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Many things contribute to a well-made movie: The script, the direction, the cinematography, the sound, the editing, but if the audience can't accept the actors in their roles then the movie won't work. By accident or design, the casting for Angel was perfect; here we have a set of charismatic actors with unique personalities playing similarly unique characters. Ever watched a movie where you get confused about who is who because you can't tell the actors or their characters apart? That doesn't happen with Angel at all. Let's look at some other movies that each of the starring actors has appeared in and see what each brought to this movie. I'm not going to review these movies, I'm just going to make some comments; there are other sites one can visit for reviews.
Let's start off with someone unexpected! Director and cowriter Robert O'Neil doesn't have an acting role in the movie but he does appear for a few seconds in one of the trailers where he's seen walking along the boulevard beside Donna Wilkes. Directing a story he cowrote is presumably a big reason why the movie works so well, as he knows the material better than any other director would. There are only a few scenes that aren't relevant; what's on the screen is what needs to be there for the story to work. Had someone else directed his story then it may not have worked out so well.
It's clear from watching nothing else but Angel that O'Neil can tell a story, especially if one has seen the TV edit, which closes loose ends that the theatrical cut irritatingly left dangling. I remember watching the TV version in 1984 and recognizing even then that the story was well told, especially that the loose ends were tied up nicely. I was shocked when I finally saw the theatrical cut in 2006 which, for me, is missing the end of the story!
It's interesting to note that O'Neil is more of a writer than a director, as his IMDB credits list more writing credits than directing. So what else has he been involved with? Let's see.
This movie is a fascinating combination of exploitation elements, nods to spy movies of the era, some romance, and some pop psychology. Although it has some rough spots it also has material that elevates it above other movies in the same market. Perhaps that shouldn't be too surprising as the movie was produced, written, and directed by O'Neil, and he did so early in his career. One can assume that with that much responsibility and control he would have been trying hard to succeed, both artistically and financially. The movie's skillful weaving of exploitation staples (to pull in the paying customers, naturally!) with its dramatic storyline (gotta give them a payoff!) shows that he has the skill to do it but there are enough rough spots to show that he was still learning his craft.
The movie is held back by its low budget but this is one of those rare movies that isn't really hurt by this. A greater budget would have allowed for better polish but wouldn't have turned the end product into a blockbuster. Instead, it might have allowed for some exploration of those interesting spy-movie references (why does a psychiatrist have a groovy supermobile complete with radar?) but that would have distracted the audience from the murder plot without any benefit to the story.
The story isn't new; the movie itself points this out by referencing The Manchurian Candidate, but while watching it I was reminded of Old Time Radio. I thought of The Whistler, a show which liked to use overly dramatic plot twists of the sort seen here to punish a protagonist who did evil. However, it is an entertaining story and this movie tells it well, with the exploitation elements of the era adding something new to the telling of it.
This early movie of his shows that O'Neil already has the ability to write a story and then get it on the screen. We'll see that this skill has grown by the time Angel was made, which tells its story with almost no rough spots.
This is a fine little low-budget psycho-thriller that would make a nice double-feature with The Psycho Lover. This movie feels so similar that I was surprised not to see O’Neil credited as the writer. It must be the direction rather than the writing that contributes most to the feel of these two movies.
This one is the better-made of the two. The execution is consistent and leaves an impression of being generally well done from beginning to end. My only nitpick is with the pacing, which feels somewhat slow — this movie could easily have lost 10 minutes — and some of the acting. The pacing is consistent though, the movie has no problem sequences that would put people to sleep.
Like The Psycho Lover the plot isn't anything new and could easily also have been an old time radio episode of The Whistler. There is a slight difference in that normally with that radio show the protagonist is punished by the revelation of his evil deeds, bringing them to an end, whereas in this movie the revelation only drags the protagonist deeper into the spiraling-down desperation of his situation. To reveal anything more would be a spoiler. I think an interesting sequel could be made, or perhaps a remake plus a sequel. There aren't enough plot or characters remaining at the end to fill a feature length slot but that's why writers exist; it would just be a question of maintaining the mood of the first movie.
