The first time I watched Alan Parker’s satanic film Angel Heart would have been on video cassette in the basement of my father’s home. We had a Saturday night ritual when I would visit him of watching movies, often just the two of us. Angel Heart, as you’d likely guess if you’re familiar with the film, made for a little bit of uncomfortable viewing when the then-controversial and still intense today sex scene between Lisa Bonet’s Epiphany Proudfoot and Mickey Rourke’s Harold Angel occurs. If that moment, a blood soaked vision of writhing bodies, was all that Angel Heart had going for it, I’m not sure if we’d still be talking about it today. However, 37 years after its release, the film holds up as a film noir cum horror film with one of cinema’s great portrayals of Satan.
Based on William Hjortsberg’s 1978 novel Falling Angel, Angel Heart finds New York City detective Harold Angel hired by businessman Louis Cyphere (Robert DeNiro) to track down a missing crooner named Johnny Favorite. Cyphere had given Favorite help early in his career and is looking to collect on a debt, but Johnny’s gone missing. Angel’s investigation takes him from Harlem all the way to New Orleans and the world of voodoo, as he discovers Favorite’s involvement in the occult. Along the way, bodies start piling up and Angel looks like the main suspect.
There are so many reasons that Angel Heart has become a classic. Alan Parker directs it with a slow burn style, interweaving memory and motif as we come closer to discovering Johnny Favorite’s whereabouts. Parker also wrote the screenplay and made the decision to relocate the film’s second half from the book’s New York setting to New Orleans, making Rourke’s cool and confident NYC private dick a fish out of water surrounded by oppressive heat and religion (not to mention all those damn chickens). The soundtrack by Trevor Jones is understated yet seemingly everpresent, setting the mood for scenes but never overwhelming them.
And then there are the performances. In the 1980s Mickey Rourke was everything one would want in an actor – leading man looks matched with talent. He gives Harold Angel depth and swagger to start with, and then delivers the vulnerability and anguish required when his case and his life spirals out of his control. Lisa Bonet, who was 18 years old at the time of filming Angel Heart, holds her own in her scenes with Rourke. Her voodoo priestess Epiphany Proudfoot is strong and seductive.
Which brings us to Robert DeNiro as Louis Cyphere, Harold Angel’s benefactor and the man Johnny Favorite tried rip off. As we discover by the end of the film, if not sooner if you’re paying attention, Louis Cyphere is actually Lucifer (“‘Mephistopheles’ is SUCH a mouthful in Manhattan,” Cyphere tells Angel), and he’s come to collect Favorite’s soul. DeNiro’s devil is elegant, smooth, well-dressed, and professional. He’s a businessman and doesn’t like accounts that are out of order. Parker often gives us shots of Cyphere’s well-manicured, long fingernails throughout the film, not to mention the pentagram ring he wears as well. All signs to who he actually is are given as we watch Angel Heart, but the final revelation of both Cyphere and Angel’s identities still hit their mark when the movie concludes.
Unlike his acting equal Al Pacino, who would give the devil his due himself ten years after Angel Heart in 1997’s The Devil’s Advocate, DeNiro is never over the top in Angel Heart. He doesn’t have a lot of lines or scenes in the film, but his character looms over the entire film and DeNiro makes his moments memorable. His is inarguably one of the greatest portrayals of Satan committed to celluloid.
While Angel Heart is a classic, for those who hunger for more Harold Angel and Louis Cyphere, it’s worth picking up William Hjortsberg’s original 1978 novel and its sequel, Angel’s Inferno, published posthumously in 2020.
