Angel Heart (1987)
Angel Heart is a horror noir classic directed by Alan Parker, who would revisit the seedy South in 1989's Mississippi Burning, after which he's probably best known for his film adaptation of Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes. Harold Angel, played by a young Mickey Rourke, is the quintessential 1950s New York City private eye - trenchcoat, stubble, glass of whiskey always within reach. He's also got an irrational fear of chickens. Contracted by the law firm of Winesap and Macintosh through their client, Louis Cyphre (a wonderfully deadpan Robert DeNiro), Angel is sent on a hunt for a wartime crooner named Johnny Favourite, who was apparently injured during the war and is likely wandering around shell-shocked with no money, no direction and possibly no memory. And if you don't know who Cyphre is supposed to be, just...I don't think there's anyone who can't figure this out, seriously.
I got a thing about chickens.
So Angel tracks Favourite through his known acquaintances, who tend to end up dead soon after he talks to them. First on the list is a morphine-addicted doctor who signed off on Favourite's hospital paperwork, who ends up shot through the eye while Angel is out picking up smokes and a sandwich. The trail then leads to New Orleans' French Quarter and the dark bayous of Louisiana, where Angel becomes embroiled in voodoo, devil worship and a web of lies involving Favourite, a local fortuneteller and Favourite's daughter Epiphany.
The plot here is pretty obvious - if not from the start, you should at least have figured it all out within the first half hour or so. Everyone's got a meaningful name, Cyphre barely even bothers covering up his true identity and seems to find it genuinely amusing that Angel doesn't figure it out until the end, and Parker doesn't really seem to think that you're going to be surprised when it all clicks. The real reason to watch this movie is because of its atmosphere. It's a superbly dark and foreboding piece of Deep South noir with some great New Orleans jazz music and possibly one of the best soundtracks ever, by Trevor Jones (who also did amazing work on Labyrinth and Dark City). You know where Angel is headed, you know the realization that's in store for him, but it's a compelling process just watching him get there. I don't ordinarily like Satanic movies - religious horror comes with a lot of inherent moral and cosmic baggage, and being as far from religious as you can get, I never quite buy into it or suspend my disbelief enough to actually be scared by the idea of the Devil. This is one of the few that I do like.
Alas, how terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit
to the wise, Johnny....
Angel Heart has a couple of other interesting bits of trivia surrounding it. Epiphany Proudfoot is played by Lisa Bonet, probably most often remembered as Denise Huxtable on The Cosby Show and A Different World. Bonet took the part in Angel Heart to move away from her contractually "pure" image, and for better or worse, it succeeded. There's a very explicit sex scene between Epiphany and Angel that had footage cut so the film could retain its R rating, and Bill Cosby had her fired from The Cosby Show as a result - which seems all the more ironic in hindsight, given what's come to light about Cosby himself in subsequent years. Angel Heart was also the primary inspiration for the 1993 adventure game Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, much as Adrian Lyne's Jacob's Ladder inspired Silent Hill.
Available On: Netflix.
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