There's a wide range of acting skill on display here. The best comes from Jacqueline Dalya who clearly shows the most natural talent. She plays a minor role but her performance is a lesson in how to steal scenes by talent alone. Listen to her line delivery: There's not a word or tone out of place. The impression I have is similar to what I felt from Joan Bennett in Suspiria, also a lady loaded with talent in a role late in her career.
There is one sequence that would be replayed in Angel: The doctor finding the corpse in the shower proceeds quite like Angel finding her friend's body. There is a technical difference though: Here the film of the shock scene has not been flipped upside down like it would be in Angel. The sequence plays better in Angel which suggests that O’Neil had learned from this one and fine-tuned it to better effect the second time.
Of O’Neil's movies this one may make the closest comparison with Angel in terms of direction. The story is well-told, with a stable consistency to that telling similar to what Angel would have. It's a multiple-murder thriller. The twist ending with the re-appearance of an unexpected character is similar to Angel's ending. There is a difference in acting talent though: All the stars of Angel had talent, while talent isn't so evenly distributed here. Still this movie is well worth watching. It's an example of an early 70's low-budget thriller that should show up on late-night TV regularly if there were any justice.
Imagine an early 70's James Bond movie filmed in Manila and a lush green Philippines jungle, but made with nowhere near the budget of a Bond movie. That's what this movie feels like; one can see the limited budget but if one can ignore the few wobbly bits then the budget is not a hinderance and one comes away with a positive impression of a fun 70's exploitation movie. There's a cast of low-budget veterans in Ross Hagen, Roberta Collins, and Sid Haig, plus plenty of bikinis and mini-skirts.
This was still early in O’Neil's career, and shows that he's moved forward from The Psycho Lover and Blood Mania, and has put together a more professional movie althought it's not Angel quality. I do have the feeling that there might have been some chaos behind the scenes that resulted in scenes not shot or otherwise leading to editing difficulties because there are a few wobbly bits where one just has to accept sequences that don't fit together smoothly and then move on with the story. If one can do that then watching this movie makes for a good time.
Trivia: Despite the end credits proclaiming that it was filmed entirely in the Philippines, a few of the opening scenes and the epilogue sequence were shot at the Yamashiro Restaurant in Hollywood. Angel had a few scenes filmed there, so that gives it a link with this movie.
The run time printed on the Media Home Entertainment VHS box says 82 minutes but the tape actually runs for 90. What's interesting about that is that there is a natural break in the story at the 82 minute mark where it could cut to credits without losing much of importance, as what follows is an epilogue with a cliffhanger ending. This structure is similar to Angel's TV version with its epilogue ending coming after the theatrical version ends when Angel, Andrews, and Kit walk out of the alley. However, Angel's epilogue closes loose ends while Wonder Women's cliffhanger creates one!
This movie is a change of pace for O’Neil and anyone used to exploitation films. It's a family-friendly movie that children and adults can enjoy which left me with a positive feel-good feeling after watching it. That's even though the DVD I watched (released by Dreamline) had a terrible transfer that was so bright that daylight scenes suffered from white-crush that made the details of the bright areas unviewable.
The horrible transfer was a disappointment because I wanted to check out Andrew Davis's cinematography. He did such a good job with Angel that I really wanted to see how his skill had grown in the seven years between these movies. My impression was that the filming wasn't done as well, suggesting that Davis learned from the experience or from the other movies he was cinematographer on prior to Angel. There aren't any major problems that I could see, it's simply plain that Angel showed more skill.
The budget must have been way smaller than Wonder Women's but the location, rural and urban Bogotá, Colombia makes up for a lot. In fact, despite the American lead actors this doesn't feel like an American movie; all of the Spanish names in the credits suggests that it's mostly a Colombian work. Not all of those names are Colombian though, Panchito Gómez for one, who plays Paco; per the IMDB he was born in New York.
This movie turned into an urban street life movie for a while, and I realized that the "street urchin" character is a recurring theme in O’Neil’s movies. Three movies qualify: The first is Paco, then Angel (but not Avenging Angel), and Jailbait.
The story suffers from the "who are these people" syndrome that can happen when there are too many supporting characters. Reducing the size of the active supporting cast so that the audience recognizes who is on screen makes the first impression much more positive.
I'd like to revisit this movie but via a DVD with a good transfer.
