Film Review: ANGEL HEART (1987, Alan Parker)

Stars: 4.7 of 5.
Running Time: 113 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Mickey Rourke, Robert de Niro, Lisa Bonet, Charlotte Rampling. Music by Trevor Jones (EXCALIBUR, LABYRINTH, RUNAWAY TRAIN). Cinematography by Michael Seresin.
Tag-line: "It will scare you to your very soul."
Best one-liner: "I gotta thing about chickens."

ANGEL HEART is a masterful 80's neo-noir (with a tinge of otherworldly horror) from English filmmaker Alan Parker (PINK FLOYD'S THE WALL, FAME, MIDNIGHT EXPRESS). Parker tackles the supernatural like the best of Kubrick and Lynch, rarely presenting it tangibly, and instead opting to let you simply feel the timbre of its ominous presence.

The forceful imagery of cinematographer Michael Seresin (ANGELA'S ASHES, FOXES) and production designer Brian Morris (THE HUNGER, the first PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN) goes a long way in maintaining this exquisite atmosphere, and these impressions (like an imposing tenement with one, red-lit window or a shadowy, malfunctioning steel fan squeaking and scraping in the night) remain ingrained in your mind long after the picture has finished. The key performances are astoundingly good, with Mickey Rourke delivering probably his second best performance of the 80's (after RUMBLE FISH) as a chicken-phobic private eye who finds his entire world crumbling around him.

Robert de Niro is his mysterious, long-fingernailed client who manages to transform the act of eating a hard-boiled egg into meditation on existential dread.

Charlotte Rampling is a world-weary Southern gentlewoman who has more than dabbled in the black arts, and Lisa Bonet's bayou-dwelling voodoo priestess may just figure into the mystery as well. Almost playfully macabre, ANGEL HEART is littered with puns, allusions, and utter ridiculousness, from Rourke's Coney Island 'nose shield'

to the droll callousness of lighting a match off a dead man's shoe. But this thing is brutal, too: it's Cajuns threatening to have their dogs bite your face off, it's being beaten and thrown into a wheelbarrow of crawdads, it's scalding and slicing and being asphyxiated by your own (severed) balls. It all builds to a surprising coda, that, even if you see it coming, is simultaneously mind-numbing and masochistically satisfying. Life's just one creaky, rusty elevator ride, and it only ends once.



-Sean Gill


2009 Halloween Countdown

31. PROM NIGHT (1980, Paul Lynch)
30. PHENOMENA (1985, Dario Argento)
29. HOUSE OF WAX (1953, André de Toth)
28. SILENT RAGE (1982, Michael Miller)
27. BASKET CASE (1982, Frank Henenlotter)
26. THE DEADLY SPAWN (1983, Douglas McKeown)
25. PELTS (2006, Dario Argento)
24. ANGEL HEART (1987, Alan Parker)
23.
...

Film Review: FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (1975, Dick Richards)

Stars: 4.5 of 5.
Running Time: 95 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Robert Mitchum, Harry Dean Stanton, Sylvester Stallone, Joe Spinell (MANIAC!, THE GODFATHER), Jack O' Halloran (SUPERMAN II, HERO AND THE TERROR), Charlotte Rampling (SWIMMING POOL, THE VERDICT, ZARDOZ), Kate Murtagh (THE CAR, FAMILY PLOT), Anthony Zerbe (COOL HAND LUKE, THE DEAD ZONE, KISS MEETS THE PHANTOM OF THE PARK), John Ireland (SPARTACUS, RED RIVER, WAXWORK II), Jerry Bruckheimer (!, here co-producing).
Tag-lines: "I need another drink...I need a lot of life insurance...I need a vacation....and all I got is a coat, a hat, and a gun!"
Best one-liner: "The house itself wasn't much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace and probably had fewer windows than the Chrysler building." AND "I sparred with the night clerk for a couple of minutes, but it was like trying to open a sardine can after you broke off the metal lip. There was something about Abraham Lincoln's picture that loosened him up. "

FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (1975), proceeds as if the contemporary wave of neo-noir (THE LONG GOODBYE, CHINATOWN, NIGHT MOVES) had never happened- and why should it? It's exactly like a 40’s noir that happened to be made in the 70’s (with only slight variances in violence, sexuality, and envelope-pushing), and smack dab in the middle is the legendary 'Ole Rumple Eyes himself (Bob Mitchum) as Philip Marlowe.

Now, MURDER, MY SWEET (the original adaptation of this Chandler tale) can’t really be touched, but FAREWELL, MY LOVELY manages to come damned close. Mitchum truly doesn’t give a shit as he encounters a rogue’s gallery of noir archetypes from how ya doin’ thug Sylvester Stallone,

to prickly cop Harry Dean Stanton,

to ravishing ingenue Charlotte Rampling to two-bit hood Joe Spinell (MANIAC!) to sympathetic palooka Jack O’Halloran (Non from SUPERMAN II). (And special mention must be given here to O'Halloran; he exudes serious pathos in a role (Moose Malloy) could have easily devolved into caricature. Mike Mazurki is perfect in MURDER, MY SWEET, but you rarely feel for him like you do for O'Halloran. Bravo!)

Prison matron Mom Smackley from SWITCHBLADE SISTERS is even in on the action, slapping the shit out of Mitchum in one scene, and then cathartically getting slugged in the face by Mitchum in return. Mitchum is on fire. He cracks wise, sings a few bars a cappella, has stiff exchanges with children,


Mitchum doesn't give a shit about ANYTHING. You really think he feels any differently about kids?

drinks heavily, and gets forcibly hopped up on smack (with a 40’s-style drug trip sequence).

Mitchum on smack. Smack kinda makes Mitchum look like James Karen.

Although my favorite parts might be the ridiculously awkward banter and rough-and-tumble antics between Mitchum and the Newsie. I feel like they were all done in one take, cause Mitchum was probably uncomfortable laying his hands on a man in any context other than knocking the shit out of him.

There’s also a few times in the film that Mitchum is, surprisingly, required to look like he ‘cares’ about something.

Mitchum kind of cares when you crumple his hat. See THUNDER ROAD. Click on photo for an enlarged view.

He kind of looks off into the distance, wistfully, and you totally believe it, but I can’t help but feel that those moments were brought about by the director threatening to bring about harm to Mitchum’s gin stash. Anyway, Mitchum reprised the role 3 years later in the slightly ridiculous but very entertaining remake of THE BIG SLEEP, but make no mistake, FAREWELL, MY LOVELY is quality. Four and a half stars.

-Sean Gill