“Why should the johns be scared? It’s the hookers that are getting killed.”

Drake’s rating: Mae has fashion sense and a mean right hook

Drake’s review: “High School Honor Student by Day. Hollywood Hooker by Night.” That was the tagline on the poster for Angel, and it caused a bit of a ruckus back in 1984. Pearls were clutched and there were concerned parents groups here and there threatening boycotts. None of it came to much as the film went on to become a big success for a recently post-Roger Corman New World Pictures, and the fairly mild furor over its existence was largely ignored as Angel exited the theaters and soon enough entered the video stores.

Still, Angel did have that tinge of sleaze surrounding it, which is not a big surprise as the film was the work of one Robert Vincent O’Neil, who had only a few years before co-written a trashy exploitation movie called Vice Squad which featured a manic Wings Hauser chewing the scenery as a psychotic pimp named Ramrod. Sharing even a strand of cinematic DNA with that flick was honestly enough to set off warning bells by itself, even without the questionable subject matter.

Somehow, though, Angel turned out to be, if not squeaky clean, then at least considerably less grimy than you might expect.

Of course the subject matter is disturbing as heck, what with a 15-year-old protagonist, having been abandoned by her parents, living the life of a sex worker to earn the money she needs to keep attending a prestigious private school. And the late-movie reveal that she’s been at this for some three years would be enough to make you toss your cookies and throw in the towel if the subject were treated with any degree of realism. Wisely, though, O’Neil doesn’t delve too far into the nighttime activities of Molly (the real name of Angel, played by Donna Wilkes from Jaws 2, who was in her twenties here). In fact, he almost entirely skips right past them, instead showing Molly as she navigates through her days at school, with her nights spent walking down Hollywood Boulevard where street magicians perform for the tourists and a cowboy actor hands out autographs.

It’s a pretty tame view of life on the street, all in all, with the skeeviest people in Molly’s life not coming from the boulevard at all but from her school days as she’s harassed by an older* student who won’t take no for an answer. Drugs, disease and the threat of violent pimps are absent from Molly’s world as she happily hangs out with Mae (Dick Shawn, The Producers), an older drag performer, and a pair of young-but-not-as-young-as-her prostitutes at the local diner, sharing jokes and telling stories. The forced dichotomy between Molly’s worlds is evident and heavy-handed, but O’Neil is making an exploitation flick here, not a moody drama, and he seems to take great delight in playing up the familial elements of Molly’s group of street friends as opposed to the snobby students at the school.

But because O’Neil’s shooting an exploitation flick, he needs to threaten Molly with more than the ridicule of her fellow students, and that’s where the killer comes in. The unnamed, silent, egg-sucking** killer (John Diehl, Joysticks) who first stalks Molly’s friends and then, when Molly herself catches a glimpse of him, sets his sights on her as well.

Molly’s no pushover, though, and she’s no shrinking violet. And she also has a few people on her side, including Mae, Kit Carson (the aforementioned cowboy actor, played by Rory Calhoun, Motel Hell), and a cop named Andrews (Cliff Gorman, All That Jazz). Which is a good thing since the killer is resourceful himself and hard to catch.

It’s probably the protein from all those eggs.

Angel is very much a film of its time. Ten years earlier and it would have been a disturbing sleazefest, made for an audience who would have had a harder time connecting with it. But the latchkey kids who saw this could immediately identify with Molly and her solitary lifestyle, and her self-sufficiency would have struck home with them as well. That familiarity no doubt aided in the success of Angel as it became a solid hit for New World Pictures in the early months of 1984, leading to three sequels that all starred a different Molly.

But we’ll get to those. Anything to avoid reviewing the Vice Squad sequel trilogy.

*And when I say “older,” I mean this dude looks like he’s 30! I though he was supposed to be a teacher at first.

**You have to see it to believe it.

Intermission!

• Part of why the movie works so well is the casting, especially in the supporting roles. Dick Shawn was a comedian and actor known for his outlandish work, including playing Lorenzo St. DuBois (LSD) in Mel Brooks’ The Producers. His one-man shows could be so offbeat that when Shawn suddenly died on stage in 1987, audience members assumed it was just part of his act.
• The apartment manager where Molly lives is played by Susan Tyrrell, who also portrayed some wild characters in her time, such as the deranged Aunt Cheryl in Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker and Sconset Sal in TV’s Wings. She also did voice work for Ralph Bakshi, among others, and was the narrator for his animated film Wizards.
• Producer Sandy Howard produced some exploitation cult classics like The Devil’s Rain and Embryo in his time, but began his career as a director for The Howdy Doody Show because everyone has to start somewhere.
• John Diehl’s egg sucking got him the role of the killer in Angel, and they decided to use the scene in the film. I have no idea if it also won him the role of Detective Zito for his three-year run on Miami Vice.