Mixed Blood is a 1985 black comedy film directed by Paul Morrissey and John Leguizamo's film debut.

Plot

Rita La Punta (Marília Pêra) leads a gang of Brazilian juvenile delinquents in an attempt to seize control of New York's Lower East Side's illegal drug trade from a Puerto Rican gang.

Principal cast

Critical reception

The film received generally positive reviews. Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote:"Paul Morrissey continues to be a cinema original and his Mixed Blood, a most unorthodox look at life in the drug trade on New York' s Lower East Side, is successively comic, brutal, primitive and sophisticated—a comedy with the manners of a live-action cartoon for jaded adults."Morrisey's former collaborator Andy Warhol stated in The Andy Warhol Diaries:"Paul's movie Mixed Blood is playing midnights at the Waverly ... And I just loved the movie. It was everything he's done before, but it was photographed well and he seemed to know so much about the Lower East Side and the Alphabet—avenues A, B, C, and D—for someone who hadn't been in New York for so long."Sid Smith wrote for the Chicago Tribune:"Although still fairly crude, the movie has more style than Morrissey's earlier pictures, and the lovely salsa score provides a biting undertone and subtlety Morrissey once avoided. It 's not a perfect picture, and sometimes it's a boring one, but Mixed Blood is a fairly successful neo-realist look at something most moviemakers wouldn't go near."