|
ANGEL (1984)
New genre: juvenileprostitutsploitation I must've been eleven or twelve, staring up in awe, yes awe, at the poster for Angel in the window of K.G. Video. "High school honor student by day..." read the tagline. Ugh, rough start. "...Hollywood hooker by night." Yes. Awesome. This is exactly what I wanted to see. It would not be long before I saw it, crammed into a small space in the basement with my brother and my pseudo-cousin somehow getting away with watching this obviously R-rated movie on one of those free pay TV weekends they used to have. It didn't take much to impress an 11 year old who, now that I think about it, probably hadn't seen an uncut R-rated movie before. The tag line makes it pretty clear; girl probably gets like no sleep at all. Donna Wilkes, looking way sluttier on the poster than she does in this movie, plays Molly (hooker name: Angel), yes she gets great grades, and yes she's 15 and has been hooking since she was 12. This all looks fairly harmless - hey, no big deal - but Angel's hooker life is shaken from its pimp-free idyll when her hooker friends start getting chopped up by a necrophiliac on whom the cops have absolutely no leads. He trains in his dingy, dank apartment with cinder-block weights and half-barrel washtub baths, relentlessly steeling himself into the perfect prostitute-killing machine. I don't really get this guy, the cop lets a few stock theories loose but he's basically a dead-eyed slasher throughout, though he gets a good, uncomfortable scene where he sucks the content out of an egg. Harder still to get are Angel's non-hooker friends, some drag dude (Dick Shawn, who's basically playing my aunt Linda), and an old-timer movie cowboy who tirelessly hands out photos of himself (Rory Calhoun). At least Angel hooks; cowboy and bizarro-Linda just kind of give themselves away for free. There's some good sleazy fun to be had here (two girls'-shower scenes that just made made think, what a wonderful, wonderful place), but Angel is sunk by its heroine, who I just couldn't buy because we never see her do any real hooking. She confirms later on that she's had sex with hundreds of men, and hates it all with squirming desperation, but all we see is her effortlessly spotting vice cops and NOT HOOKING. How much scratch is this chick pulling down from these johns I'm never seeing? For most of this movie she appears to be supremely relaxed and confident at her work. With the sole exception of a scene with a dorky classmate I once found so sad, and now find sooooo funny, this girl can handle anything. She could probably sell real estate to Glengarry's stack of bullshit leads. And yet, she's streetwalker-level hooking, pretty much the most dangerous job in the universe. (for sure, in this movie it has a mortality rate of like 80%) If she honestly liked hooking, or at least the danger of it, I could see her doing this to support herself. But she hates it, and who can blame her? And she's way too self-assured to be doing work she hates, getting no sleep, when she could almost certainly find other ways to pay rent and tuition that leave enough room to get some sleep. This incongruity is mirrored in a scene where bizarro-Linda makes friends with Molly's guidance counsellor, who flatters and pleases him enough for him to bashfully give her his given, male name, which she then uses to address him. It seems sweet, but does it ring true? I mean, I don't see a lot of Marvin in this dude-looks-like-a-lady. I bet only his mom calls him Marvin, and I bet that's something he only puts up with because he loves his mom. I just think it couldn't have hurt to have made the whole approach a little more unflinching, and less idealistic about the heroine - now that's how you do a sleaze classic! But plot ain't its strong suit either; it's Hollywood, it's 1984, and there isn't even a scene where Molly's getting tag-teamed by Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee. And late in the film, the killer shaves his head and stalks our heroine by going along with a throng of about twelve, fifteen hare krishnas. I understand that the cops might not spot him in disguise like this, but didn't any of the hare krishnas ask, "Hey! Who's the n00b?" (c) Brian J. Wright 2009 BACK TO THE A's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE |