Night Angel (1990) Fries Distribution Company/Horror RT: 91 minutes Unrated (strong sexual content and full frontal nudity, graphic violence and gore, language) Director: Dominique Othenin-Girard Screenplay: Joe Augustyn and Jeff Geoffray Music: Cory Lerios Cinematography: David Lewis Release date: September 7, 1990 (Philadelphia, PA) Cast: Isa Andersen, Linden Ashby, Debra Feuer, Helen Martin, Karen Black, Doug Jones, Gary Hudson, Sam Hennings, Tedra Gabriel, Ben Ryan Ganger, B.J. Turner, Twink Caplan, Phil Fondacaro, Susie Sparks, Roscoe Lee Browne (narrator). Box Office: N/A
Rating: *** ½
I spent my fair share of time sitting in Sunday school as a kid and teen (no choice in the matter) and not once do I remember any of the teachers mentioning Adam had a first wife. Apparently, it’s more of a Jewish thing. Okay, fine. Here’s a quick religious lesson for the goyum. Her name was Lilith and it just didn’t work out between them. She left Adam and the comfort of the Garden of Eden to hang out with demons. God made Eve and she became Adam’s second wife, the one who yielded to temptation and got them both kicked out of Paradise. The First Man sure knew how to pick them, didn’t he?
According to the erotic horror movie Night Angel, Lilith’s decision cost her dearly. She’s now a succubus, irresistible to men, who every now and then returns to life to seduce and kill. We see this happen in the movie’s opening while a narrator, distinguished actor Roscoe Lee Browne (The Cowboys), lays it all out for us:
“From the dawn of history, she has plagued mankind. Many a mother has wept for a baby found dead in its cradle. Many a man has spurned true love for an eternity in her hell. The Babylonians built statues to honor her. The Jews carved amulets for protection from her evil. By many names is she known, from Kali in India, to Pele in Hawaii. She was created from dust when Adam was created, but no restful peace in dust will she find. She is Lilith: the temptress, seducer and destroyer, harlot of demons and enemy of love. And she shall stalk us forever, walking in the shadows, sowing the seeds of discontent, reaping a harvest of souls for her caller of hell.”
It’s a cool start to a really bonkers fright flick.
Okay, we know Lilith (Andersen, Real Men) has come back to plague humanity, men in particular but she’s open-minded so anything goes really. This time, she has her sights set on a fashion magazine called Siren. She wants to be on the cover. She goes right to the top guy, editor-in-chief Crenshaw (Hennings, Indecent Behavior III). Talk about aggressive, Lilith appears in his bedroom and starts f***ing his brains out while his wife (Gabriel) sleeps next to him. When wifey wakes up, Lilith effortlessly slashes her throat with her fingernails (pointed and painted black, of course) and keeps going. She also kills the couple’s young son (Ganger, Flowers in the Attic) whose only crime was walking in on them. She finishes by finishing off Crenshaw in more ways than one.
Now you would think with the boss dead, murdered, the big party planned for the next night would be cancelled. NOPE! The new boss, second-in-command Rita (Black, Airport ’75), says the show must go on because that’s what Crenshaw would want. Take a wild guess who shows up at the party (uninvited, of course). That’s right, Lilith herself. Needless to say, she turns a lot of heads when she walks in. Dorky magazine employee Ken (Jones, Hellboy 1 & 2) wants her bad enough that he takes to the disco floor and does what can only be described as a spastic mating dance. That’s when ladies man Rod (Hudson, Road House) swoops in for the kill. Guess who Lilith goes home with? Hint, it’s the same guy who ends up dead just moments later.
The only one not smitten with Lilith is the art director Craig (Ashby, Mortal Kombat). He’s actually been having nightmares about her and her bloody handiwork. Also, he’s more interested in Kirstie (Feuer, To Live and Die in L.A.), a jewelry designer and Rita’s little sister. They meet at the party and start a relationship while Lilith proceeds to take over Siren, turning the entire staff into horny, sex-crazed, Lilith-worshipping minions. The scene where she seduces Rita is laced with sexy talk like “I want to serve you like a slave to help you use the power that I see in your eyes, eyes that I’ve seen many times before, the eyes of Herod and Attila.” They’re the very words every partner longs to hear.
No religious-themed horror movie is complete without a religious nutjob. In Night Angel, that honor belongs to Sadie. She’s played by Helen Martin who you might remember as busybody neighbor Pearl on the sitcom 227 or “Weeping Wanda” on Good Times. Obviously, she’s the one will help Craig conquer Lilith. She’s an expert on the subject due to a previous encounter with the evil temptress. She senses her return and immediately sets out (in an old used taxi cab) to find Craig and render aid. She carries with her a dagger that will kill the demon and send her back to hell from whence she came.
