As some of you may know, I not only consider Landis' AN American WEREWOLF IN London (1981) the finest "Wolf Man" flick ever but it is also, hands down, the greatest horror film to emerge during the last 3 decades. Still, while I have always been aware of this one – which deals with vampires – I somehow never got around to watching it until now! I did catch Landis' two good entries in the "Masters Of Horror" series, though, not to mention the debacle that was his episode from TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE (1983).
Anyway, this is typical of the era in keeping nudity (right from the start, and some of which is surprisingly kinky!) and gore (as expected from a vampire movie, we get plenty of the red stuff) at the forefront. The film attempts to give a novel spin to the well-worn theme by making the heroine something of a femme fatale (a well-cast Anne Parillaud) – complete with first-person narration, where she rather uninspiringly refers to other humans as "food" – and throwing her amidst a modern-day world of 'cops and robbers' (thus continuing the noir analogy but which does not really lead anywhere!). The latter seems to emanate from a Martin Scorsese picture, what with the first such scene involving a man being beaten in the face with a toaster, but then it leans towards the heavy-handed when the mobster (Robert Loggia), vampirized by Parillaud when he takes her home for a fling, begins to infect his gang left, right and center!
The hero (Anthony LaPaglia) is an undercover cop and he instantly catches the eye of the leading lady in that she does not want to convert him to her nature, even if his pursuit of her for presumably killing Loggia (which he had been meticulously planning to personally bring down) is relentless – she even glides over him in a POV shot inside a church! Once he realizes what she is (though, apparently, the word "vampire" is never actually used!), he naturally has a hard time convincing his colleagues...that is, until corpses start coming back to life with uncomfortable regularity. Herein, however, lies the film's main problem: the vampires here hardly act like your typical bloodsucker (which, by the way, they do not simply bite the jugular but rather tear right into the neck like an animal!). When aroused, their eyes glow and they give out feral sounds (which again resemble more a werewolf or, at least a panther, as this reminded me quite a bit of CAT PEOPLE {1982}!). Besides, the deathly make-up makes them look more like zombies than anything else!
Other minuses, while we are on the subject, and especially in comparison with American WEREWOLF, is that the script (not written by the director himself in this case) shows little of the earlier film's knack in blending together the narrative's two styles, to the point that the comedy and horror here seem to belong in different movies but, also, the accompanying soundtrack pales beside that of the 1981 lycanthrope masterpiece (though one appreciates the in-joke of the mob being particularly fond of Frank Sinatra, given the singer/actor's notorious lifelong association with real-life underworld figures)! That said, a number of scenes are well done (notably Don Rickles' literal hospital 'meltdown'), Parillaud and Loggia (amusingly, he does not know what he has become at first and goes apeshit when he starts disintegrating in the sunlight) are terrific and, as usual, Landis incorporates his usual touches of the fabled "See You Next Wednesday" marquee and a handful of 'star' cameos, including genre authority Forrest J. Ackerman, directors Frank Oz and Michael Ritchie, and even fellow horror-meisters Dario Argento (then filming TRAUMA {1993} in the U.S.), Sam Raimi and Tom Savini!
Anyway, this is typical of the era in keeping nudity (right from the start, and some of which is surprisingly kinky!) and gore (as expected from a vampire movie, we get plenty of the red stuff) at the forefront. The film attempts to give a novel spin to the well-worn theme by making the heroine something of a femme fatale (a well-cast Anne Parillaud) – complete with first-person narration, where she rather uninspiringly refers to other humans as "food" – and throwing her amidst a modern-day world of 'cops and robbers' (thus continuing the noir analogy but which does not really lead anywhere!). The latter seems to emanate from a Martin Scorsese picture, what with the first such scene involving a man being beaten in the face with a toaster, but then it leans towards the heavy-handed when the mobster (Robert Loggia), vampirized by Parillaud when he takes her home for a fling, begins to infect his gang left, right and center!
The hero (Anthony LaPaglia) is an undercover cop and he instantly catches the eye of the leading lady in that she does not want to convert him to her nature, even if his pursuit of her for presumably killing Loggia (which he had been meticulously planning to personally bring down) is relentless – she even glides over him in a POV shot inside a church! Once he realizes what she is (though, apparently, the word "vampire" is never actually used!), he naturally has a hard time convincing his colleagues...that is, until corpses start coming back to life with uncomfortable regularity. Herein, however, lies the film's main problem: the vampires here hardly act like your typical bloodsucker (which, by the way, they do not simply bite the jugular but rather tear right into the neck like an animal!). When aroused, their eyes glow and they give out feral sounds (which again resemble more a werewolf or, at least a panther, as this reminded me quite a bit of CAT PEOPLE {1982}!). Besides, the deathly make-up makes them look more like zombies than anything else!
Other minuses, while we are on the subject, and especially in comparison with American WEREWOLF, is that the script (not written by the director himself in this case) shows little of the earlier film's knack in blending together the narrative's two styles, to the point that the comedy and horror here seem to belong in different movies but, also, the accompanying soundtrack pales beside that of the 1981 lycanthrope masterpiece (though one appreciates the in-joke of the mob being particularly fond of Frank Sinatra, given the singer/actor's notorious lifelong association with real-life underworld figures)! That said, a number of scenes are well done (notably Don Rickles' literal hospital 'meltdown'), Parillaud and Loggia (amusingly, he does not know what he has become at first and goes apeshit when he starts disintegrating in the sunlight) are terrific and, as usual, Landis incorporates his usual touches of the fabled "See You Next Wednesday" marquee and a handful of 'star' cameos, including genre authority Forrest J. Ackerman, directors Frank Oz and Michael Ritchie, and even fellow horror-meisters Dario Argento (then filming TRAUMA {1993} in the U.S.), Sam Raimi and Tom Savini!