Angel Heart. Alan Parker, Director. 1987.

Angel Heart. Alan Parker, Director. 2001. DVD: widescreen. 

Angel Heart. Alan Parker, Director. 2004. Special Edition DVD: widescreen. Features director commentary and features on Voodoo.

Voodoo, or Voudoun, always gets a bad rap. 

The word is often used to denote a lack of understanding, as in the terms Voodoo economics or Voodoo science, and it's been used countless times in horror movies—sometimes simply in the title—to catch the eye, or other times as a device to depict graphic witchcraft involving manipulative spellcraft and murder. Movies that show Voodoo in a more realistic light require extra careful attention from the viewer. 

After all, EVIL, realistically, is omnipresent in the world, and one must be careful not to be distracted by the craft and rituals of Voodoo so that one misses the evil that hides in the most common of places. In 1987, the spectacle surrounding Alan Parker’s  Angel Heart involved the combination of Voodoo and actress Lisa Bonet, specifically Lisa Bonet’s role as a mambo (Voodoo priestess) who has a naked sex scene with Mickey Rourke. No one seemed to mind that Rourke’s naked bum would grace the big screen; what mattered was that an actress from the then-popular and wholesome Cosby Show was going to, in the minds of audiences, lose her innocence. In the light of such spectacle, viewers either simply got a peepshow and reinforcement of their stereotypes about Voodoo, or they were held spellbound by what they witnessed. Or both. 

Viewers also got an occultist’s eye view of the only American city that could help lend a suspension of disbelief to such a story. Short of Africa and Haiti, the great city of New Orleans (my home, by the way) is the most well-known pop culture setting for tales of Voodoo. The Special Edition DVD acknowledges this, as it includes an in-depth feature on the religion, including interviews with two mambos (female Voodoo priestesses) and a few practitioners as well. In addition, viewers are treated to clips of a few ritual loa (the gods, or spirits of Voodoo) dances in New Orleans' Congo Square, historically one of the few public meeting places allowed for blacks in the area. These features help set the record straight, that Voodoo is primarily benign and used for healing purposes, the death of animals being required for only dire circumstances where the animal can embody and take away harm or become imbued with blessing. Parker even hired local Creoles to play bit parts, which helped flesh out the cast: Rourke as the hardboiled gumshoe, complete with personal idiosyncrasies; De Niro as the enigmatic Louis Cyphre; and Lisa Bonet (despite the gossip), as Epiphany Proudfoot, a child of nature, a sexually liberated innocent.  

Though Voodoo was also practiced by blacks and immigrants in New York (where the film begins), Parker’s using New Orleans as its main setting imbues Angel Heart with a southern gothic feel. Among moss-draped haunted southern mansions and above-the-ground cemeteries, the gothic and its monsters rule the area. The supernatural is as rich an element as the land’s dark soil. Its climate provides an excellent environment for Harry Angel to discover the truth of his past. As his unconscious visions and flashbacks break to the surface, the dampness and rain, both indicative of South Louisiana, increase. The sultry atmosphere of the French Quarter where Angel takes up residence in a cheap hotel is the perfect setting for his tryst with Epiphany. Where else could we believe that a girl with a Catholic name would be a Voodoo mambo?  

And where else could Angel meet with Cyphre—the devil in disguise—in a church during mass?

Only in New Orleans could the occult hold such sway that even the devil can sit placidly in a consecrated church. New Orleans’ own mysterious milieu underscores the mystery behind Angel’s case. We never find out specifically how Favorite used Angel to hide from Lucifer.¹ We never know who Angel really is. Is he an amnesiac Harry Angel or Favorite himself? We only know Angel is damned as a result of the ritual. In a scene between Angel and Ethan Krusemark, Krusemark offers to let Angel try some of the gumbo brewing in a huge pot, a metaphor for the mix of the occult that can exist in America only in New Orleans. It is the only place where such magic could truly come to fruition. In the movie’s final scene, Angel returns to his hotel to find his newest fear realized, that Cyphre has killed Epiphany, and the rain drenches the French Quarter in a torrent. The soundtrack ends with the whispers “Johnny.  Harry.” The sultry heat of New Orleans that Parker makes so obvious in sweat and limp suits is no match for the burning to come.

Parker also wrote the script, based on the novel Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg. The book is simply another decent noir mystery, a somewhat fast and entertaining read. Parker takes a cue from Hjortsberg and creates his movie as a film noir, not a horror movie. The film noir atmosphere gives the movie a gothic feel: old style metal fans turn lazily, and a deep blood red color accents scenes dealing with death. All is dark and shadowy, and Trevor Jones’ eerie soundtrack, sprinkled with the odd whisper of “Johnny,” helps to hold the viewer in a thrall. Every character’s line is pregnant with clues. Visual details are also important, but like the spoken details, they are underplayed. 

Each viewing of Angel Heart brings out fresh discoveries. Indeed, this is a movie worth owning on DVD. Hjortsberg’s novel is set in 1959, but Parker takes his movie back to 1955. He notes in the director’s commentary that 1959 would make audiences think of the 1960's, of change, of the future. Setting the film in 1955 makes us look back, back to WWII, back to horror’s past, populated with the dark/gothic and the truly mysterious/unexplainable—the two elements that make a horror movie truly unforgettable. 

¹For those of you who have yet to see this brilliant film, here is a brief plot summary: Harry Angel, a small time detective in New York, is hired by Louis Cypher (Angel will later comment on the dime store nature of his client’s derivative of Lucifer) to locate a WWII era crooner, Johnny Liebling (alias Johnny Favorite). Hjortsberg’s novel is set entirely in the north, but Parker moves his movie down to the New Orleans area as Angel looks for clues, as The Big Easy enhances the gothic feel of the movie. Horror and the supernatural come in to play as those closest to Favorite keep turning up dead shortly after being interviewed by Angel, victims of violent murders that turn Angel’s stomach. Angel begins suffering from flashbacks, and these become more gruesome as he discovers the details of Liebling/Favorite’s life. The 2004 release contains more flashbacks of rituals pertinent to the solution to Favorite’s mystery, including Voodoo rituals. Along with the string of murders, Angel follows clues (such as upside-down pentagram jewelry), and a figure draped in black, and soon finds himself pursued sexually by Epiphany—now revealed as the illegitimate child of Favorite and a mambo. Angel’s clues also lead him to Favorite’s former southern-debutante girlfriend and her father, Margaret and Ethan Kruesmark. Ethan and Louis Cyphre reveal the solution of the mystery, and close attention to their dialogue is what dispels the Voodoo spectacle: Having raised the devil himself to offer him his soul in return for fame, a typically European and Faustian bargain, Favorite tried using a manuscript in Latin and Greek to try to undo his contract, or hide from Lucifer.