"Innocent Blood" (1992) d/ John Landis

I've gotta admit, by the time director John Landis was busy churning out mainstream comedy fare like Spies Like Us (1985), Three Amigos! (1985), and Coming to America (1988), I wasn't really paying attention, and had kind of lost sight of him altogether after Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983). In fact, I had no idea he'd made tonight's review until I saw the one sheet upon the wall of a certain vampiric witch I had been "staking down", so to speak...ahem, back in the nineties. Another twenty years would pass before I'd give it a look; nothing personal, I'd gotten deeper into obscure Italian directors by then and this effort, also known as "A French Vampire in America" (why stop there, says me, An Albanian Ghoul in Senegal is just screaming to be crowdfunded...) ,  was just one of those under-the-radar movies that I let slip by, for whatever reason.


Marie (Anne Parillaud), a beautiful French vampire in America, with exquisite taste in food.
Marie (Anne Parillaud), a vampire starving for both sex and blood, sets out to "eat Italian" one night, and in doing so, naturally sets her sights on the local Mob, as headed by Sallie "The Shark" Macelli (Robert Loggia), coincidentally the very same crime syndicate that undercover cop Joe Gennaro (Anthony La Paglia) has been targeting. When she charms Tony (Chaz Palmintieri) out of his precious red stuff, using a shotgun afterwards to remove any tell-tale signs of vampirism and mimic a mob hit, Gennaro gets fingered by the press at the crime scene, effectively blowing his cover. She then targets The Shark himself, while he's putting the make on her at the crew's hideout, but she doesn't finish the job, and the neck-ravaged Don reanimates from his slab in the city morgue. Her further pursuit of the loose end mafisoso is temporarily thwarted by the persistent police officer, who tails her all over town, discovering that she's far different than the average beautiful, under dressed French girl with a yap full of coagulating blood, in the process.


"You call this capocolla?!!? Madonna!! Where's the red peppers?",  snarls Sallie the Shark (Robert Loggia).
With his trusty lawyer, Bergman (Don Rickles) in tow, Sallie quickly adapts to life as one of the undead, greedily sucking the blood out of frozen chunks of meat, rapidly healing significant body wounds, and jumping from building tops like an Italian flea. Meanwhile, Marie comes clean about her condition to her police pursuer, and after allowing him to handcuff her from the rear, she finally convinces him to wax, plus tax her, solving her other missing desire from afterlife. She informs Gennaro that she has to re-kill Sallie before he can feed, otherwise his power will equal hers, but unluckily for her, after taking shelter from the destructive daylight in a frozen meat locker,  he's already dined on Bergman, and started adding his favorite goodfellas to his undead organization, two by two. Can the cop and the countess reel in the Shark and his thugs before it's too late? Will you ever see a vampiric Don Rickles agonizingly crumble into burning ashes in another movie? The answers to these and other pertinent questions can be answered when you screen this one for yourselves...


"I'm all outta 'Rack of Campbell' back there, Boss...", notes the Roma Meats Man (Sam Raimi).
Like any Landis movie, there are genre celebrity cameos a plenty. Look for the likes of Tom Savini, Forrest J. Ackerman, Linnea Quigley, Frank Oz, Vic Noto, Sam Raimi, and even Dario Argento himself, among the director's fanged frames here. Besides Loggia AKA/ "Feech La Manna", there's also an awful lot of Sopranos regulars (naturally) like Tony "Paulie Walnuts" Sirico, Tony "Carmine Lupertazzi" Lip, and David "Richie Aprile" Proval, to name a few. John allegedly took on the film after Jack (Alone in the Dark, The Hidden) Sholder left the production, and his own Oscar (1991), a Sly Stallone mafia comedy, tanked like an M4 Sherman at the box office. Landis ultimately replaced that director's choices for the lead roles, in Lara Flynn Boyle and Dennis Hopper with Parillaud, who you'll remember as La Femme Nikita (1990), and Loggia. Though, it'd be hard to mistake Blood for an immortal genre classic, or even one of Landis' best works, for that matter,  it certainly never bores in its surprisingly even-handed delivery of the bloodsucking goods. It scores an average two Wops on the scale, but don't let that stop you from checking it out, just the same,  you might even like it more than I did.


