How To Make A Horror Film
Innocent Blood (aka A French Vampire in America) is a 1992 film. The gangster and horror genres come together head-on in this typically stylish and tongue-in-cheek offering from John Landis. The film is unique in that it is set and was filmed in and around the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area. The “Little Italy” of Pittsburgh, a portion of the Bloomfield (Pittsburgh) neighborhood, clustered around Liberty Avenue, is recognizable in many of the film’s outdoor urban scenes.
Anne Parillaud plays Marie, a very appealing modern-day vampire in Pittsburgh, with a moral code that limits her bloodsucking to the criminal elements of society. However, when she feasts on vicious gang boss Salvatore ‘The Shark’ Macelli (Robert Loggia) and fails to complete the job properly (by not severing his spinal cord), he too becomes one of the undead and begins to pass his new-found powers on to his henchmen. With the help (and love interest) of undercover cop Joseph Gennaro (Anthony LaPaglia), Marie sets out to put things right.
In typical Landis fashion, this movie balances plenty of slickly directed thrills and gore with some moments of humour. Loggia’s bewilderment at waking in the morgue to find a thermometer protruding from his stomach and the reaction of the wife of crooked lawyer Manny Bergman (Don Rickles) to the bizarre mayhem that ensues are good examples.
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