Angel Heart

1987 • Dir: Alan Parker • St: Mickey Rourke, Robert DeNiro, Lisa Bonet

Premise: New York, 1955. Private Detective Harry Angel is hired by the somewhat strange Louis Cyphre to find pre-war crooner Johnny Favourite. His investigation unveils black magic, evil and increasingly brutal murders.

Analysis: Angel Heart is excellent. I don't say that lightly, but this film is incredible. The worn and grubby look of 50's America is still a refreshing change from the usual wholesome Rockwell-esque take on the decade most films continue to use. The cast are incredible in their roles. DeNiro is unsettlingly creepy as Cyphre, Rourke is back in his heyday here as Angel. Lisa Bonet broke free of her Cosby Show wholesomeness in this role, causing Bill Cosby to publicly criticise her for playing the voodoo laden, highly sexualised role of Epiphany.

The film builds carefully, and is very visual. Every shot is a beautifully framed composition. From the get-go when we meet Louis Cyphre we realise there's something very eerie about him. Prior to meeting Cyphre, Angel sees a fundamentalist Christian revival meeting, the pastor loudly and unashamedly demanding his flock to give them all their money "I should be driving a ROLLS ROYCE!" he cries. The various insanities and inanities of religion are prevalent in this film. Religion is NOT presented as a stainless force for good, it is shown to be selfish, authoritarian, creepy and a haven for the simple. This is a refreshing change in this sub-genre of film, which tends to present the church and its footsoldiers as incorruptible warriors in the army of All-That-Is-NOT-Naughty.

Harry Angel's search for Johnny Favourite builds a disturbing picture of Favourite in fragments. He is described as almost completely evil, a capable black magician and a wicked lover. Returning from the war Favourite became amnesiac and horribly scarred. It is revealed that he had been taken from hospital and released.

As Angel follows the trail, people start turning up dead in horrible and brutal ways. Dr Fowler, the junky doctor who had been covering up Favourite's disappearance from the hospital, is shot in the eye. Toots Sweet, the musician who'd known Favourite has his junk cut off and stuffed in his mouth. Margaret Krusemark (played with great subtlety by Charlotte Rampling), who'd also known Favourite has her heart cut out. her father is drowned in a massive pot of gumbo, and finally Epiphany, the child of Favourite and a voodoo witch named Evangeline Proudfoot, is shot in a place no-one should ever have a gun inserted.

SPOILER!! Type is in black below (select to read)

So.
The big reveal in this is a kick in the guts. The first time you see it, it WILL f#ck you up. It is revealed that Harry Angel IS Johnny Favourite. The evil Favourite placed his soul inside shell-shocked Harry Angel's body as a way of cheating the Devil, who it turns out is Louis Cyphre (get it? Louis Cyphre - Lucifer). Angel is told all of this by DeNiro's charming Lucifer, after Angel has had some pretty brutal sex with Epiphany, now revealed as his daughter. He races back to his hotel room, only to find her, shot (urg) with Angel's gun and wearing his long-lost dogtags. The cops stand there. "You're gonna burn for this Angel." one says.

Angel replies "Yeah, in Hell."

END SPOILER!!

This film is incredible. Even knowing the twist, it keeps you hooked, making a re-watching continually enjoyable. The cinematography, the subtle direction, the brilliant performances from the cast, everything adds up to make a truly memorable and classic devil flick.

Stars: 5 out of 5

Comics Interlude

An addendum to the brief retrospective of Buffy and Angel.

Buffy and Angel both managed to live on in comic format.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer was continued in 'Season 8', set 1 year after the end of Season 7, presumably to allow for fleeting references to Buffy that were made in the final season of Angel, which ran in the year after Buffy the TV series finished.

