Film Review: 'Angel Heart' (1987)
Robert De Niro plays Louis Cypher -- get it? -- a hood who wants Mickey Rourke to find a singer who signed a contract with him in Alan Parker's Angel Heart.
Angel Heart (1987), directed by Alan Parker; starring Robert De Niro, Mickey Rourke, Charlotte Rampling, and Lisa Bonet. Based on the novel, Falling Angel, by William Hjortsberg.
Angel Heart had a hard time attracting an audience when it first came out in the late 80s. That may have been because it’s an oddball brew of different genres — Satanic Panic, film noir, Southern Gothic, and slasher. It was generally ridiculed by critics, most of whom hated seeing America’s Sweetheart of the 80s, Lisa Bonet, playing a prostitute and dancing around with a headless chicken in a weird voodoo ritual. (The chicken scene isn’t nearly as ridiculous as the critics claimed.)
Today, Angel Heart is considered a horror masterpiece. It’s also the only horror film ever directed by Alan Parker, who is mostly known as the helmsman of gritty dramas like Mississippi Burning (1988) and musicals like The Commitments (1991). Despite his lack of genre cred, Parker manages to turn in a glossy, high-class — if rather gory — horror film that sticks with the viewer long after the final credits roll.
The atmosphere is excellent, as Parker establishes a smokey, hard-boiled vibe that recalls Polanski’s neo-noir masterpiece, Chinatown (1973). Mickey Rourke plays Harry Angel, a down-on-his luck New York private eye with a Chandleresque-sized case of world-weariness.
Harry's desperate for work and jumps at a missing persons case offered by a new client named Louis Cypher (Robert De Niro), who appears to be a small-time hood. And he’s a very sinister hood indeed, as he sports over-long fingernails filed to sharp points, and speaks in a weird philosophical cadence about things like why eggs "are the symbols of the soul." Plus, if his first name is shortened to “Lou," his full name becomes just a little, umm, suggestive of quite another identity. But Harry doesn’t catch on, the sap. He thinks that Lou's name is a made-up joke.
Cypher hires Harry to find a singer named Johnny Favorite, who disappeared during the war (the story is set in the 50s), shortly after Cypher signed him to an exclusive management contract. Harry snoops around and finds that Favorite’s trail leads to New Orleans, where he bumps into Favorite’s ex-wife Margaret (Charlotte Rampling), and Toots Sweet (played by the blues singer Brownie McGee), a jazzman who peformed with Favorite. Margaret swears that Johnny's dead, but Harry doesn't buy it.
Strangely, almost everyone whom Harry interrogates in New Orleans ends up dead, usually in a horribly gruesome way. Like, for example, having a head shoved into a pot full of boiling Louisiana crawfish. But Harry still doesn’t catch on, the sap.
Eventually he hooks up with one Epiphany Proudfoot (Bonet) a teenage prostitute who turns out to be Favorite’s illegitimate daughter. (She also likes to dabble in voodoo/hoodoo, hence the infamous chicken-sacrificing scene.) Harry falls in love with Epiphany—which sadly means that her future life span is not extensive. Poor Epiphany.
As the film ends in a wicked twist, Harry has a confrontation with Cypher and finds out Cypher’s true identity— as well as his own, thus revealing the fact that Harry is an even bigger sap than the one Fred MacMurray played in Double Indemnity (1944).
On disc and streaming; strong recommend.
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I read Falling Angel before I saw Angel Heart, but both of them are such class acts. I feel like the twist was a lot more obvious and telegraphed in the movie than it was in Hjortsberg's novel, but seeing the more visceral scenes, especially those involving Epiphany, played out on the screen is incomparable. De Niro turns in a top-notch performance as Louis, and Rourke was born to play a role like Angel, but casting Lisa Bonet as Epiphany was a stroke of genius. Talk about playing against type! And of course, Charlotte Rampling is absolutely arresting no matter what she appears in. :)
Lovely review, as always. I hadn't connected the name Alan Parker to Mississippi Burning, but once I read that, so much seemed to make sense/fall into place. Got me wanting to watch both films again, so thanks a lot! :D
Ha! I didn't pick up on the telegraphing at all--I thought Favorite or one of his pals were going around doing the murders. But I didn't read the book either. Agree about Lisa -- everyone wanted her to be Denise Huxtable, to the point where it hurt the film's reception and box office. Oh PS -- I found another Sabotsky anthology film I'd never heard of before -- called The Uncanny (1977). Not Amicus -- but Amicus-like since it was produced by Sabotsky. It's got Pleasence and Cushing in it. It's on YouTube, so I'm gonna watch it this week and will probably do a review.
This movie does sound pretty cool! Although, I don't think I should ever watch it... I'm a complete wimp when it comes to horror....
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thanks!!
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Thanks!
I loved this movie!
It's pretty creepy!
My all time favourite movie and the only movie I ever went to see twice at the cinema . I still have the incredible Courtney Pine soundtrack on an LP.
It was filmed very cleverly to get the colours muted and that really atmospheric cinematography.
Ahh back in the day when Mickey Rourke deserved an Oscar and Lisa Bonet was truly the most beautiful girl on the planet.
I would never actually call it a horror movie though.
Thanks for reviewing this , a really understated movie!
It's kind of hard to buttonhole this picture because it's a mix of various genres. But I'd include it in the horro category. Thanks for commenting!
Thanks for the review. It looks interesting... and I think I never saw this one.
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