Angel
By day Molly Stewart is a hard working, high achieving student going to a prestigious private school in LA. By evening she funds this (and her flat) by working as an under-age hooker named Angel on Hollywood Boulevard. A necrophiliac serial killer is haunting the area and killing off girls, Angel and most of her friends need to keep working to support themselves but when Molly finds herself a target she must team up with her friends Kit Carson, an aged ex stuntman working the strip and transvestite hooker Mae in order to stay safe. Concerned detective Lt. Andrews assists in helping find the killer before its too late.
Angel presents a potentially sanitised account of life as a streetwalker. Certainly the fact a 15 year old girl who has been working the streets from the age of 12 is shocking material in itself, there is little actual depiction of Angel picking up the sort of low-lifes that would go for that sort of thing, nor is there much in the way of drugs, filth or degradation, equally it seems implausible that a girl working all night as a hooker could keep up her grades. That said this exploitation picture from New World pictures is still worth a look, because what it lacks in possible social realism it makes up for in entertainment. Its a well crafted and well paced piece of work that does its job well enough and provides solid entertainment. The score is decent and the acting is pretty good as well.
Avenging angel
In this sequel to Angel, Molly stewart is now a law student working hard to pass the bar. When Lt. Andrews is killed Molly decides to take to the streets once more as Angel to find his killer. she teams back up with Kit and her other friends to find the killer and discovers a powerful criminal cartel buying up the property on Hollywood Boulevard in order to gentrify it. Molly and her friends make their way up the food chain to expose murder and police corruption and ultimately avenge Lt Andrews.
This time, Angel is re-crafted as a low budget action flick with plenty of shoot-outs and a high body count. Ossie Davis turns up as a police officer looking to find Lt Andrews killer and the film is actually more entertaining and certainly dafter than the first. Any pretence that this is social realism goes out the window and as a result we get a straight up, thoroughly entertaining slice of exploitation action.
Angel 3: The final chapter
Molly is working in New York as a photographer for genre legend dick miller when she discovers her long missing mum. She heads back to LA where mommy dearest is promptly blown up in a car bomb. Before she dies she reveals that Molly has a sister who has been abducted by a powerful Madam (played by Maude Adams) who is running a white slavery ring from the streets of LA. Molly must become Angel once more and team up with old friends, as well as a detective played by Richard Roundtree in order to bust the slavery ring.
Less an action flick than the last picture, its still great to see that whatever else changes ANGEL is still cracking entertainment from beginning to end. A lot of 'franchise' pictures become somewhat homogenised as the go on but Angel 3 still feels like a straight up exploitation picture as Angel negotiates the seedy underbelly of LA
angel.jpg Angel Collection: Angel & Angel 2 & Angel 3 DVD 1990 Region 1 US Import NTSC: Amazon.co.uk: DVD & Blu-ray
The set goes for between £4-6 on marketplace, is locked to region 1 and is well worth picking up. Great stuff!