Credited to four writers, including O'Neil, this was supposedly mostly rewritten by director Gary Sherman but there are scenes that feel like they would have been at home in Angel. The structure of the movie is also somewhat similar, at least near the beginning. So it looks like some of O'Neil's material did survive.
This is a darker and far sleazier movie than Angel would be, but also oddly similar. I'd really love to read the drafts of the script to see how it changed as the various writers worked on it. Did O'Neil base any of Angel on material of his that didn't make it into the final version of Vice Squad?
I noted above that the end product seems to be better when a director directs a movie which he was involved in writing. Avenging Angel suggests that that's a simplistic view, that there are other significant factors at work that determine whether or not a movie works well, because the sequel didn't work as well as the original did. Casting certainly played a large part in that, with the new actors not having similar charisma as those they replaced, but the movie doesn't feel like it had the same vision behind it that resulted in Angel so I wonder if there was any studio interference. Perhaps Angel's success led to greater financial expectations and pressure on the producers to duplicate that success?
When I noticed that the story was credited to O'Neil and Donald P. Borchers (one of the producers of Angel) and also co-written by them, I deduced that this had to be an attempt to recreate Angel's success. It seems simple in principle: Take those elements that work, add a few new ones, and wrap them up within a new story. To their credit, this story is not simply a clone of Angel; there are similarities and it is worth watching once to see which elements were kept and which are new but the end result isn't anywhere near as successful. Nevertheless, it's good that this attempt was made. Perhaps this shows just how difficult it is to craft a good movie even when there's a successful template to work from.
This movie may be an example of one that would have been better if O'Neil, as writer, had also directed. Perhaps he himself or the powers that be felt that people would make the obvious connection that this was a second-generation Angel if he did direct. While watching it I felt a strange disconnect between what I was seeing on screen and the story that was being told, which is exactly what I think having O'Neil both write and direct would have avoided.
This felt like a TV movie, making me think of Angel 4 as I watched it. My first thought was that the director must have done lots of TV work, but no, it was the editor who has lots of TV credits; which does make sense. This explains why the movie had a similar feel to Angel 4. However, the material here was richer, and given the richness of Angel that must have been O'Neil's contribution.
The Hollywood Blvd scenes worked well in Angel so it was a welcome sight to see Boulevard locations in Jailbait but the street cinematography wasn't as well done; I didn't have the same sense of reality, the same feeling of being there. So, points given for realizing the location was important but some points taken away for execution.
There was some criticism that Angel glorified life on the streets; Jailbait seemed to respond by including sequences that said street life is bad but those sequences felt out of place. It seemed that whenever such scenes were playing out the movie came to a halt. Perhaps O'Neil couldn't work out how to advance the plot with homeless sequences but recognized a need to answer criticism by including them. In hindsight, it seems that not including such material allowed Angel's story to progress without digression.
Like Avenging Angel this movie is cursed with that silly gunfire that seems endemic to American action movies. The gunfire worked in Angel because the situations seemed like they could happen in real life but in Jailbait it's just another example of the cliché. I can't help but feel that studio marketing had a hand in this; any writer would know this stuff isn't realistic and has been done to death.
The ending will be very familiar to anyone who has seen Angel, for which some points have to be taken away. There's a bit of a twist when one particular character is shot dead, but there's no emotional response from the audience because this character isn't developed at all. However, if the character had been developed then I'd be pointing out that having the cop's sidekick killed just to elicit an emotional response is another cliché.
This wasn't supposed to turn into a mini-review but it seems appropriate given the relationship to Angel. What's irritating is that there is a story in this movie (the writer's job) but the execution of getting it on screen (the director's job) did not work well. With Hollywood in the mood to make lots of remakes, this is one that should be remade. If O'Neil were to direct it then the results should turn out to be interesting.
For more insights and anecdotes about filming Angel read my interview with Robert O'Neil.
Each of the four Angel movies features a different actress as Molly/Angel. Many viewers, this author included, consider Wilkes' performance to be the best. The material in the first movie is richer than the other three and she rose to meet the demands of that material by showing more acting range than what was demanded of any of the other three actresses. Imagine any of them trying to act the role in this movie; never mind that they couldn't play a 15-year old, just imagine the performance. See? It wouldn't work anywhere near as well. Wilkes' performance has a truth to it that the other actresses couldn't give their respective movies. The result is a performance that matches the quality of the material, helps make the movie work, and is enjoyable to watch. Can't beat that combo!
