“Don’t mix the mooshu pork with the sweet and sour.”

Drake’s rating: I don’t think “final” means what they think it means

Drake’s review: Three years after Avenging Angel staggered through disappointing returns at the box office, New World Pictures went to bat with the saga of Molly one more time. Was this a good idea? Eh, probably not, since Angel itself had pretty much resolved the story of Molly and the sequel was already grasping at straws to get her back onto the streets and into tube tops and mini-skirts. But someone at New World must have been insistent that the franchise needed some type of resolution, and so in 1988 Angel 3: The Final Chapter limped into the theaters in an attempt to wrap up the whole story as a trilogy.

Which it kind of does, even though there is an Angel 4: Undercover awaiting us five more years down the road. But that’s a story for another review.

So after the events of Avenging Angel, it would be easy to imagine Molly as a successful lawyer, living somewhere in Southern California and only rarely getting into gunfights since all of her enemies from the first two films are conveniently dead. But writer and director Tom DeSimone had other ideas in mind for our heroine, which consisted of Molly now being a part-time photographer in New York City. You know, just like Peter Parker! Except Molly doesn’t have spider powers, but she does have a pretty upscale apartment, which probably beats living with Aunt May.

By the way, Molly only works part-time so that she can focus on writing her book, which is mentioned in passing once or twice and then completely forgotten about.

But Molly’s photography skills become crucial to the plot when she takes pictures of the police raiding a gambling boat that’s not out in the open sea, where it could conceivably be beyond the borders and jurisdiction of the local law enforcement, but is instead docked at a local pier.

I’m beginning to suspect that there wasn’t much thought put into this movie.

Still, Molly snaps some pics and then goes off to her room to develop them and is shocked to find a familiar face in the crowd. It seems that Molly’s mother is still alive and well all these years after leaving the girl to fend for herself on the mean streets of Los Angeles!

Which is exactly where her mother ends up going back to in any event, since she lives in L.A. and has a pricey art gallery. Wow, way to go, mom. Deserting your daughter really worked out for you after all.

So Molly goes back to the City of Angels, grabs a baseball bat, and gives dear old mom the long-delayed Mother’s Day greeting that she really deserves.

I wish.

While that might have happened in a better movie, in Angel 3: The Final Chapter, Molly goes back to Los Angeles, confronts her mother in her fancy-pants art gallery, and gets absolutely no apologies for her shattered childhood. Her mother in fact seems indignant that Molly is angry over being deserted as a child and lets her know that the guy she ran off with left her as well.

Yeah, no, mom. That’s not how this works.

Fortunately, we have little time to be infuriated by Molly’s mom since she’s blown up by a car bomb just a scene later. Which might have ended this flick pretty quickly if mom hadn’t let slip a key bit of info during her brief meeting with Molly. Which was, congratulations, you have a sister!

Which means that the Worst Mother of the Year winner for the last decade-plus not only deserted her daughter to run off with a guy, she also figured, “Hey, I miss being a mom so much I should just have another kid! Surely I’ve learned from my mistakes!”

I swear, car bombing was too good for this woman.

With that knowledge in hand, Molly inexplicably poses as Angel again to go look for her sister, who has been missing thanks to mom’s sex club gangster friends. That leads to tight dresses and high heels, big hair, more shootouts, and a chase scene with an ice cream truck. In other words, just a typical afternoon playing Grand Theft Auto V.

Angel 3: The Final Chapter isn’t actually a bad movie. DeSimone keeps a fairly steady hand on the proceedings, and it has a much more even tone than Avenging Angel. But with that said, this movie has more problems than the first sequel since the timeline just gets thrown out the window. For example, Molly says that her mother deserted her 14 years ago, which would be 1974. That means the first flick would have taken place in 1977 and the sequel in 1980, and I’m just not buying that. I was around for all of those years,* and none of them looked like the 1984 that Angel actually took place in.

Things get worse when we finally see Molly’s sister, since she should be around 13 or so but is obviously at least 18 or 19. Granted, I’m probably asking too much of the Angelverse, but it would be nice if at least minimal attention was being paid to the already shaky chronology.

Angel 3: The Final Chapter honestly feels more like an extended episode of the 1990’s USA Network TV show Silk Stalkings than an Angel movie, especially due to the casting of series star Mitzi Kapture as Molly this time around. It’s a lot of glitter mixed with superficial sleaze, and while Kapture does a nice job stepping into the Molly role, the premise just kind of falters early on and the movie lacks the momentum it should have had. Molly finding her long-lost mother is a great idea on paper, but in execution it falls flat, thanks especially to mom herself being an unforgivable piece of human trash.

On its own, Angel 3: The Final Chapter isn’t too bad, and it might have worked as a standalone movie, but as the supposed final entry in the saga of Molly it’s unfortunately very forgettable.

It’s also lying to all of us, just like the Friday the 13th movie series did in 1984, because it’s not the final chapter. We’ve got one more Angel flick to go, and the outlook is not good.

*I’m not old! You’re old!

Intermission!

• Molly’s got a Nikon. Being a part-time photographer must be a lucrative gig!
• Getting away from the gambling bust in a speedboat. The cops didn’t bring any boats of their own, even though they’re busting a floating casino.
• Maud Adams? So *this* is where Bond girl careers go to die.
• Dick Miller sighting! Corman may be gone from New World, but his legacy lives on.
• Mom thought Solly would take care of Molly? *Solly?* This woman is deranged.
• Tony Basil is also in this. It’s almost worth watching just for the cameos.
• Molly claims she’s 5’5″. With her big hair, it’s more like 6′ even.
• Tailing the bad guys in an ice cream truck. Eh, it *is* L.A. Maybe no one will notice.
• Molly gets involved with the world’s tamest X-rated film trying to get more info.
• Ice cream truck to the rescue!
• Oh, right, we left one of the baddies in the freezer. Whoops!