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.

An American Werewolf In London

1981 • Dir: John Landis • David Naughton, Jenny Agutter, Griffin Dunne, John Woodvine, small appearances from Frank Oz, Brian Glover and Rik Mayall

Premise: David Kessler and his friend Jack Goodman are hiking through wild and woolly rural England. Jack is set upon by what looks to be a wild wolf and killed, while David is merely scratched. Waking in hospital, David soon receives a visit from the ghost of his friend Jack, who tells him the horrible news - David has been injured but not killed by a werewolf and at the next full moon, he too will become become a werewolf and kill.

Analysis: This is John Landis in top form. Written and directed by him, this film is not only one of my favourite films, but also a classy werewolf flick, and one of the best examples of comedy horror around.

David's plight is a sublime mixture of black comedy and true fear for his sanity, and this is what makes this film a real joy - the perfect mixture of horror and comedy. While David's nightmares are horrible, while Jack's slowly rotting appearances are horrible, and the murders David commits while in Lupine form are bloody in the extreme, the moments of comedy are so deftly handled, and so seamlessly intertwined with the horror, that Landis hands you a perfect package.

Of course, David does not want to believe that Jack is really talking to him, or that he's going to sprout hair, run on all fours and eat people at the next full moon. He's much more interested in romancing his caring and considerate nurse (Alex Price, played by Agutter), who seems very archly English compared to the very American David. David's culture clash is bought hilariously to the fore when, after he has realised he HAS shapechanged and killed, he runs up to an English bobby and screams 'The Queen's a man', 'Prince Charles is a faggot!' in order to get arrested. Which, of course, fails.

While a little dated now, Rick Baker's effects are still solid and impressive. The nightmare Nazi demons, the rotten Jack Goodman, and the David/wolf itself are all brilliant pieces of SFX from an age where CGI simply wasn't used because it looked awful.

The customers of the English pub David and Jack visit just before Jack's death - The Slaughtered Lamb - are also a treat. Sullen rustics in almost a James Whale-ean bent. Brian Glover is especially sullen and local.

There's a lot in this film about Landis' obvious love for the Universal golden age of monster cinema, especially The Wolf Man, as the film frequently references The Wolf Man. Landis' frequent in-joke of 'See You Next Wednesday' also makes an appearance in the form of a slightly surreal English porn film, where David goes to meet Jack, and gets introduced to his other victims, who then launch into a plethora of suggestions on how to top himself.

SPOILER (in black type below-select to read)

Well if you haven't seen this film, and don't want the ending ruined, you have no excuse - it's been out since 1981! An American Werewolf In London shows Landis' love for The Wolf Man pretty clearly in the ending. David, having professed his love for Alex, is now in the porn cinema and begins to change. Discovered by a policeman in lupine form, having turned the rest of the cinema-goers into small piles of sticky gore, wolf-David escapes into the London streets, and is cornered down a dead end alleyway. Alex breaks through the police line, who are ready to shoot him dead the second they get a clean shot. She professes her love for David, and for a split second, you get the impression that even in bestial form, he understands, as the beast's expression softens. It is not to last however, and the wolf snarls, the police open fire and David dies, naked and bloody in a dirty London alleyway. Alex cries. The End.

The theme of this is of course, The Wolf Man's theme that only love can truly kill the werewolf. Alex's declaration of love for David foreshadows his death - suicide by cop perhaps? - by only a split second.

End Spoiler

An American Werewolf in London is a classic film, and if you haven't seen it by now, you should, before other people find out and mock you.

Stars: 4 out of 5

An American Haunting

2005 • Dir: Courtney Solomon • St: Donald Sutherland, Sissy Spacek, Rachel Hurd-Wood

Premise: In the early 19th Century, the Bell family of Red River Tennessee begin to experience violent haunting phenomena in their home, seemingly centred on their daughter Betsy.

Analysis: This is based on one of America's most enduring haunting legends. The film, while a visual treat, and featuring some top shelf acting talent in the form of Sutherland (playing John Bell), Spacek (his wife Lucy) and radiant young actress Hurd-Wood (playing their daughter, and the focus of the film, Betsy), feels a little fragmented.

The film opens with a modern-day framing sequence, with a young woman pursued by some sort of spectral pursuer. Her mother discovers a letter written by Betsy Bell, which tells her story of the famous haunting. This then segues us neatly into the events that make up the primary narrative of the film.

Betsy lives with her family. Her father, John Bell, is a local community pillar, and she has a budding romance with her school teacher, Richard Powell (played by James D'Arcy). John Bell angers his neighbour, who curses him and his daughter - cue the supernatural phenomena.

The ghostly torment of Betsy takes up most of the film, with the family and their friends all witness to much of the phenomena. The lead cast all do a very good job - Spacek is good as the weary, caring mother, Sutherland convincing as the vaguely creepy father, and Hurd-Wood very good as the chief protagonist.

I guess the thing that got to me about this film is that it felt like it was being pulled in too many directions. The modern framing sequence, while having a parallel with the story beyond being a mere 'letter from the past' introduction technique, felt intrusive and a little pointless at first. The reveal of the cause of the haunting that comes at the end also felt tacked on. Don't get me wrong, I'm very skeptical of most haunting stories, and the reveal made a modicum of sense, BUT there was very little in the film to support the reveal, which I found to be a bit of a cheat.

SPOILER (in black type below-select to read)

As it turns out, the cause of the haunting is Betsy herself. Through some sort of telekinetic out of body astral thingummy, she has been tormenting herself and her family. The cause? She is revisiting trauma visited upon her by her father, who it is revealed has sexually assaulted her for at least a year. This makes no sense. Why did the phenomena only just start recently if the causal trauma has been underway for a year? Why was Besty bright and bubbly for a year beforehand if she had been abused by her father? The modern framing sequence hints to us that this sort of torment continues today, which though grim, is not really surprising, and seems to belabour a point that we do not need belaboured, as it already hits us hard enough.

There is a theory that poltergeist phenomena is prevalent when an adolescent is present, and moreso if the adolescent is undergoing some form of trauma or depression. This theory seems purpose made for the events of this film, but at the same time, the desire to play the film as supernatural and parapsychological and psychological all in one breath seems clumsy.

END SPOILER

I like this film, and I want to like it a lot more, but the confused direction holds me back.

Stars: 3 out of 5