Innocent Blood



A Black Comedy from director John Landis. Essentially, Vampires meet The Mafia.

In Pittsburgh, Friendly Neighborhood Vampire Marie (Anne Parillaud) lives from one night to the next, feeding on the city's criminal element. When a Mob War breaks out involving the crime family of Sal "The Shark" Macelli (Robert Loggia), Marie uses the violence to mask her own feeding, draining Sal's goons and then using a Sawed-Off Shotgun to ensure that they will not rise from the dead. One night, however, she makes the mistake of preying on Sal himself, and is forced to flee the scene before she can ensure that he stays dead.

Now empowered with the might of The Undead, Sal begins to assemble an army of vampires with which to take total control of the Mob. To survive and take the bloodsucking made men down, Marie must turn to Joe Gennaro (Anthony LaPaglia), a Cowboy Cop whose undercover infiltration of the Macelli family has threatened to destroy it. But can Marie and Joe stop Sal and his men before it's too late?

""We've come down so far, we're in China""
 * All Men Are Perverts: This is Marie's operating principle. It seems to serve her in good stead.
 * Although she knew on sight that Joe wasn't. But the next man she saw...
 * Amoral Attorney: Played by Don Rickles, no less.
 * Anticlimax Boss: Sal.
 * Bad Boss: Oddly, Sal becomes less of one after becoming a vampire.
 * Batter Up: One of the least effective weapons against vampires.
 * Berserk Button: Marie invokes this by touching almost getting hit by Tony's car.
 * Casual Kink: Marie letting herself get cuffed.
 * Coitus Ensues: When they have to take a break for the night day.
 * Cowboy Cop: Any resemblance between Joe's methods and actual police procedure are purely coincidental.
 * Cue the Sun: Sal drives into the Fort Pitt Tunnels in the dark, and the sun pops up just as he exits the tunnel.
 * Digging to China: As the descend through the basement of a restaurant, they pass through a Chinese kitchen.

"Sal: You think you can kill me? All you've killed here is my suit!"
 * Extra-Strength Masquerade: A dead man wakes up in the morgue and runs out past a crowd of reporters. A man spontaneously combusts in his hospital bed in front of a team of doctors and nurses. A man survives being slammed into head first by a bus, then hijacks it by jumping through the windshield. And multiple vampires walk around flashing fangs and Kaleidoscope Eyes at random people. The Muggles take precisely zero notice of any of this.
 * Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Marie insists on only feeding on people she thinks deserve it.
 * Game Face: Marie has a scary one.
 * A God Am I: Sal has one of these...while ablaze from head to foot.

"Coroner:"Some nights there's so much farting and belching in here, it's like being in a ballpark."
 * Hello, Attorney!: Angela Bassett as U.S. Attorney Sinclair.
 * Hey, It's That Guy!: Half the cast had prominent roles on The Sopranos. Then you've got Anthony LaPaglia, Chazz Palminteri, Frank Oz, Sam Raimi, Angela Bassett, Kim Coates, Luis Guzmán...
 * Nikita
 * Kaleidoscope Eyes: Vampires' eyes glow in a variety of colors, including green, yellow, white, blue, and red.
 * The Mafia: Yup.
 * Magic Pants: When Marie changes into mist, her clothes change with her.
 * Mob War: Sal is in one, and Marie uses it to cover her tracks.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Seriously, doesn't matter if you're a vampire: don't mess with a guy named "Sal the Shark."
 * Not Using the Z Word: There are vampire movies that characters in the movie watch - but the word "vampire" is not uttered once.
 * Only One Name: Marie.
 * Our Vampires Are Different: The vampires' powers seem to be fairly standard. They operate at night, threy drink blood with fangs, they're repelled by garlic, they sizzle like cakes on the griddle in sunlight, they're super fast and super strong, they can turn into mist, and they have a Healing Factor. Crosses don't seem to faze them (Marie goes into a church), and their visage is reflected in mirrors (Marie breaking the rearview mirror after her first kill). On the other hand, what can kill them seems to get somewhat...fungible as the movie goes on. At first, it's just headshots and sunlight. By the last ten minutes or so, neck snaps are doing the trick.
 * Playing Against Type: Don Rickles as a lawyer
 * Red Eyes, Take Warning: When vampires feed, their eyes glow red.
 * Rule Number One: Marie's rules of feeding. Rule Number One is "don't play with the food." Rule Number Two is "always finish the food." Too bad she broke Rule Number Two.
 * Sawed-Off Shotgun: How Marie likes to "finish the food."
 * Super Senses: "I can hear an angel fart."
 * Television Geography: The Fort Pitt Tunnels, which Sal drives out of when he sees the rising sun, face northeast so there's no way he could have seen the rising sun head-on from there. Justified by the Rule of Cool, though.
 * Toilet Humour:


 * The Un-Reveal: Anything about Marie prior to the first scene.
 * Vampire Bites Suck: And they're awful messy, too.
 * Vampires Are Rich: Marie would have to be, given that she has no apparent source of income, yet lives comfortably.
 * Vampires Are Sex Gods: Marie, sure. Sal? Not so much.
 * So it may have more to do with Everyone Looks Sexier If French posing as this.
 * Vampires Own Nightclubs: Sal owned a nightclub before he was a vampire.
 * The Virus: Anyone bitten by a vampire will become a vampire, unless their central nervous system is destroyed (for example, with a headshot) before they wake up again.
 * Voluntary Shapeshifting: Vampires can turn into mist.
 * Waif Fu: Don't mess with Marie.
 * Waking Up At the Morgue: For Sal. This causes an understandable degree of consternation, both for him and the guy who was about to autopsy him.
 * Wall Crawl: Another vampiric power.