Alan Parker is one of my favorite film directors. Unlike most directors who are often great in their own ways, Parker is an artist. I don’t think it is any surprise that he directed two of the best filmed musicals ever: Pink Floyd—The Wall and Evita. And that’s not even counting Fame and The Commitments, which are kind of musicals. He has a stunning visual style that somehow manages not to call attention to itself like Martin Scorsese’s (with all due respect).
Despite the fact that he has made so many wonderful films (eg Midnight Express), my favorite Parker film is Angel Heart (1987). It is based on William Hjortsberg’s novel Falling Angel, which so brilliantly blended the detective story with the occult.
And the whole film is so well executed with his usual editor (Gerry Hambling), cameraman (Mike Roberts), cinematographer (Michael Seresin), and production designer (Brian Morris). There’s also Trevor Jones doing the score and Louis Falco choreographing the amazing voodoo scene.
Angel Heart is the kind of film you want to watch every few years. It’s one of the best.
Synopsis
If you haven’t seen Angel Heart and you would like to, don’t read the synopsis. It’s a fascinating mystery with a great ending. It’s good to see it cold — especially since it is a film that is worth watching many times.
Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) is a New York City private detective in the middle of the 1950s. He is called to see a client in Harlem to see a creepy dandy with long fingernails and cane, Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro). Angel is hired to find a singer named Johnny Favorite who signed a contract with Cyphre to forfeit “certain property” in the event of his death.
Dr Fowler
Favorite suffered from shell shock in the war, a condition Angel shares. Supposedly, Favorite is now a vegetable and is being kept at an out-of-town hospital. Angel tracks down Favorite’s doctor, Fowler, who tells him that the singer recovered a decade earlier and left with some friends.
Angel locks Fowler in his bedroom to stew — hoping he will remember something. When he comes back, he finds the doctor dead — apparently due to suicide.
As a result of this, Angel wants to quit the case. But Cyphre keeps him in it by offering him a huge sum of money (a year or two of income).
New Orleans
Research leads Angel to learn that some of Favorite’s friends moved down to New Orleans. So he travels down there. He find’s Favorite’s old society girlfriend, Margaret Krusemark (Charlotte Rampling), who is a fortune teller. After she learns what Angel wants, she throws him out.
Angel then seeks out Favorite’s “secret love” but finds that she is dead. Her daughter, Epiphany Proudfoot (Lisa Bonet), is still around, but she isn’t keen to help Angel either. So he seeks out Favorite’s old friend, Toots Sweet (Brownie McGhee), who is performing locally. He also sends Angel away.
Voodoo and Murder
Angel follows Sweet who drives to a voodoo celebration which Proudfoot leads. Later, Angel confronts Sweet at his apartment where he learns that Proudfoot is a voodoo priestess — like her mother before her. But he claims he hasn’t seen Favorite since the war.
The next morning, Angel finds out that Sweet has been brutally murdered and the police suspect him. Later, he goes back to Krusemark’s appartment where he finds her dead with her heart cut out.
Favorite’s Daughter
He goes to see Proudfoot again and learns that Johnny Favorite was her father.
Cyphre is in New Orleans and meets with him at a church. Angel explains that he thinks Favorite is following him around and killing everyone who can identify him.
When Angel gets back to his hotel, Proudfoot is there — scared to stay at home. The two flirt and eventually have energetic and bloody sex. The police question Angel about Krusemark’s murder.
Soul Stealing
Angel tracks down Krusemark’s father, Ethan (Stocker Fontelieu), who explains that Favorite made a deal with Satan: his soul for fame. But Favorite used a spell to switch souls with a young service member. He says that soldier’s dog tags were sealed in vase that Margaret Krusemark had.
While Angel is being sick in the toilet, Ethan is murdered by having his head submerged in a huge vat of gumbo.
It Was You
Angel races to Margaret’s apartment and finds the vase. Inside are the dog tags with the name, “Harry Angel.”
Cyphre appears in the apartment and claims to be Satan. “Louis Cyphre” is a pun of “Lucifer.” He explains that Angel is Favorite, “Frankly, you were doomed from the moment you slit that young boy in half, Johnny. For 12 years, you’ve been living on borrowed time and another man’s memories.”
At first, Angel doesn’t believe it. But then the memories come back of him killing Fowler, Margaret, Sweet, and Ethan. Angel rushes back to his hotel where he finds the police in his room investigating the bloody corpse of Proudfoot, who he now realizes is his daughter.
Angel Heart is Pyschotronic
Below, I discuss this film seriously. But none of that really matters. Angel Heart is a wonderful mystery with great Satanic elements. Much of the beginning of it is spooky with loads of creepy added for color. And the second half of it is ghoulishly bloody.
It’s also filled with loads of wonderfully bent characters. Everyone in the film is afraid. And it isn’t clear what’s up with them until the end. The acting is also exceptional with lots of regional performers. One of them (Pruitt Taylor Vince) went on to be be a major character actor in Hollywood.
