Peeping With Parker

Angel Heart

directed by Alan Parker

at the USA Charles Cinema

I'M A TRUSTING KIND OF GUY. I was aware of the enormous controversy surrounding Angel Heart, including TriStar Pictures' battle with the ratings board over the film's initial X rating. So, when the ad for Angel Heart asserted that "Everything You've Heard Is True," my voyeuristic impulses got the best of me. I trusted TriStar, and director Alan Parker, to provide an afternoon's worth of titillation and was reassured when the audience, packed with thrill-seekers galore, from middle-aged businessmen to hormone-charged teenagers, looked ready for the same.

Now, unfortunately, I'm a little confused. I'm not sure who to blame for the fiasco that is Angel Heart. Should I sue TriStar for false advertising, or Alan Parker for the waste and abuse of directorial talent? For Angel Heart is not the movie TriStar wants it to be--a sexually charged murder mystery centered around the disrobing of Cosby Show sibling Lisa Bonet. Mr. Parker is shooting for something greater, more profound--an intellectually and sexually charged murder mystery centered around the devil, featuring the disrobing of Ms. Bonet. I've been had.

Ostensibly, Angel Heart deals with hard-boiled detective Harry Angel's (Mickey Rourke) quest for a long missing crooner Johnny Favorite. Favorite has been absent since his return from World War II, where a head wound left his a vegetable and permanently disfigured. Angel is commissioned in this fruitless search by the mysterious Louis Cyphre (Robert DeNiro) who needs proof of Favorite's death in order to collect collateral from a contract he had with the singer.

Angel's search leads him from a mental hospital in upstate New York to an unfriendly Baptist church in Harlem, and, in the film's climactic sequences, to the dank swampland surrounding New Orleans. It is here that Angel discovers the nubile Epiphany Proudfoot (Bonet), as well as the truth about Favorite, Cyphre, and himself.

This all reads like a straightforward detective story and Parker makes the most of the genre. The film's 1955 setting is exquisitely rendered and photographed, and Rourke doles out the requisite number of gumshoe monologues and mannerisms throughout. His brief encounters with a series of Favorite's acquaintances lead to their grisly murders, and he becomes increasingly implicated in their unorthodox deaths. Thus, the tough private eye must disover the truth before he becomes a victim of the circumstances of his own investigation--a la Sam Spade.

The problem with Angel Heart is that it has greater ambitions than merely updating this genre. It wants to combine The Maltese Falcon with the psychological and intellectual thrills of Rosemary's Baby and Don't Look Now. As Angel progresses deeper into his investigation, he is plunged into the world of voodoo worship and animal sacrifice. He witnesses Epiphany engage in a ritual sacrifice of chickens to the Dark Lord, has recurring hallucinations of orgies and encounters a masked, black-clad creature, culminating in the now infamous scene in which gallons of blood fall on him and young Proudfoot while they screw on his motel room bed.

Parker makes damn sure that we know this is no ordinary missing person case: the forces of Evil are at work here. He wants to hit his audience above the neck as well as below the belt. The integration of the occult with the detective story is possible, albeit difficult. However, the task is obviously beyond Parker. Though an extremely talented craftsman, he has consistently found it difficult to muster cinematic subtlety. His previous efforts (Midnight Express, Pink Floyd: The Wall, and Birdy to name three) are virtual textbooks in cinematic exhibitionism, from "sturm und dreck" junior high metaphysics to high school psychoses.

This style can be effective and powerful. In Angel Heart, it is simply ridiculous. The film's momentum is constantly interrupted by sensational images, from jejune religious symbolism to graphic violence and incest, none of which are any more exciting than Angel's plodding investigation.

Parker cannot be held solely responsible for the film's ludicrous content. Credit must also go to William Hjortsberg, whose novel Falling Angel Parker adapted. Surely the author must be held responsible for such linguistic masterworks as Harry Angel, Louis Cyphre (as DeNiro states, "Mephistopheles is a mouthful in Manhattan) and Epiphany Proudfoot as well as the generous amount of scenes set in or around places of worship. One can easily see what attracted Parker to this work. No pulled punches anywhere--it's a veritable primer of platitudes.

Creativity aside, Angel Heart is entertaining in a way. Mickey Rourke gives the best in his series of hard-boiled-ethnic-gumshoe-with-a-heart-of-gold-an d-sort-of-a-racist performances by adding elements of humanity to the character of Angel, giving the film its only sympathetic reference point.

And Lisa Bonet is a remarkable screen presence, though an uninteresting actress, in the underwitten role of Epiphany Proudfoot. However, considering how ruthlessly she is defiled publicly for the enjoyment of the audience, one wonders why she would ever have accepted the role. The film's climax is also surprisingly effective, if only because it gives some meaning to the previous one and a half hours.

Ultimately, however, Angel Heart is a mental and physical cock tease. Hollywood and Alan Parker have once again fallen victim to their appetite for the sensational and the uninteresting. If you're looking for cheap thrills and sexism, this film is the place to go. But to escape the bad, somewhat salty taste it will leave in your mouth, try the hole in the wall of the nearest peepshow. Chances are, if Angel Heart is any indication, Alan Parker might be in line ahead of you.