Entry 95: Angel (1984)

Angel (1984)

Dir: Robert Vincent O'Neill

"High school honor student by day.  Hollywood hooker by night."

 

For my first entry of 2016, I'm paying a little visit to the down-and-out folks hanging out on Hollywood Boulevard.  Join me now down in the Basement of Sleaze as I spend a little time with Angel.

Abandoned by her mother after the death of her father, teenaged Molly (Donna Wilkes, Jaws 2, Grotesque) leads a double life: by day, she's an honor roll high schooler, but by night she pays tuition and rent by slapping on heavy makeup and a miniskirt and prowls the streets of L.A. as underage prostitute Angel.  After letting us get to know Angel and her surrogate "family:" bitchy drag queen Mae (Dick Shawn, The Producers, Young Warriors), slightly senile, cowboy-attired former western stuntman Kit Carson (Rory Calhoun, Motel Hell, Hell Comes to Frogtown), lesbian artist Solly (Susan Tyrrell, Forbidden Zone, Cry-Baby) and Chaplin-lookalike street performer Yo-Yo (frequent TV actor Steven M. Porter), we get down to the dirty meat of the story: a crazed killer (John Diehl, Joysticks, Stargate) is stalking the Boulevard and begins picking off Angel's ladies of the night "co-workers."  Though promised protection by streetwise cop Cliff Gorman (Night of the Juggler, Ghost Dog), Angel still feels the need to pack some goddamn heat and purchases a hand cannon.  After Diehl slaughters a police station full of cops and murders Mae to get to Angel, our badass practitioner of the oldest profession decides to take the law into her own hands with a little help from her oddball "family," leading to an unexpected but satisfying conclusion.

I fucking love this Corman-backed release; it's prime, grade-A 80s sleaze at its best!  Heavily edited, it was a staple of late-night TV when I was growing up, which is where I first learned of it's existence.  It's an oddball movie; half skid-row slice-of-life, half "action slasher" movie in the vein of 10 to Midnight or Blue Steel.  O'Neill (The Psycho Lover, Blood Mania)'s direction is strictly TV-movie level, but he livens it up with a healthy dose of blood and boobs (the movie DOES have the good taste to keep underage Angel clothed) and some great, on-location footage of seedy, early-80s Hollywood Boulevard (there's a marquee advertising Return of the Jedi!).  The performances are also first-fucking-rate, ranging from the genuinely great (Wilkes as the streetwise but troubled Angel, Shawn as the motherly Mae and, best of all, Calhoun as leathery old shitkicker Kit), to the unhinged (the great Tyrrell brings her usual manic intensity to her smallish landlord role) to the enjoyably kitschy (Gorman's cop sounds and looks like he's from New York, calls black people "nigros," and generally feels like he belongs in a movie at least twenty years older).  Look for John Carpenter regular Peter Jason (They Live, Escape from L.A.) as a skeevy, pedophile "John ("You better be 14 or I'm throwing you back for being too old!")."  Angel was a big hit for New World and spawned two sequels, which brought back Calhoun, Tyrrell and Porter, but had a different actress playing Angel each time.