Much like my culinary appetite, I
find my appetite for stories sizable, but more noteworthy, to be heavily
influenced by seasonal hallmarks. Just
as the 10th month of the year brings an insatiable taste for
anything with a particular orange gourd as an ingredient, so to does October fortify
my craving for creepy, sinister, and macabre tales. Naturally, it culminates on
the 31st, before turning to the heartwarming, playful, and jolly stories
that draw my fancy through the remaining holidays of the year.
With Halloween just days away, many
dark, enticing tales cross my mind, but one that emerges as not only scary, but
interesting to ponder is the film Angel Heart (1987). * Though I’ve seen
it multiple times, and years ago, it still stands as a complex story with
themes and details worth revisiting and contemplating from time to time.
It stars a barely recognizable
Mickey Rourke, to those familiar with the actor today, alongside Robert De Niro
and Lisa Bonet. Rourke portrays Harry Angel. On the surface he’s an easily
identifiable, hardboiled private detective – struggling to pay his bills,
chasing beautiful women, and bedding a few in order to pursue his latest
investigation. But that’s only where the
character begins. The missing person case that falls into Angel’s lap takes
him, and us, on a dangerous path of secrets, corruption, and murder. Besides
putting Angel’s own life in jeopardy, the story leads to darker territory
including voodoo, deathly fortune telling, and devil worship.
This alone is enough to distinguish
the story from a Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe case, and to push this film into
the October-appropriate realm of Horror, but this is only the surface appeal of
the film. Angel Heart goes further, and doubles the detective’s investigation,
with all its peril, as also a voyage of self-discovery. As Harry Angel must go to dark and sinister
places, so to must he uncover dark and sinister truths about himself.
This elevates the story from
entertaining to contemplative, and is the reason this film can not only give
you a welcome Halloween chill, but also leave those of you who love a good
story as much as I do, ruminating on its themes and psychological consequences
for years to come - revisiting this meaty morsel whenever your appetite for the
menacing and direful surfaces.
* Note this film was based on William Hjortsberg’s novel Falling Angel (1978). My familiarity lies
with the film and my discussion is limited to it, though I’m sure the novel
shares most of the film’s admirable qualities, as well as possesses many of its
own. Perhaps appropriate for a future post...