Wilkes was well-suited for this role: Obviously she could play a 15-year old but it's more important that she not be the sort of dominating actress who seizes control or sets the direction of a movie just by being cast in it. That greatly benefits this movie because her performance doesn't overwhelm what any of the other actors are doing, allowing them to have meaty supporting roles that significantly contribute to the movie's feel. It's effectively an ensemble cast but it's Angel's story so Wilkes' is the central role, one that balances the rest of the cast.
Looking at her acting credits, this must have been Wilkes' greatest test of skill as an actress and it resulted in what must be a career high point of a performance. The material was the most interesting, especially its requirement of a greater range of emotion than her other roles. Just watch her face in any number of scenes that don't have dialogue; she has the skill of being able to convey her character's emotional state without words. She might have had difficulty only once: I couldn't read her performance in her wordless sequence in Andrews' car outside Angel's apartment building. Maybe the point of that sequence was to show her emotional confusion as she was beginning to trust Andrews, a portrayal which confused me instead. Acting's not an easy job!
An acting skill that I really became aware of when watching and listening to these movies is that of line delivery. An actor's voice and how he chooses to deliver dialogue has a profound effect on the audience's reaction to the performance. If both the words and delivery are correct for the character then the audience should have no problem suspending disbelief and accepting the character, but if either one is off then the audience becomes aware that the actor is only acting. Wilkes has an interesting voice and delivery style that can sometimes sound a bit breathless. This comes close to calling attention to itself sometimes but when she delivers lines cleanly she does a good job and has a unique vocal style too.
It's a shame that Wilkes only appeared in one other movie and a few TV shows after Angel. I'd love to see what she could have done with other starring roles matched to her skills. Let's look at a few roles prior to Angel to see what sort of basis Wilkes had going into that role, and a couple of roles after Angel to see what she brought to them.
In this thriller Wilkes doesn't have much screen time until the last third. She's playing a supporting role as Klaus Kinski's daughter which becomes more prominent only near the movie's end.
A highlight of the movie is her exotic appearence in the dinner sequence where, thanks to the makeup and dress her character has chosen to wear, she has a totally different look than in the rest of the movie. This, along with her different looks in Angel, suggest that she has a naturally pretty face that is quite neutral, which makeup artists must like to work with because its neutrality allows for the creation of such a wide range of looks.
The handling of this movie's ending is interesting to compare with Angel's. In Angel it will be Kit that dispatches the killer because Angel would lose the vulnerability that holds the audience sympathetic to her, but here Wilkes' character does the deed; although we have no clue if her actions are actually fatal. A philosophical view of this is that her character is allowed to kill to protect her father in this movie, but not to protect herself in Angel.
This sort of low-budget movie is all too easy to make unwatchable but for the most part they get it right. Basically there aren't any boring sequences and the photography is clear and well-lit most of the time.
Wilkes looks comfortable with the role but hasn't yet developed the acting range or skills that she would show just two years later with Angel. In particular her line delivery doesn't yet sound completely professional; at times it's a slightly laconic delivery with a touch of breathlessness to it.
This movie ends with a wacky twist that it would have been better without. All too often it seems that a writer or director comes up with what he thinks is a great idea to shock the audience while ending the movie but either can't see that it doesn't work or doesn't have the strength of will to cut it mercilessly. This movie already came to a satisfactory conclusion, we didn't need the twisty bit.
Possible trivia: It's not clear when Blood Song was shot versus being released. Was it in the can for a year or two? It sort of feels like it in some unknown way.
It's an even bet that whoever cast Angel saw Wilkes in this TV appearance. The pigtail look is here, predating Angel by almost two years.
Wilkes has more screen time in the first episode since her character is the one who sets in motion a major series plot point.
Her line delivery skills have grown, although it sometimes sounds like she's trying to force her lines to have the vocal mannerisms of someone the age of her character but her voice doesn't have the high range to pull it off. Age the schoolgirl character from Father Murphy a few years for Angel and Wilkes doesn't have to force anything at all. For all but a few lines her delivery in Angel would sound natural.