Buffy is in charge of a worldwide army of Slayers. Besides the occasional feud with local vampires and side-trips to Tokyo, Tibet and New York, the Big Bad of Season 8 is a masked superhuman called Twilight. Regular characters are present, with Buffy's enhanced gang of Scoobies represented by Dawn, Xander, Willow, Giles, Faith, Andrew and Kennedy. A lot happens in this series, and as it is still going I am reluctant to comment in too much detail on the events of the series. Where Buffy in comic format excels is in doing crazy, big-budget things: the far future, exotic locales, teleporting a sub, 3 gigantic goddesses, Dawn becoming a giant, a centaur and finally a porcelain doll, flying, super-speed, the madness is frequent and breathtaking. The character dramas haven't stopped either: Buffy's fling with one of her Slayers, a romance between Dawn and Xander, Willow's ongoing worries about her power levels, Giles going rogue on Buffy before being accepted back into the fold. A lot happens, and is still happening in this season, so much so that it feels like a 'season and a half'.

Angel: After The Fall takes place the second after the TV show finishes, in a back alley with our heroes confronted by wall to wall monsters, intent on killing the hell out of them. Things get much worse quite sharpish, with all of LA turned into Hell. Like Buffy's Season 8, After The Fall benefits from its limitless budget, with dragons in the sky, LA's skyline turned hellish, a floating telepathic fish, and a talking T-Rex demon. After The Fall feels a lot more balls-to-the-wall insane than Season 8. True to the Angelverse, few of the characters have really entered Hell-LA unscathed: Gunn's vampirised, Illyria/Fred's slowly losing her mind, Angel's human, Gwen's electrified again, Wesley's shackled by contract as a ghost to Wolfram & Hart.

Some of the crew are doing well for themselves: Lorne's running Silverlake as a Demon Lord, Connor and the Groosalugg are doing very well for themselves and Spike is accompanied by a scantily clad gang of kickass women.

After The Fall is accompanied by a series that explains every character's first night in Hell. When After The Fall wraps up, LA returns to normal, with the one exception that now Angel is a celebrity. The mock-official movie adaptation 'Last Angel In Hell', based on the in-universe film made by hack Hollywood scriptwriters in the wake of LA's return to normal, is absolutely hilarious. Its missed beats should be no surprise to anyone who's seen their favourite comic mangled by Hollywood. It makes me wonder whether the Angelverse Jon Peters produced 'Last Angel In Hell'.

Angel is also still continuing, and I'd say more but my wallet only allows me to catch up with so many trade paperbacks a month.

In tone and approach, both comic franchises continue their TV counterparts admirably, even upping the scales, with bigger effects and a bigger cast. If you've been pining since the cancellation of both TV shows, you could do worse than catch up with the comic series.

TV Interlude

So recently I finally finished watching all of the Angel TV series - the spin-off from Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Without going into episodes and really specific details, I thought I'd do a very quick comparison between Buffy and Angel.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer ran for 7 seasons. Its initial theme 'High School as Hell' produced some very intriguing episodes, using the vehicle of the supernatural backdrop to explore some very personal issues for the teenaged characters, and other kids at Sunnydale High School. As the characters grew older, finished high school, started college, got jobs, the various apocalypses, 'big bads' and monsters of the week all managed to provide a backdrop for the ongoing character dramas the characters were going through.

Buffy was very solidly structured. In addition to each episode's drama, and villain, each character had an ongoing season arc, and faced a series finale 'end boss', labelled the 'Big Bad' in Buffy parlance. New characters came and went, but the core of Buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles were (almost) always present. The lighter tone served to make more serious episodes, including 'The Body' - the episode that dealt with the death of Buffy's mother, Joyce - truly heartbreaking to watch.

Angel spun out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and ran for 5 seasons. Its tone was definitely darker, dealing as it did right out of the gate with adult characters, and their various dramas and problems. Angel's biggest differences with Buffy, apart from general tone, were a decentralised approach (no real Big Bad or overarching season plot), and a much more frequently revolving cast of characters. The core characters in Episode 1 are Angel, Cordelia and Doyle. The last episode of season 5 by contrast has Angel, Wesley, Spike, Lorne and Illyria with Gunn, Connor and Harmony in tow. Buffy in comparison starts with Buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles and finishes with those same characters, with Dawn, Faith, Robin Wood and Andrew in tow.

