, stating that she "died a long time ago". Gennaro talks her out of it, telling her that he loves her. Gennaro books her into a nearby hotel and Marie states in a voiceover that he "made [her] feel alive" and decides to make him a vampire.
John Landis had a deal with Warner Bros. to direct a film based on a script by Mick and Richard Christian Matheson called Red Sleep.[2] Landis re-wrote the script with Harry Shearer, saying "it was pretty wild. The premise was basically that Las Vegas is a city that is run by vampires."[4] The studio did not like the idea, and instead offered him another vampire script, Innocent Blood by Michael Wolk.[2] Landis said "I really liked it. I was given tremendous freedom by the studio to make it, although it was rather low budget. It was very risky, which I think perhaps contributed to the fact that it didn’t do well."[4]
Landis cast Anne Parillaud off the back of La Femme Nikita "because Marie had to be beautiful and sexy and very sympathetic. Anne had been a ballerina, so she had this amazing physicality."[4] Landis said preview audiences had trouble understanding her French accent but he refused to dub her.[4] Landis said he described the film as "a Hammer film as if it was directed by Scorsese".[4]
The film was shot in Pittsburgh, beginning on January 13, 1992;[2] Landis originally intended to film in Philadelphia and set it in New York, but decided on Pittsburgh upon visiting there.[4] The "Little Italy" of Pittsburgh, a portion of the Bloomfield neighborhood, clustered around Liberty Avenue, can be seen in many of the film's outdoor urban scenes.[5] Filming wrapped in April 1992.[2] In post-production, Landis made about 15 to 20 minutes of cuts to the film. The MPAA wanted to give the film an NC-17 rating, so Landis cut out two minutes of sexual and violent content to secure an R.[4][2]
Release
Box office
Innocent Blood opened on September 25, 1992, and grossed $1,857,658 in its opening weekend, earning the #7 spot at the box office.[6] By the end of its run, the film had grossed $4,943,279 domestically.[3]
Home media
Several versions were released for home viewing, which were generally cut to some extent, censored for nudity and gore. The US (region 1) DVD release is the shortest, and is also in pan and scan 4:3 ratio, whereas the original film was widescreen. The most complete DVD version is the German release, entitled Bloody Marie: Eine Frau Mit Biss which is 28 seconds longer and in widescreen format.[7] The widescreen version was eventually released on Blu-ray by the Warner Archive Collection on September 19, 2017.[8] In May 2020, HMV released it on Blu-ray on their Premium Collection label in the UK with four art cards and a fold-out poster.[9]
Critical reception
The film received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a 36% score based on 25 reviews, with an average rating of 4.9/10. The site's consensus reads, "Awkward tonal shifts and a sluggish pace plague Innocent Blood -- a horror comedy with anemic scares and laughs".[10]
Roger Ebert gave the film 2 out of 4 stars and said the film misses opportunities to fully explore the notion of vampire-gangsters and is muddled in its execution. Ebert said "It looks great, with its film noir streets and its vampires who steam and disintegrate at the touch of sunlight (Don Rickles, as Loggia's lawyer, meets a particularly gruesome end)…But such cuteness doesn't make up for the lack of a clear idea of what the movie is about", and "it's all effect and no emotion."[11] He noted Parillaud’s Marie "is an interesting character, and some of her scenes with LaPaglia have a certain poignance as a result. But she's real enough, dimensional enough, to be more at home in one of Anne Rice's vampire stories, instead of in this uneasy anthology of genres and styles."[11]
In a positive review for the Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas wrote Landis and Wolk "take real risks in that 'Innocent Blood' must always be as funny as they are grisly or they quickly become a turnoff. Fortunately, they’re able to turn the lavish display of blood and guts, devilishly concocted by special makeup effects maestro Steve Johnson, into cathartic laughter".[12] He also said Loggia is given "a legitimate opportunity to tear loose and grandstand gloriously, infusing the entire film with an exhilarating comic energy."[12]
Kathleen Maher of The Austin Chronicle criticized the film’s length and said, "It loses steam and coherence about midway through, leaving us rooting for it but doomed to disappointment. Combining comedy, horror, romance and chase scenes, Innocent Blood finally begins to collapse in on itself but not before we've had more than a few good laughs and a frightened yelp or two."[13]