Wilkes has plenty of screen time in this TV appearance and her performance convinced me that she can play a secondary lead role quite well. The breathless quality to her line delivery is back sometimes, but if she can control that then she can deliver dialogue well and do so with quite a unique voice. A good example of this is the scene where Wilkes' character learns of the fate of Benny, her father-figure; her lines here are delivered in a smoothly flowing style that did not sound like any other actress' delivery. She has a unique voice when she wants to use it, especially when a scene has enough lines for her to deliver that she gets some momentum going.
This show was probably shot a year after Angel, with a lot of location shooting (all of it maybe?) in San Francisco. Wilkes' character makes a reference to Bruce Springsteen albums; although we don't see an album cover this might be inspired by the mid-1984 success of Born in the USA. Wilkes already showed range with Angel but proves it again here as she plays her character differently then any of her prior roles, at least of those that this author has seen.
The series wasn't a success, only lasting 13 episodes per the IMDB, but this episode is a reasonably entertaining TV detective thriller that's worth a watch if one enjoys 80's detective shows, particularly if one's in the mood for an 80's TV flashback.
Trivia: Look closely and you'll see that in a few scenes Wilkes wears the same sweater that she did in Angel, the one she's wearing in the above photo. It's probably standard procedure for low-budget movies to cut costs by having the cast members wear their own clothes when possible; in fact, press materials for Angel do mention that authenticity was gained by having extras in the boulevard scenes supply their own wardrobe. It's not too hard to imagine this applying to the actors as well.
More trivia: The Bruce Springsteen albums sequence was shot on Guerrera St north of 22nd St in San Francisco. Identifying the Angel filming locations made me want to find this one too, and thanks to the clues on screen it was easy to spot via Google Maps.
While Wilkes does have lots of screen time in the first third of the movie, much of it is spent in dialogue with Linda Blair or running from the bad guys, neither of which gives her much of an opportunity to show further development in acting skill like she did with her role in Angel. Her dialogue scenes here have a naturalness to the line delivery, like the delivery she used in Angel, so I had expectations of seeing a performance of that caliber but ultimately it was not to be. That's not her fault, she played the part well but it was a supporting role in a movie that didn't give her much to do, and I was looking for more after seeing how well she did with Angel.
The movie is at least an interesting variation of the hidden monster in the family takes revenge plot but the direction and particularly the editing let down the storytelling a few times when there are action sequences. It seems that dialogue is the director and the editor's area of expertise.
My biggest knock against this movie is the many many twists that are thrown at the audience. For the record, I saw the version with the Frankenstein and Wolfman ending as the final twist. There are so many twists that when the movie ended I was so annoyed I didn't really care about the story anymore. I think there is a good story in there but the execution is flawed; if any movie should be remade it's this one.
In Angel Gorman represents the force of good and also hope of a normal life for Angel so he has to play this role pretty straight, unlike some other of his roles. The fact that he pulls off a reasonable Charlton Heston impression in a few scenes where instead of delivering dialogue he acts with a charisma that one could mistake as being wooden, shows talent that one doesn't appreciate until one sees him in other roles where he acts totally hip instead.
Based on his other roles Gorman must have been restraining himself in the role of Lt. Andrews. Although there are a few scenes, such as when he first meets up with Collins, where he shows a bit of playfullness that cracks the veneer of his square cop act of the rest of the movie.
Gorman only has a couple of minutes of screen time but just like Dick Shawn in The Producers he makes the absolute most of it. The character he plays is a nightclub comedian that is totally unlike his role of Andrews in Angel, where based on a few scenes many may think he's a wooden actor. Anyone who thinks that needs to watch All That Jazz; his scenes confirm that he can act wooden but is really anything but.
Once I saw Gorman's performance in this movie it was clear to me that he was playing Andrews with restraint, a performance deliberately toned down to be slightly square but there are a few moments when some playfulness escapes into the character. It was those moments that made me think there was more to his acting ability than he showed in Angel, so I was glad when this movie proved it.
Gorman's a good guy in Angel but here he's on the opposite side of the law playing a creepy kidnapper who has mistakenly kidnapped the wrong person. He has range; this character's not like Andrews or his comedian from All that Jazz. Gorman gets to let loose with all sorts of creepiness that should freak anyone out. This is a great counterpoint to his role as Andrews.