"I haven't done meth this pure since that Vegas bender with Humperdinck in '07!", exclaims Mr. Warmth.

"Beach Blanket Bingo" (1965) d/ William Asher

Five beach movies in, you've gotta chuckle at how male lead Frankie Avalon was still playing teenage parts in this formulaic, gimmicky hit series for American International Pictures, seeing how he was in his mid-twenties, and married with children when this one, his last starring role in the series, was released. Oh, Annette's still around, of course, getting jealous at the drop of a hat and parting with miniscule pecks on the lips like they were Faberge eggs, as usual. The usually abrasive Don Rickles also returns. Also on board for zany pre-fab Caucasian summer fun in the sun in this installment, are Timothy Carey, Harvey Lembeck, Buster Keaton, Linda Evans, John Ashley, and Paul Lynde. Hang ten, cats...


"How can it be too cold to take your top off, that backdrop is rear-projected!"
Beach blanket bingo is the name of the game, at least, until the opening credit sequence is over, anyway, as I can't remember seeing anybody in the fucking movie even suggesting it the rest of the way through. Frankie and Dee Dee (Avalon, Funicello)'s long-running summer celluloid romance hits a snag in the form of a pair of skydivers (John Ashley, Deborah Walley) offering up close and personal lessons for kicks to the surfers, while their annoyingly gag-thick pal Bonehead (Wasn't he Deadhead a while back?) romances a mermaid named Lorelei (Marta Kristen) and an aspiring pop star named Sugar Kane (Linda "Dynasty" Evans), whose pr manager, Bullets (Paul Lynde), keeps her knee deep in headline catching publicity stunts and head shaking sardonic snarkery, enamoring her to Eric Von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck), the illiterate jagoff head honcho of the Rats motorcycle gang, local rivals to the carefree surfer crowd, when they aren't not playing pool with South Dakota Slim (Timothy Carey). Silent film legend Buster Keaton shows up as a creepy old dancing lech, and Big Drop (Don Rickles) has apparently dumped drag racing for skydiving.


"I shaved twice since your last shot, boobie!", shrugs a chalky South Dakota Slim (Timothy Carey).
While Frankie seemingly eyes every passing female bikini body, Dee Dee gets momentarily jealous, they kiss and make up. Dee Dee wants to sky dive, Frankie suggests that she stay in the kitchen because boys are different, they kiss and make up. A melancholy Bonehead is forced to say goodbye to his mermaid chicken, and then it's Frankie and Dee Dee both having their own go at fake skydiving and everybody lip syncs saccharine-flavored pop tunes, from the top-billed couple, to Sugar Kane (who also fakes a sky dive of her own), and even the love struck Von Zipper, who later kidnaps the singer and vows to teach her how to play pool, before she's snatched up by the sinister Slim and taken to his "Boobie House", where he ties her to a log saw,  Perils of Pauline-style, does the "I've got fleas" dance, and gets ktfo-ed by Frankie Avalon. More singing, more dancing, and Buster Keaton ogling young go-go chicks, and we can finally clear the beach. There's nothing more to see here...


Skydiving Funicello, belted by gamma rays...
After getting through half of my second teen beach movie, I came to the realization that my tolerance for such things may have run out during the end credits of my first teen beach movie. Sorry, Gidget. I might feel differently if there was the rampant sex, violence, and gore that the target audience had already started to gravitate towards with the biker movies that would saturate drive-in double bills well into the seventies. One surfer bitten in half by a fourteen foot tiger shark, for realism's sake, Boobie? One bloody surfer v biker beach battle... That too much to ask, Dad? Am I really constructively criticizing Beach Blanket Bingo? In any case, Annette's always great to look at, and Timothy Carey steals the show, as usual, and that's worth a standard, very corny deuce on the rating scale, and a look for the curious.