So what exactly is Lilith’s end game? To tell you the truth, I’m not sure. I think she wants to get her face on that magazine so she can turn the whole world into sex-mad zombies or some such nonsense. People will be captivated and lured in by her beauty. Let me ask you this. Does it even matter?
Directed by Dominique Othenin-Girard (Halloween 5), Night Angel was actually filmed in 1988 which explains why it’s awash in 80s fashions and hair. I’m proud to say I saw it at the cinema (the old Barclay Square Theater) on opening night. I was psyched to see it because of my deep appreciation for low-budget B-movies from non-major studios. By 1990, they were a dying breed in cinemas. They weren’t drawing in the audiences they used to in the 70s and 80s. It didn’t help that smaller theaters (singles and twins) were shutting down en masse to make way for bigger multiplexes. The major theater chains don’t like to waste valuable screen space on niche films like this. Geez, you’d think with up to 24 screens, they could spare one for grindhouse fare.
I forgot how wild Night Angel is until I rewatched it on YouTube this past Saturday night. To my great surprise, it was the uncut version with all of gore and more explicit content restored. I would have liked to see more violence and gore (only seven kills), but Girard makes up for it in other ways. Take the scene where Craig is looking at photographic proofs of Lilith when the pic comes to life and beckons him into a nightmare-like orgy. Later, he goes to a bar to meet up with Kirstie only to be pulled into a version of hell that includes a woman whose boobs are actually living heads (?!). It’s stuff like this that makes me wonder why they don’t make them like this anymore.
I don’t know the precise budget of Night Angel, but it isn’t a lot. Even so, the effects look great. They’re the work of a few artists. Steve Johnson made a few contributions before leaving to start work on The Abyss. Most of the FX were done by an outfit called the KNB EFX Group. It consists of Robert Kurtzman, Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger (hence the name KNB). They met while working on Evil Dead 2 (1987) and went on to do the effects for Intruder (1989), A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 (1989), Halloween 5 (1989), Dr. Giggles (1992) and Army of Darkness (1993). They’re right up there with Savini and Baker. Incidentally, Kurtzman also directed the underrated killer genie flick Wishmaster (1997).
Night Angel benefits from a cool cast starting with Andersen as the demonic temptress. She’s hot, sexy and deadly. You should see what she can do with a beer bottle. Tell me that’s not suggestive. In the words of Paris Hilton, that’s hot. Ashby is fine albeit not entirely convincing as the hero-ish Craig, the one who resists Lilith’s charms even though he can’t look away either. He looks suitably troubled by his nightmares and panicked when Kirstie gets snatched up by one of Lilith’s followers. It’s okay though, Craig has true love on his side. Well, that and a silver necklace with his birthstone, amethyst. Oh, I forgot to tell you, Lilith has an aversion to silver. Feuer is okay as the non-demonic love interest. She was just coming off her marriage to Mickey Rourke when she filmed this so taking on an ancient demon must have been a cakewalk.
It’s hard to believe looking at some of her performances that Karen Black was once nominated for an Academy Award (Best Supporting Actress, Five Easy Pieces). Somewhere along the way, she became a queen of camp. She camps it up outlandishly in Night Angel. Her bedroom scene with Andersen is one for the books. Martin is a hoot as Sadie. She gets to say crazy lines like “She is Satan’s whore! Lust is her life force!” Jones, who went on to become a regular in Guillermo del Toro’s films, actually shows his face here. He’s pretty good as the nerd who goes full-out creepy under the spell of his new mistress. It’s a rare performance that doesn’t involve lots of makeup and/or prosthetics. He does, however, maim himself in his futile pursuit of Lilith. I mean, how can he compete with a stud like Rod?
Like many a cheapie horror from the 80s (and early 90s), the soundtrack is made up of songs not destined to chart on Billboard. It’s fairly ordinary as far as these things go. The one song that sticks out is the blues-rock number “Sirens Burnin’” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. I actually have it on one of my YouTube playlists. The stylish, surreal cinematography by David Lewis (Leprechaun 3 & 4), in all its purple and pink-hued glory, is pure 80s erotic horror.
Sure, Night Angel is silly and dumb. It’s downright ridiculous, in fact. At the same time, it’s smart enough to know what it’s doing and who it’s for. Is it scary? It is, a little. It delivers sufficient shocks and terror. On a deeper level, it’s a strong argument for practicing abstinence. But who wants to go deep with a movie like this? Oh yeah, it has a cool-looking monster at the end. Now that’s more like it, right? In short, Night Angel is a lot of fun if you like cheap B-level horror films from this era. 
