Touches You

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

THE GODFATHER meets Dracula! This film from director John Landis starts off promisingly: the first half of this film is great, with lots of in-jokes and overacting from Robert Loggia, playing a leading Mafioso. The idea of vampire mobsters is interesting, and played for laughs for the most part with strong effect. I didn't care much for the lead, Anne Parillaud, who begins the film naked and removes her clothes numerous times during the long running length, perhaps this is a desperate attention grabber.There's some kinky sex involving handcuffs and lots of references to over movies for horror fans, such as the films Dracula and THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS playing on TVs. It's entertaining, but doesn't go beyond face value. With this and AN American WEREWOLF IN London, it seems like Landis loves making easy viewing horror films for horror fans. Watch out for a hilarious scene where Loggia begins to dissolve in the sunlight, without realising what's happening. There's also a lot of swearing in this film which may be off-putting to some although it ties in with the gangster genre well enough.One thing this film really does have going for it are the special effects. The main ones are the glowing eyes, which are effectively shocking the first few times we see them. The best effect in the film is the disintegration of one of the vampires in the sunlight. His flesh burns apart, his arm comes off, and finally his neck bursts open spraying blood and his head dissolves. Quite shocking really, I was surprised this film got a 15 certificate rating here in Britain. Overall, the film feels a lot like a pre-runner to FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, and I'm surprised that nobody seems to remember it these days as it's one of the most fun vampire films of the 1990s.

Joey Gennaro (Anthony LaPaglia) is a new henchman for mob boss Salvatore 'The Shark' Macelli (Robert Loggia). Sal is a ruthless killer. Joey turns out to be an undercover cop working under U.S. Attorney Sinclair (Angela Bassett). Marie (Anne Parillaud) is a vampire with a moral code. She only kills the criminal class and she finishes her food meaning she decapitates them before they turn. Tony (Chazz Palminteri) vouched for Joey but he gets eaten by Marie. Her next target is Sal but she doesn't finish before she gets shot and chased away. Sal is reborn and Marie needs help to bring him down.I really like the premise of a gangster vampire. I would have preferred a dark intense horror. Director John Landis brings a lighter touch which detracts from the intensity. There is plenty of blood but it's not that grotesque. LaPaglia does great mobster acting but this movie could use another type of action hero. The premise is great but the execution is less than thrilling.

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!

Marie is a vampire in the big city who picks her victims from the criminal underworld. One night she hooks a big fish, crime boss Sal Macelli, but the feed goes wrong - she has to flee before she finishes him off. Now he is one of her kind, she must find and dispatch him before he can feed and become immeasurably powerful …This is an extremely enjoyable vampire movie. It's a handsome production, with excellent Pittsburgh location photography. It has plenty of scary and sexy moments, like all good vampire films should. But most of all, Michael Wolk's script cleverly mixes together horror and gangster movie elements with terrific results. Sal starts out as your standard crime boss, does a very funny slavering transformation into a vampire, then realises the implications for his syndicate if he turns them into superhuman killers. He's still in the same line of work; nightlife, killing and power-struggles, only now he and his men will be unstoppable at it ! This is a terrific idea; the only film which even vaguely resembles it is Juan Padrón's brilliant but little-seen 1985 Cuban movie Vampiros En La Habana. Talented perennial supporting player Loggia has tremendous fun as the evil kingpin, staggering around in horror as he wakes up in the morgue, sucking the blood out of frozen steaks and generally terrifying the life out of everyone. Parillaud (Nikita) is great as Marie the vampire; lithe, athletic, frequently nude and with an amusingly ear-bashing thick French accent, and LaPaglia judges the all-over-the-place part of Joe well as he juggles layers of undercover cop / turncoat / vampire lover / confused hero. The support cast are full of funny performers too, particularly Rickles as the mob lawyer (his two death scenes are hilarious), Kagan as his much put-upon wife, Guzman as a detective, Proval as a hoodlum, scream queen Quigley as a nurse and Landis' trademark cameos by directors (here Dario Argento, Michael Ritchie, Tom Savini and a funny Sam Raimi as a meat-locker clerk). Landis directs with great wit and style; he makes the movie feel like an authentic spaghetti-and-meatballs Italian American gangster film which a vampire has mistakenly wandered into and milks the comic/horror potential for all its worth. Featuring great monster makeup by Steve Johnson, scary eyeball effects by Bill Taylor and Syd Dutton and lots of great old horror movie clips on TV, this is a fine frighteningly funny fanged flick for horror fans looking for something stylish and different.