Rainbow with Egg Underneath and an Elephant

Angel Heart

Angel Heart
U.S.A., 1987
Director: Alan Parker
MONTHLY FILM BULLETIN
Vol. 54, No.645
October 1987
by KIM NEWMAN

Cert--18. dist--Columbia-Cannon-Warner. p.c Carolco International. A Winkast-Union production. exec. p--Mario Kassar, Andrew Vajna. p--Alan Marshall, Elliott Kastner. assoc. p--Robert Dattila. p. exec--Dan Mark. p.sup--Simon Bosanquet. p. office co-ordinator-- Ingrid Johanson. unit co ordinator--Mary Richards. unit p.manager--Michael Nozik. location managers--(New York) Jonathan Filley, (New Orleans) Clayton Townsend. location co-ordtnator--(New Orleans) David Ross McCarthy. casting--Risa Bramon, Billy Hopkins (extras) Isabelle Kramer, Rick Landry. asst. d--Ric Kidney, Sarah M. Brim, Nina Kostroff. sc--Alan Parker. Based on the novel Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg. ph--Michael Seresin. col--Technicolor. camera op--Michael Roberts, Michael Levine. steadicam op--Larry McConkey. opticals--Camera Effects Limited. ed--Gerry Hambling. p designer--Brian Morris. a.d--Kristi Zea, Armin Ganz. set lec--(New York) Robert J. Franeo, (New Orleans) Leslie Pope. set dressers--John Dwyer, Scott Rosentock (lead), Anthony Baldasare, Michael Benson, Martha Fishkin. draughtsmen (New York) Daniel R. Davis, (New Orleans) Warren Clymer. scenic artists--Roger Dietz, Richard Ventre, John Kelly. sp effects sup--J.C. Brotherhood. sp. effects assistant--Russell Berg. m--Trevor Jones m. performed by (saxophones) Courtney Pine. songs--"Rainy Rainy Day" by Brownie McGhee; "The Right Key, the Wrong Keyhole" by Clarence Williams, Eddie Green; "Lasin Street Blues" by Spencer Williams; "Gospel Song" by Anthony Evans; "I Cried forYou" by Arthur Freed, Abe Lyman, "Girl of My Dreams" performed by Glen Gray and his Casa Loma Orchestra; "Auld Lang Syne' performed by Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians; "Soul on Fire" by and performed by Laverne Baker; "Zu Zu Mamou' performed by Doctor John; "Sh-Boom" performed by The Chords; "Honey Man Blues" performed by Bessie Smith, "Fenesta Che Lucive" performed by Franco Corelli; "Sunny Land" performed by John Lee Hooker. choreo--Louis Falco. cost design--Aude Bronson-Howard. wardrobe sup--Barbara Hause, Elin Bjorkman. make-up--David Forrest (chief artist), Carla White sp.make-up effects-- Robert Laden. titles--Peter Govey. sd. ed--Eddy Joseph. sd. rec.--Danny Michael, (m.) Paul Hulme. Dolby stereo. sd. re-rec--Robert Litt, Stevc Maslow, Elliot Tyson; sd. effects ed-- William Trent. foley--Jean-Pierre Lelong. p. assistants--(New York) Julie Bloom, Jill Greenberg, Chris Chandler, Maureen Kleinman, Dana Robin, Charles M. Lum, David Massar Grant Reid, Christian Faber, (New Orleans) Leann Stonebreaker, Mary Shelton, Jay Lempart, David Dempsey, Woody Sempliner, Mark Hutto, Wayne Clapion, Mark Sarver, Felix Oliver; stunt co-ordinator--Harry Madsen. stunts--Webster Whinery, Felix Mauras, Perry Nichols, Roy Thomas, Jeff Ward, Shirley Walker, Andy Duppin. Joy Hooper, Bufort McClerkins, Franklyn Scott. horse wrangler--Corkey Randall. animal trainer--Steve McAulif.

l. p--Mickey Rourke (Harry Angel), Robert De Niro (Louis Cyphre), Lisa Bonet (Epiphany Proudfoot), Charlotte Rarnpling (Margaret Krusemark), Stocker Fontelieu (Ethan Krusemark), Brownie McGhee (Toots Sweet), Michael Higgins (Doctor Fowler), Elizabeth Whitcraft (Connie), Eliott Keener (Sterne), Charles Gordonec (Spider Simpson), Dan Florek (Winesap), Kathleen Wilhoite (Nurse), George Buck (Izzy), Judith Drake (Izzy's Wife), Gerald L. Orange (Pastor John), Peggy Severe (Mammy Carter), Pruitt Taylor Vince (Deimos), David Petitjean (Baptism Preacher), Rick Washburn (Cajun Heavy), Neil Newton (2nd Cajun Heavy), Oakley Dalton (Big Jacket), Yvonne Bywaters (Margaret's Maid), Loys T. Bergeron (Mike), Joshua Frank (Toothless), Karmen Harris (Harlem Mourner), Nicole Burdette(Ellie), Kendell Lupe (1st Oyster Cajun), Percy Martin (2nd Oyster Cajun), Viola Dunbar (Concierge), Murray Bandel (Bartender), Jarrett Narcisse (Epiphany's Child), Ernest Watson (Oyster Bar Saxophonist), Rickie Monie (Oyster Bar Pianist); Toots Sweet Band: Sugar Blue (Harmonica), Pinetop Perkins (Piano), Deacon Johnmoore (Lead Guitar), Richard Payne (Double Bass), W. Alonzo Stewart (Drums), Lillian Boutte (Vocalist); Joel Adam, Darrel Beasley, Stehen Beasley and Jerome Reddick (Tap Dancers), Louis Freddie Kohlman, Curtis Pierre, Stephen Kenyatta Simon and Kufaru Aaron Mouton (Voodoo Drums), Roselyn Lionheart (Voodoo Musician), Marilyn Banks, Lula Elzy, Francesca J. Ridge, Hope Clarke, Oscar Best, Sarita Allen, Noel Jones, Valerie Jackson, Greer Goff, Arlena Rolant, Karen Davis, Shirleta Jones and Mark Taylor (Voodoo Dancers).