Sugar Kane (Linda Evans) enjoying South Dakota Slim's signature "I've got fleas" dance at his boobie house.

"Bikini Beach" (1964) d/ William Asher

Once upon a time, something like a hundred years ago or so, people flocked to the theater to see a string of cheapie, gimmicky beach movies that starred a couple of Italian kids: Frank Avallone from Philly, and former Disney Mouseketeer, Annette Funicello of Utica. This one, followed on the heels of the success of 1963's Beach Party and the followup, Muscle Beach Party, the following year. The words 'sex' and 'carnality' get thrown around an awful lot for a movie that features zero boobs, unless you count the recurring appearances of C.P.O. Sharkey himself, Don Rickles. You could still have a wholesome blast, according to these cats.


"These studio waves sure are the most, Deadhead!",  notes The Frankie (Frankie Avalon).
Out of school (for something like eight years at this point, by my count), a zany entourage of "kids" drive to Bikini Beach, where girls perpetually turn heads and cause accidents with their revealing swimsuit bottoms, besides the busty Dee-Dee (Annette Funicello), whose full jutting bosoms while contracted under the watchful eye of Walt Disney, remain fully and tastefully wrapped at all times. Thanks Walt, you dick. Keenan Wynn spies on the surfers from his limo, then sends out his chimpanzee, Clyde (Janos Prohaska), to surf among them, as part of his scheme to eliminate nuisance teenagers on the beach, since they function at a monkey's level. Well, Deadhead (Jody McCrea) does, anyway. Anyway, Frankie (Franke Avalon) seemingly loses Dee-Dee to obnoxious British import, "Potato Bug" (also Frankie Avalon, in disguise, with joke Brit accent), who lip synchs Beatle-esque numbers to the adoring screaming bikinis, when he's not drag racing at Big Drag's (Don Rickles) track. Big Drag dabbles in modern art and has a pet hawk that talks like a parrot. The monkey-suit guy also drag races.


Open you, my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things: Janos Prohaska in a monkey suit on a surfboard in front of some projected waves. But there's more...
Meanwhile, "The Rats" are a bumbling gang of delinquent forty-somethings (The Ladies Auxiliary are called "The Mice" btw) headed by one Eric Von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck), an illiterate dope who continually knocks himself out with a karate finger. The Rats also hate the surfers, while idolizing Hitler, Mussolini, and Harvey Huntington Honeywagon (Wynn's character). They hang out with teenage werewolves and shoot pool at South Dakota Slim's (Timothy Carey). At Big Drag's place, the bald-headed Pyramids play surf rock and the guy in the monkey suit twists with blondes in frilly red go-go dresses. Frankie and Potato Bug have a drag race that the Rats try to sabotage, but they louse it up, just like everything else. There's a big gag punch up with flying paint, Little Steve Wonder joins the band on stage, Boris Karloff pops his head in for a cameo, and Frankie reunites with Dee-Dee. One kiss in front of a projected night tide, some corny love songs, and summer's over already. Cue the blonde go-go dancer and roll the credits.


South Dakota Slim (Timothy Carey) is just trying to get a game of pool, daddies.
The story is nonsense, the flat dialog and hokey jokes couldn't raise a sincere snicker out of me if I was hooked to a tank of nitrous, but somewhere deep inside the Nebraska-level corny wholesomeness of this slapdash affair, it works, somehow. As a time capsule, maybe, of an impossibly exaggerated American ideal that Hollywood once tried to pitch to a generation of kids that was hopefully already having loads more fun getting drunk, getting high, and getting laid by this time. If it wasn't successful, then there wouldn't have been Pajama Party (1964), Beach Blanket Bingo (1965), Ski Party (1965), How To Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965), and let's not forget those Dr. Goldfoot movies either. On the scale, a deuce for historic significance and entertainment sake. Worth a look, daddies.


"Dee-Dee's beach torpedoes are wayyy frightening, like... hold me!"