This movie features plenty of New York locations from the late 1970's with lots of car and foot chases on the streets. It's worth a watch for the story, characters, and locations.
Apparently he was in his best element and best able to be appreciated by the audience when doing standup comedy. Has much, if any, of Shawn's material been captured on film? If not then that's a terrible loss. Based on what we see of his comedy when he's soloing in his movie roles, especially in his early roles, he can be funny in an incredibly unique way. If his movie appearances had been limited to the early roles for which he's best know, The Producers and It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, it would have been enough to secure Shawn's place in movie history. However, that would have deprived us of the treat of watching his performance in Angel; not as comedic as other roles but still memorable.
Shawn's character, Mae, is used partly as comedy relief but it's a sign of quality that she's not comedy relief because of what she is but because she's the comedian of the group. Shawn's portrayal of Mae as a real person helps keep the entire movie real. The movie wouln't have anywhere near the believability it does if this character had been played as a stereotype.
Angel was my first exposure to Shawn's work. After I'd seen his performances in the above two films I noticed that he seemed to exude happiness in both those movies, yet in Angel he has an aura of bitterness. Was this possibly something from his personal life leaking into the character or did he add this bitterness to a character who could have had a bitter streak in real-life?
Shawn delivers a manic performance as one of the all-star cast searching for the hidden loot. Watch his intensity in each scene.
He plays a lead role in this movie but from what I've seen he's not really a lead actor that can carry a movie on his own; Shawn's unbeatable when he's soloing as a comedian, such as his scenes in The Producers, otherwise he needs other leads to act against for best effect.
Dick Shawn owns the scenes he's in, which are standup comedy pieces where he's soloing. It's too bad his character's part couldn't be expanded in the play within the film to give him more screen time.
As Angel's punkish landlady Tyrrell only appears in scenes set in Angel's apartment building but with what little screen time she has she still succeeds in leaving a strong impression. Watch her playing Cribbage with Dick Shawn to see her go from the sly gentle pussycat to angry tiger, immediately followed by an argument with Elaine Giftos which reverses that by taking her from outrage to quiet defeat; and then there's the final scene with Dick Shawn. All that is what acting's all about.
Like all of the other actors in Angel she plays her character realistically; her character could really exist in real life.
Plot summaries may suggest that this is a movie about boxing, but boxing has nothing to do with the point of the story; like the killer in Angel, boxing is a McGuffin that moves the story along but otherwise doesn't matter. So if you're not a boxing fan then don't worry about it. Instead, this is a brilliantly told downbeat story about the loneliness of regular people living out their lives and obliviously going nowhere. Hopes and dreams rarely come to fruition in real life, so why should they in this movie? The characters are working class but the lessons apply to everyone; there's truth in this movie, a depressing truth but truth it is. Depending upon one's attitude one'll come out of this movie either slightly despondent or inspired to do something with one's life.
I was so caught up in the story that the end credits took me by surprise when they showed up but I immediately knew they came at the right time. I realized I'd just seen the climax of the story but it had taken a few seconds for me to catch up and understand half of what I'd just seen, further understanding came later after digesting the ending a few more times. What follows is my interpretation of that ending. It's a major spoiler for the point of the story so you'll have to highlight the text if you want to read it, but rather than reading it go and watch the movie instead and discover its meaning yourself.
The story is over when Stacy Keach's character, Tully, has an epiphany that shows him just where he is in the cycle of life. It's presented as a couple of freeze-frame scenes where he witnesses that time has passed by a group of older people playing cards just as time is passing by a group of younger people playing cards; his self awareness is that he's in neither group, he's in a limbo between young and old (remember, he's not yet 30) and he's alone. Just then the young boxer, who he's drinking coffee with, says he has to leave, a prospect of loneliness which frightens Tully for a moment so he asks him to stay and talk. They don't talk and as the camera pulls back their placement on-screen is the same as the two tables of old and young card players, which suggests what Tully's fate will be. But director John Huston doesn't stop there. In this long final scene there are a few moments where nothing on screen moves; it's not freeze-frame, Huston's being more subtle than that, but it's the same effect: Instead of time passing Tully by, Huston is now pointing out that time is passing the audience by. Incredibly subtle storytelling. One should now sit back for a while and ponder the truths in this story.