10,179 ft. 113 mins.

New York, 1955. Private detective Harry Angel is contacted by lawyer Winesap, who sets up a meeting with Louis Cyphre, a mysterious foreigner who wants Angel to track down Johnny Favorite, a once-famous Big Band singer who has defaulted on an unspecified debt to Cyphre. Since the war Favorite has supposedly been in a veterans' hospital, classified as a vegetable, but from Dr. Fowler Angel learns that the singer, although amnesiac, recovered from his war wounds and, with the aid of Ethan Krusemark and his daughter Margaret, disappeared. Fowler is prompdy murdered and Angel departs for New Orleans, where the Krusemarks are prominent. Angel visits Margaret Krusemark, a wealthy woman with an interest in voodoo; shortly afterwards, she too is murdered, her heart torn out in accord with a voodoo ritual. From Toots Sweet, a black musician who knew Favorite, Angel discovers that dhe singer was involved with Evangeline Proudfoot, a high-ranking voodoo priestess, and that they had a daughter Epiphany. Eavesdroppmg at a voodoo ceremony, Angel sees that Epiphany has also become a priestess. Toots is murdered, and Angel begins to realise that Favorite has escaped Cyphre by changing his identity. On New Year's Eve, 1943 Favorite with the help of the Krusemarks, kidnapped a soldier and ate his heart, thus taking on his face and memories. Angel begins an affair with Epiphany, and is harassed by cops Sterne and Deimos about the murders. To find out the name of the soldier murdered by Favorite, Angel interrogates Ethan Krusemark, and is told that the dead man's dogtags are kept in Margaret's apartment (Krusemark is then drowned in a vat ot chicken gumbo). Angel finds his own name on the dogtags and realises that he is Johnny Favorite and that Louis Cyphre - Lucifer - has made him go through the mystery, committing the murders himself during amnesiac fugues, in order to force him to honour his part in the bargain he once made, exchanging his soul in return for worldly success. Back at his hotel, he finds Epiphany shot dead and Sterne and Deimos ready to arrest him for the killings. He realises that his destiny is to burn in the electric chair and then in Hell.

Like many of his generation of British (and to be fair, American) directors, Alan Parker seems capable of everything except telling a story. As a consequence, he is at his worst when confronted with a genre hybrid like this -hard-boiled horror story - in which he has to deal with a format in which narrative is one of the primary concerns. While Michael Mann's The Keep has proved that it is possible to achieve results by substituting style and mood for linear drive in adapting a solid genre novel, Parker here falls rather between Mann's challenging (but commercially unsuccessful) approach and the simply fudged versions of a string of horror best-sellers since The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby started the cross-fertilisation of modern literary and cinematic trends in horror. William Hjortsberg's novel Falling Angel suffers slightly less that the film from its contrivances: the business about the hero committing the murders during fugues is a shade more acceptable (perhaps thanks to Agatha Christie's precedent-setting) in a first-person novel, which can draw attention to the fact that things happen between chapters, than it is in the more fluid, revealing film medium. But the novel equally has the problem that its surprise revelations are guessable from very early in the story.

Hjortsberg covers himself with a spirited pastiche, while Parker opts for a foreshadowing of a variety of dooms that lets the audience in, virtually from the start, on the fact that the protagonist is doomed and damned. The shift of the setting of the last half of the story from the book's New York to New Orleans allows for a succession of striking images - tap-dancing on rainy pavements, dilapidated Southern buildings - to intercut with the horrors, and also for an air of Body Heat-style sweaty eroticism. There is an almost-expressionist menace about the shadows through which Harry Angel searches for a murderer who is ultimately shown to be himself (Hjortsberg evidently intended a reminder of Dan Duryea in Black Angel, but could also have been thinking of Boris Karloff in Grip of the Strangler or the protagonist of Thomas Gifford's novel Hollywood Gothic), and the final descent to Hell in a rattling skeleton lift is a marvellously understated vision of the Pit. However, it comes after a particularly banal, literal peek into Hell (screaming fat people), and the straining for atmosphere is forever tipping into bathos. At least one strand of the film's visual pattern - the repeated and insistent close-ups of whirring fan blades - has been rendered meaningless by the removal of the event (Winesap's decapitation) that is supposed to be the pay-off.

As film noir, Angek Heart tends towards the fatalistic and uneventlul. The (of necessity) off screen murders entail a soon monotonous series of scenes in which Angel comes across yet another bloodied corpse, and the final revelations are blurted out in an astonishingly inept bit of narrative-unravelling as Ethan Krusemark fills in the missing pieces at hysteria pitch before his own death. Under the circumstances, Mickey Rourke does the best he can, and is rewarded with a scattering of good hard-boiled lines taken from the novel. Robert De Niro as a long-haired, taloned Devil makes a powerfully suave incarnation of ultimate Evil, but can do little in a role that defeats his usual actor's trick of submerging himself totally in the world of his character. There is a fertile common ground between the horror and hard-boiled private detective genres - as has been proved by authors like Cornell Woolrich, Jim Thompson and David Morell - but to transfer this cross-breed to the screen requires that a film-maker take it seriously rather than striving for extra weightiness by turning perfectly good genre material into a 'real' film.