Robert Vincent O'Neil

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.