Angel Heart Is an Important Film
Parker is well known to me as providing director commentaries during which he says very little. He gets involved in watching the film and says nothing for long periods of time. And he’s aware of this because he even mentions it from time to time. He even concludes that it is okay that he isn’t saying anything. For the record: no it isn’t. But his commentaries are still rather good because what he does say is interesting.
On one of his commentary track — for Mississippi Burning, I believe — he said that he had shown Angel Heart to his mentor. I don’t currently own the DVD, so I can’t say who it was. But the mentor did not like the film. He claimed that being able to make a film was such a great opportunity that one should only use it to make important films.
I don’t know if this is what caused Parker to go on to make Mississippi Burning or The Life of David Gale or other later films of varying quality. But his mentor was wrong—profoundly wrong. Angel Heart is probably the most serious and important film that Parker ever made.
Let’s Get Ontological
This is my opinion, of course. It is the result of my interest in ontological questions. If you haven’t seen the film, you should skip my discussion until you do. But if you have, read on!
The central question in the film is: what is a soul. We find out eventually that Harry Angel is a man with amnesia who used to be evil. And the film does an excellent job of showing that he’s a very nice guy now. A woman’s hat blows off and he grabs it and gives it back to her. Everyone who knows him seems to like him. He’s a decent guy. But throughout the film, he blacks out, does terrible things, and is none the wiser.
Soul and Personality
Toward the end of the film, he repeatedly tells Satan, “I know who I am.” But he doesn’t actually know who he is. And this is a deep question that I’ve argued with religious people for years. It has long been my claim that if humans have a soul, it has nothing to do with our personalities. That’s the synapses and electrochemical reactions. The soul must be something much deeper than this. But even Catholic priests balk at this idea.
The thing that they all want to believe is that in heaven, whoever they think they are now will be who they are then. But that’s just silly. Consciousness itself is a kind of weird construct of our brains. As a going concern, it doesn’t exist. Think about it: are you the same person you were ten years ago? Or even ten seconds ago? Of course you’re not! You are always changing. If you weren’t, you couldn’t even tell that you existed!
So at the end, the good personality who is Harry Angel (as opposed to the evil soul of Johnny Favorite) still burns in hell. It is a deeply disturbing way of looking at the world. And by the way, it is one that I don’t accept. But it is a Christian one. All the murders that are committed don’t really matter, because all souls are inherently sinful. It is only through the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ that they are washed clean. And it doesn’t matter if those sins are murder or just the thought of murder.
I Know Who I Am?!
Angel Heart asks us the most fundamental question imaginable: who are we? And it provides us with the most unsettling answer: we don’t know. We may all think of ourselves as Harry Angel, but we may actually be Johnny Favorite. No horror film has ever scared me in that way. The good guy gets his just punishment. That denouement is still as chilling today as it was when I first saw it almost three decades ago.
Get Angel Heart
Angel Heart has been released on disc a few different times and in general, they’ve been good.
There are two primary releases for Americans and others who need a Region A/1 disc. They are both from Lions Gate, but they are slightly different.
Blu-ray
This disc was released in 2009. It is 1080p with DTS-HD 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0 audio. The disc is region free so you can play it regardless of where you are. But there are potentially better options if you are outside A/1.
It also includes a French audio track. There are English and Spanish subtitles.
The extras on the disc are old but good:
Feature commentary with Alan Parker from 2001 where he provides some insights but spends most of the time not talking.
Interview (8 minutes) with Parker where he says the same things he said in the commentary.
Interview (14 minutes) with Mickey Rourke where he mostly talks about how he didn’t work that hard on the job, which may explain why it’s the best thing he’s done.
Second interview (22 minutes) with Rourke where he discusses his professional life.
This seems to have been re-released in 2015 along with a Digital HD copy. But I’m not certain, so don’t blame me. But it was also released by Lions Gate.
DVD
This 2004 Lions Gate DVD is a good release, but it comes as 4SIF(525), which is 704 by 480 pixels. This is not necessarily a problem given that a bit of grain can heighten the experience.
The audio is the same: two English tracks. It comes with English and Spanish subtitles.
Strangely, this release comes with more extras than the later Blu-ray. In addition to all that come with the Blu-ray, it includes:
Introduction (1 minute) by Alan Parker
Voodoo … The Truth (57 minutes): a five-part documentary about Voodoo as a religion. The main take away: these are pretty normal people.
Creating the Look (2 minutes): an old promotion short that includes some of on-set interviews with Parker.
Choreographing a Voodoo Ritual (2 minutes): an old promotion short that focuses on Falco.
Featurette (5 minutes): interview on set with Parker.
If you can play Region B/2 Blu-rays, there is a 4K version that has received excellent reviews for its video and sound quality. It seems to include the same audio tracks as the Blu-ray with the addition of a German track. But apparently the quality is improved.
It has the same extras as on the 2004 DVD release.
Blu-ray image taken from Amazon under Fair Use. Images from film taken from the DVD release under Fair Use.
