DVD AND MOVIE REVIEWS

 



 

Angel Heart
by PoeticCrow

There are some films that slip through the cracks and become forgotten or obscure due to some controversy or bad hype. They become victims of the marketing system and eventually end up on the bargain bin if they even make it to DvD at all. It is a shame really because this film by Alan Parker deserves a lot better treatment that what it has received.

To even begin to talk about this movie, you also have to talk about the reasons why it didn't receive the praise it deserved. This movie almost garnered an X rating due to the provocative scenes with Lisa Bonet. Many will remember her from the Cosby Show, you will also remember then this movie cost her the job due to Cosby's Producer’s criticism of her taking this role. They felt since the Cosby show was a family show, that Lisa Bonet should have used better discretion in baring herself in a voodoo ritual with a bloody chicken or wrestling in a heated frenzy in a bed with Mickey Rourke while blood dripped from the ceiling. She disappeared from the Cosby show's cast and due to the criticism by Cosby’s producers,  the movie wasn't too well received. Which is sad, because this movie, even dated, outshines several imitations that have followed. This movie frankly never received its due.

This movie came out in 1987 starring a younger Mickey Rourke. His face still fresh and boyish, not the beaten, world weary, reassembled face he bears now. Rourke's second profession was boxing, he has had some facial reconstruction due to being in the ring. Personally I think he is to play the perfect Marv in the upcoming Sin City. This is vintage Rourke. Not the 91/2 weeks version. He plays a private detective that gets hired by the mysterious Louis Cyphre, Robert De Niro.

Let's talk De Niro's entrance here for a moment. We already know just by looking at the inverted pentagram ring on his finger and by the hole boring stare he employs that he is something other than just a man clad in a black suit and cane. Alan Parker doesn't try to hide this. In fact, he wants you to catch on to the fact that already something is sinister and evil breeds under than sly smirk De Niro flashes so well. Though De Niro's role in this movie is small, it is essential and it makes use of all the camera time he receives oozing with a sense of foreboding.

The time is the '50's. It begins in New York's Harlem and journeys down into the South, eventually ending up in New Orleans voodoo back streets. Angel Harold, Mickey Rourke, is hired by Cyphre to find a crooner, Johnny Favor. This crooner disappeared from a hospital where he had been for the past 12 years in a reported coma. It seems that there is an unfinished contract between Cyphre and Favor and Cyphre doesn't like "messy accounts."

Throw in a mix of a morphine addicted doctor, a palm reading beauty that is the daughter of a wealthy eccentric, a guitar playing jazz musician and a charismatic black church in Harlem that keeps voodoo altars and you get something as rich as any Cajun gumbo. Even if you do come to the conclusion that is eluding Rourke, you are still entertained. Parker captures the '50's with all the grit and grime of what is Harlem and also the wispy vine covered New Orleans.

This is a classic horror film that never got its due. Film Noir that intercedes with the supernatural. Raymond Chandler flirting with Anne Rice.