Angel Heart

Angel Heart

1987

Director-  Alan Parker

Cast- Mickey Rourke, Lisa Bonet, Robert Dinero, Charlotte Rampling,  Elizabeth Whitcraft

           

The theatrical trailer compares this film to both The Exorcist and Chinatown, and though I’m sure the comparison was made in an effort to connect it to two classics, it is a reasonable comparison. Angel Heart is a thriller which walks a line between a noir detective film and occult horror.

            Mickey Rourke is private detective Harold Angel. He is hired by the mysterious Louis Cypher (a cheesey pseudonym and really the only part of the movie I don’t like). Cypher (played rather restrainedly by Dinero) is looking for a missing person, Johnny Favorite. Johnny was a crooner who did business with Cypher before WW2. Cypher went into the Army, was wounded and then seemingly disappeared while convalescing. Angel is tasked with finding Johnny’s whereabouts so that Cypher can finish his business with him. 

     Angel’s search for clues leads him through New York and eventually to New Orleans where he encounters Johnny’s teenage daughter, Epiphany (Lisa Bonet) and Johnny’s old girlfriends Margaret (Charlotte Rampling who genre fans may recognize from Zardoz). Both women have an occult connection; Margaret is a fortune teller and Epiphany is a voodoo priestess. In the course of Angel’s investigation, everyone he meets ends up getting murdered, and rather brutally at that. Angel suspects that the mussing Johnny is to blame, tying up his old loose ends, but the truth ends up being much worse.

           

The film was very controversial, originally receiving an X rating. Today, the sex scenes seem a little tame but I think the big deal was not so much the scenes but who was in them. Lisa Bonet, who was only 19 when the film was shot, was known to most of America as Denise Huxtable in the wholesome family sitcom The Cosby Show. I think this leap from teenage innocence to explicit sexuality was too much for Hollywood and this role had the same chilling effect on her career that Showgirls had for Elizabeth Berkey’s.  Still she turns in a solid performance and her sweet, innocent looks helped sell the act.                                                                        Rourke carries the film, starring in every scene. It’s the kind of part he is perfect for; likable but a little slimy. As a gumshoe in the 1950s, Rourke looks the part with his perpetual beard stubble, oily hair and smirk. As the horrible truth unfolds, his character goes from cocky and confident, to scared and then finally resigned and without hope.

            One of the few serious Satanic films made in the 1980s, Angel Heart is one of the best films of the genre. Good production values, a good cast and nice costumes help, but what makes the film stand up to the test of time is its clever script and respect for the subject matter. You’ll have to watch the film at least twice; once to see what happens and a second time to wrap your brain around it.