Review: Angel

Donna Wilkes stars as Molly, a 15 year-old high-schooler who moonlights as a hooker named Angel. She does this after her mother’s death and her father’s abandonment. Danger comes in the form of a serial killer (John Diehl) bumping off hookers. Cliff Gorman plays a cop who tries to help Molly out, but Molly is worried about her secret life ruining her day-to-day existence. On the streets she is protected by a group of oddballs and misfits like former B-western cowboy Kit Carson (Rory Calhoun), a transvestite named Mae (Dick Shawn), and foul-mouth lesbian landlady Solly (Susan Tyrrell), but how long until Diehl gets his hands on her?

 

The “Angel” flicks are exploitation favourites, it seems, but surely not because they’re any good, but more likely because there’s nothing else on at 3AM and you can’t sleep. So if you grew up on these films and enjoyed them, good for you. But I’m here to tell you why this film from director/co-writer Robert Vincent O’Neill (who directed the next in the series “Avenging Angel”) is frankly, a bit crap. Right off the bat, notice that the film is from New World Pictures, and by 1984, Roger Corman had sold the company and started a new one. So Corman, one of the best in the biz at exploitation pictures, had nothing to do with this film at all (He did, however, produce a film called “Streetwalkin’” in 1984 about the same kind of subject). Anyway, if all you want in a film is a teenager who turns tricks on the Boulevard at night, who then becomes a vigilante- this is your film, especially if you don’t care that it’s poorly made. Hell, it did pretty damn well at the US box-office back in the day. Me, I liked the occasional nudity well enough, but I was looking for more.

What we really have here is a genuinely creepy serial killer (well-played by a young John Diehl) in the “10 to Midnight” vein, stuck in a film about a teenager turning tricks that frankly didn’t have the balls to give an honest portrayal. Thus, what it does instead is feature Donna Wilkes (who was 25 at the time, and thus perfectly able to be exploited for our entertainment) doing a lot of standing around not having sex, whilst a bunch of extras from “Can’t Stop the Music” and a possibly genuinely senile former western actor (Rory Calhoun) try to convince you that life on the streets is a ball and a half. If I picked on “Pretty Woman” for glorifying prostitution, I gotta come down on this film for its stupidly glitzy treatment of the subject. It really is more like a “Can’t Stop the Music” or “Saturday Night Fever” than what it’s actually purporting to be like, and it’s extremely jarring and fatuous. Life on the streets must be a whole lot scummier and degrading than what O’Neill and co-writer Joseph M. Cala present, but with a lot of the dialogue between Wilkes and cop Gorman, it seems like we were meant to think that what we’re seeing really is depressing and degrading. It just isn’t. It’s superficial and phony, and sadly not in any outrageous or wonderfully trashy kind of way. Yes, the film has an interesting trash cast; Rory Calhoun, Susan Tyrrell, Cliff Gorman, Dick Shawn (Playing a cross-dresser to no one’s surprise), and John Diehl. Look out for a good, sleazy cameo by John Carpenter regular Peter Jason, too, cast as a John. All that’s missing are Paul Bartel, Edy Williams, and Antonio ‘Huggy Bear’ Fargas. But a trashy cast does not an enjoyably trashy film maketh. At least not this trashy cast. Rory Calhoun comes out better than most. Calhoun (looking a little like a latter-day Sam Elliott), at this point in his career looked to have checked-out, possibly mentally. Wearing an old cowboy costume, one has to wonder if he was simply wheeled out of the old folk’s home and put in front of the camera. He seems to be having a hoot and a half, and is lively at the very least. Unfortunately he and Dick Shawn come off like rejects from Ed Wood’s troupe of actors and oddballs, as they seem to have the film fit clumsily around their goofy personas. As such, Shawn is a lot less enjoyable to have around than Calhoun, as he brings nothing new to a stereotypical part. Worse, every time he turns up, any effort towards sincerity and realism are shattered. Susan Tyrrell has always kinda been a bad actress, but never a boring one, and I guess she’s what you want in a trash film, even a tonally confused one. Cliff Gorman isn’t a bad actor by any stretch, but the only impression he’ll leave on you here is that “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening surely must have modelled Moe the Bartender on Gorman. It’s unmistakable.

The best performance by far comes from character actor John Diehl, who apparently didn’t age between 1984 and 1994’s “Stargate”. His creepy Ted Bundy meets “10 to Midnight” serial killer is the only edge or element of true sleaze and danger in an otherwise superficial, dopey treatment (Oh if only Diehl actually played the killer in “10 to Midnight”, it’d be terrific). Unfortunately, even Diehl is somewhat hamstrung by the repetitive nature of his character. Take out the rogues gallery of kooky support characters and a few school scenes, and the film seems to play like this; Angel talks to a co-worker, co-worker runs off with Diehl, co-worker is killed. Second verse, same as the first.

The film has some really nice locker room nudity (although they’re meant to be high-schoolers, which is a bit icky actually), but it must be said that star Wilkes isn’t much of a looker, nor does she make like everyone else and drop her top. Why was she cast, then? She’s of age, so f you’re gonna keep her cookies in the jar, at least make sure the girl can act. Unfortunately, Wilkes doesn’t contribute much there, either, and it’s no surprise her feature film acting career was short-lived (Shorter than that of Betsy Russell, who took over the role in “Avenging Angel” and is one of the worst-actresses of all-time).

The film isn’t quite as bad as I’d heard, but it has serious problems. The tone is bad enough, but I really wish we got to see how Angel made the transition from schoolgirl to hooker. Here we only get it in the form of a speech telling of her back-story, and the film is halfway over by that point. The way it’s done, there seems to be no connection whatsoever between her daily life and her night life, they truly seem like two different worlds from two different films, and I just don’t buy that. Surely someone would’ve spotted her out on the streets long ago, and there’s a lot of questions left unanswered. The character played by Gorman and the school principal also behave completely unrealistically. No way they’d leave Angel out on her own, even with a bit of supervision. Then again, we’re talking about a film that has a serial killer dressing like a Hare Krishna in one scene for absolutely no valid reason.

Not campy enough to be trash, too campy and superficial to take seriously, the only thing this film has going for it is that it’s not exactly dull.

 

Rating: C-