Angel also really upped the ante with shocks, betrayals and deaths among their heroes. Doyle is killed off in season 1. Wesley betrays the group and is abandoned before going a little mad and being killed in season 5. We are introduced to Gunn, who ends up making some very dodgy deals, and ends the series with an aparrently mortal injury. We are introduced to Fred, a much-loved geek-girl character, who is then hollowed out and possessed by the demon Illyria. Cordelia goes through an amazing character arc. Just as she has reached a high point, she dies, comes back inhabited by the evil Jasmine, dies again and ends up an invisible, remote Higher Being TM.

My wife gave up watching halfway through series 5, simply because she was tired of being "ass-punched by Joss Whedon".

Angel has a dedicated following and many people prefer it to Buffy. I'm not so sure. Angel feels confused, a little random, and seems to enjoy shock for shock's sake. Buffy feels like a more tightly plotted series, and its emotional highs and lows seem to work in the broader scope of the series much better.

Both have been continued officially in comics format - Buffy as 'Season 8' published by Dark Horse comics, and Angel: After The Fall published by IDW. A 'Season 9' for Buffy has been announced and Angel will be crossing over to Dark Horse, so both series can intertwine a little more closely.

Both series are always worth watching, but I lean towards Buffy as the better series.

And Now The Screaming Starts

1973 • Dir: Roy Ward Baker • St: Peter Cushing, Stephanie Beacham, Herbert Lom

Premise: Virginal young Catherine arrives at the Fengriffen mansion to be married to her prospective husband Charles, latest scion of the Fengriffen family. No sooner are they wed than Catherine starts seeing ane eyeless, handless ghost, a painting that exerts a horrible mesmerism, and a ghostly creeping severed hand. What is it that haunts the house of Fengriffen?

Analysis: This film is from Amicus the low-budget studio that rivalled Hammer and also shared many of their stars, such as Cushing and Lom, who despite their high-ranking billing, only make small appearances in the film - Lom in a flashback, and Cushing not until half way through the film. And Now The Screaming Starts was directed by Roy Ward Baker, also a Hammer alumnus, whose Hammer credits include; The Vampire Lovers, Scars of Dracula and Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde.

Let me say straight up that this is not a good movie. It is cheesy, silly and the effects are laughable. That said, it is also a good old-fashioned ghostly revenge flick, the kind that nobody does anymore. Stephanie Beacham is delightful as the virginal Catherine, swooning and screaming her wide-eyed way through material that is as flimsy as wet paper. Herbert Lom is beautifully vile as the long-dead Henry Fengriffen, a cad, blackguard and bounder of the first order, and Peter Cushing is on safe ground as the scientifically minded, anti-superstition Dr Pope. Cushing looks frail and gaunt in this, but he still went on to do 35 more films and TV episodes after this - more than some actors do in their entire career.

The plot revolves around a curse levelled against the Fengriffen family by a woodsman whose wife is raped by Henry Fengriffen on their wedding night. The curse is directed against the first virgin bride to enter the Fengriffen house. Little of the twists and turns of the film make any sense at all, and the ghost hand is hilarious, seeming as it does to spy on people without the benefit of ears to hear or eyes to see.

The hand busily kills everyone it can get its clammy grip on, who comes between Catherine and the curse.

I'm not going to reveal the end, partly because this is a film few people are likely to have seen, and also partly because it's very silly - like something out of an old EC horror comic.

Do I like this film, well yeah, in a guilty pleasure kind of way. I wouldn't rewatch it very often, and it's really not very good, but not bad for a chuckle.

Stars: 2 out of 5

After a long hiatus

I'm back. Laziness and life in equal measure have intruded on the horror-lovin'.

That being said, a new review should be up today. Fingers crossed.