*Editor’s note:
This month’s column is guest written by Mark Slade.
“You know what today is? Today is Wednesday - anything can happen day.” Says Harry Angel, played by Mickey Rourke in the neo-noir horror film, Angel Heart (1987) directed and adapted by Brit Alan Parker (known for The Wall, The Commitments, and Mississippi Burning) which had gained steam in controversy even before it was released.
Re-watching this film, I realized what Hollywood missed out with Rourke. Okay, so he was a little full of himself back in those days. But what I really think bothered Hollywood more than Rourke’s cockiness was the fact he didn’t buy into their phoniness. The shenanigans that celebs do these days, Rourke was doing in the ‘80’s. Not showing up for interviews, or letting their personal lives become the star attraction - screaming at directors, fighting with photographers. What they missed the boat on was one helluva an actor. Someone that was so comfortable in his own skin he could play a charming rogue that can get whatever he wanted with just a smile.
Now after his big comebacks with Sin City and The wrestler, Rourke is in an acting comfort zone of playing bad guys and character actors, sometimes getting what he wants with a smile.
In Angel Heart, Rourke plays such a character. Set in 1955, down and out, small time Private Detective Harry Angel is contacted by phone by the lawyer of Louis Cyphre, a business man who wants Angel to track down a missing person. A former big band singer Johnny Favorite, who at one time Cyphre had helped Favorite get a head in his career. A meeting with Cyphre (Robert De Niro) in the back of a church in Harlem sets the pace of the movie and its foreboding when Angel sees a black clad woman cleaning blood from the walls of the church.
From there the plot weaves in and out like twisted vines in deep dark woods. Looking for Favorite in an Asylum (receiving treatment for shell shock that happened during WWII), notices he’d been released years before, only it was written in ball point, and the date being 1943. Ballpoint hadn’t become widely used until the 1950’s. This gives Angel an inkling that Johnny’s release was a ruse. From other sources, details lead Harry Angel out of New York City and into murky, creepy New Orleans. This leads him to meet with Favorite’s ex-girlfriend and tarot reader Margret Krouse (Charlotte Rampling). He learns that Favorite also had a secret lover and meets the daughter of the lover, Epiphany (played by Lisa Bonet). Following Epiphany Proudfoot to a voodoo ceremony, not only does the viewer learn about the ceremony in this film, but they also see a frightened Harry Angel.
During the course of the film a string of murders ensues, each one more graphic and bloody than the last. Even the title of the film is a play on a plot point in the story. And I would go as far as calling this a genre film with a new title, Blood Noir. The other film in this category, also deals with Voodoo, was The Believers, released in 1987 as well. Angel Heart seems to treat the subject with intelligence, unlike The Believers, who makes the horror in it ridiculous, and campy, and not in a fun way. A year later, Wes craven would have a go at voodoo with The serpent and the Rainbow. That film had its charm, and knew exactly what it wanted to achieve without being grandiose. Just a good old fashioned thrill-ride.
I wonder if Parker realized what problems lay ahead of him while he was making this film. Or did he just not care. After all, this was 1986 when he filmed it and society had not become that relaxed on interracial love or sexual moralities. Back then, you couldn’t even see a condom commercial on TV. Even before the film was released, the rumor of a sex scene between Mickey Rourke and Lisa Bonet was too graphic. Was it? Or was it the fact that a black woman and a white man were having sex? Or could it have been the fact Bonet was 18 at the time, and Rourke 33. Whatever the cause there was a firestorm of controversy that led to the MPAA giving the film an X. Remember, this was before NC-17, the chic of going to an X rated film had not come back in fashion as yet until Henry And June in 1990. The limitations of having an X on your film means you couldn’t advertise or get mass audience release. When it was finally released, the sex scene was trimmed down to get barely an R. I wonder also, since Alan Parker had said nothing specific was cited why an X was given, could it be the fact that Bonet was a teen star of the Cosby show, and that put a black mark on entertainment of family values? Who knows?
The film was mostly faithful to the book. Part of the setting was moved to New Orleans, whereas in the book, all of the action took place in New York. Also Parker added Epiphany’s son conceived during a Voodoo ceremony.
The movie was based on the novel Fallen Angel by William Hjortsberg (famously wrote the screenplay for Legend for director Riddley Scott). Hjortsberg had this to say about the film: “Angel Heart was based on my novel. I had the original idea in high school. In the 70s, I wrote two different screenplays on the project; first for Paramount, then on a separate deal, for Robert Redford (Wildwood Productions), after that, it was dead in the water for four years. Allan Parker wanted to write his own script which was fine by me. In 1979, I worked on a project with Brian DePalma. He was a fan of FA and told me he'd film the whole thing in New Orleans. "It's got the look," he said. "It's got the voodoo. It's got the jazz. Plus, it's a right-to-work state, so it's cheap." When I first had lunch with Alan Parker in London in 1984 (Planet Hollywood, if I remember correctly) I told him what DePalma had said. I guess he took it to heart (although I'm happy he filmed some of it in NYC). That was my only input into the making of Angel Heart."
The film was financed by the now defunct Carolco pictures, and as Alan Parker has said, “They made their money from the Rambo movies. I don’t care; I’ll take anyone’s money. There’s no such thing as clean money in Hollywood.”
Lions Gate released a special edition DVD of this film in 2004. Along with it being remastered, are commentaries by Alan Parker and Mickey Rourke, as well as interviews and documentaries about the voodoo religion. In the case of Harry Angel, it might have been better that he hadn’t answered the telephone that day.
Mark Slade, HMS
Read the previous installment.