INNOCENT BLOOD, with Anne Parillaud, Robert Loggia, Anthony LaPaglia and Don Rickles. Directed by John Landis.
IS INNOCENT Blood as good as An American Werewolf In London ? The answer has to be ''no''.
But then Werewolf was an extraordinary film, being ground-breaking, hilarious, horrifying and enormously sexy, while Innocent Blood is derivative, tired and sexist.
Innocent Blood is full of gratuitous sex, punctuated by severed body parts and torn throats, and laced with half-baked gags about AIDS. Our hero, undercover cop Joe Gennaro (Anthony LaPaglia), on expressing concern about making love to Marie the vampire vamp (Anne Parillaud) is presented with a box of condoms rather than a string of garlic and crucifix.
As with Werewolf, director John Landis in Innocent Blood places an affliction generally associated with legend, eastern Europe and Victoriana in a modern, incongruous setting. Marie the vampire patrols the streets of contemporary Pittsburgh wearing not ablack cloak and fangs but raunchy outfits and a come hither expression. A killer with a moral res ponsibility she feeds only on the corrupt and, after a series of vicious Mafia murders, she decides to ''eat Italian''.
Sound like a contrived joke? Well, that's the way it comes over on film, too. Far too many of the verbal and visual gags peppering Innocent Blood suffer from the feeling that it took a little too much effort to set them up. Two out of 10 for subtlety.