The realism in this movie strikes the same chord in me that Angel does, but in a more pure way. The characters in Angel could be real people, and Hollywood Blvd itself is real, but they don't feel quite as real as the people in Fat City do amidst their run down reality of Stockton, California. Every major city has a skid row, thus the reality of Fat City should be easier to perceive by everyone that sees it, helping the bleakness of the story make its point.
Telling a story about mundane everyday life runs the risk of boring the audience, so the characters have to make up the entertainment balance. It helps a great deal that these characters are likeable and real so their interaction keeps the audience's attention, especially Tyrrell's character. Again she's playing an outrageous whacko but it's a totally different performance than the other movies where she plays an outrageous whacko. Tyrrell has the gift of being able to be a new character for each of her roles. Here she also does something different with her style of line delivery which distances her character further from other roles she's played.
Again Tyrrell shows off her acting talent by playing a totally different character than she does in other movies while still being completely outrageous.
What can I say? This is a wonderfully insane movie that maintains the quality of its insanity for the entire length of the film, and that's not an easy thing to do. This is a masterpiece. Each time I watch it my sense of wonder comes away satisfied. If you're looking for a fun movie that is something totally different (seriously!) then watch this. Highly recommended.
Low budget creepy horror, but good creepy horror. Once more a totally different character for Tyrrell to play; this movie must be watched for her performance as the totally bonkers aunt. The horror and creepiness becomes really intense when the script calls for her to let loose.
Earns lots of points for being one of the original Video Nasties, surprisingly still unavailable in the UK. Loses points for its overuse of the cliché where the supposedly dead killer hasn't quite been finished off yet and comes back for more.
I'm guessing that due to the loss of the talents of Donna Wilkes, Cliff Gorman, and Dick Shawn, the powers that be had to give more prominence to Tyrrell and Rory Calhoun in order to have a sense of character continuity in this sequel. That's not a bad thing but the replacements for those three don't have the same charisma and so the sequel's lost the balance of character that helped make Angel special. In that movie we didn't see anything of Tyrrell's character outside of her apartment building so without any prior experience it feels strange seeing her take part in the action in this movie.
From watching her performance one gets the impression that Tyrrell was happy making this sequel, although I prefer her performance as Solly from the first movie where it wasn't overshadowed by the cartoon feeling that this sequel has.
Calhoun plays the most light-hearted of the movie's main characters. Intended or not, he pays a humerous but tragic tribute to his early career as a Western actor by playing a washed up former cowboy star who has nothing going for him anymore but life on the street. Although a curious sequence involving the lawyer who is "exectutor to [his] estate" suggests he may not have a financial need to be on the streets at all, but rather that he wants to be there because that's where he's most alive. This could have been an interesting subplot although it certainly would have distracted from Angel's own story.
I imagine that it's a bit of a casting coup to get someone of Calhoun's acting experience to play what many might interpret as an autobiographical performance. Not having seen enough of his performances I don't know how over the top he played this role compared to his Westerns. His credits list at the IMDB shows that he didn't seem to have a shortage of work, so he was never a washed up ex-cowboy actor like Kit.
This is one of those ecological horror movies that were common in the 70's that dealt with animals or insects that threaten civilization. In this case it was rabbits. The movie is also an echo of those 50's science fiction movies featuring giant animals or insects that threaten civilization. Here the rabbits of the story have mutated into giant killer rabbits.
Calhoun plays the sympathetic farmer on whose land the rabbits are breeding. The giant rabbits get a bit silly but there are good ecological lessons to be learnt from this movie.
This is a fun black comedy. Calhoun plays the proprietor of a small roadside motel that serves his "Farmer Vincent's Fritters" which are made from a smoked meat that he also distributes locally. What is the secret ingredient and how is it fattened up? Watch the movie and see!
Calhoun seems to be having a great time playing Farmer Vincent. This is clearly a subtle parody of movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and was made in 1980 before there were lots of 80's horror movies to parody. It doesn't go over the top into outright parody but is a good horror movie in its own right.
Calhoun plays the same Kit Carson character again but, like with Tyrrell's Solly, the cartoon aspects of this sequal and the action's now taking place away from Hollywood Blvd feel strange based on our associating him with the Boulevard in the first movie.
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