Avenging Angel (1985) New World/Action-Thriller RT: 93 minutes Rated R (language, strong violence, nudity, sexual content) Director: Robert Vincent O’Neill Screenplay: Joseph M. Cala and Robert Vincent O’Neill Music: Christopher Young Cinematography: Peter Lyons Collister Release date: January 11, 1985 (US) Cast: Betsy Russell, Rory Calhoun, Susan Tyrrell, Robert F. Lyons, Ossie Davis, Steven M. Porter, Paul Lambert, Barry Pearl, Estee Chandler, Tim Rossovich, Frank Doubleday, Howard Honig, Ross Hagen, Tracy Robert Austin, Michael Andrews, Karen Mani, Robert Tessier. Box Office: $5.6 million (US)
Rating: ****
The sequel Avenging Angel shouldn’t have worked. It has a different actress in the lead and the makers take a more comical approach to the material. It’s off-putting to be sure, but that’s not what bothers me the most about this follow-up to the “High School Honor Student by Day, Hollywood Hooker by Night” exploitation classic. Allow me to elucidate.
Avenging Angel came out just one year after its predecessor, yet the action takes place four years later. Molly/Angel was only 15 in the first movie meaning she’d be 19 in this one. How can she possibly be about to graduate from college? Did she complete her high school and college education in the space of the four years? It’s never explained. I know I shouldn’t try to analyze a dopey B-movie like Avenging Angel, but a plot hole like this sticks out like a sore thumb. I’d like at least a perfunctory explanation. That is, if there is one. It could also be an oversight on the part of the makers. Which is it? Do tell, do tell!
ANYWAY, Molly (Russell, Private School) has her sights set on being a lawyer. Her old life as Angel is far behind her. Her legal guardian Lt. Andrews (Lyons, Murphy’s Law), a role he assumed after the events of the original, couldn’t be prouder of her. He took her off the streets and gave her a bright future. That’s a lot she owes him. What better way to pay it back than to find the dirtbags that murder him after he responds to a call of an undercover cop (Mani, Alley Cat) in distress.
When the tragic news reaches Molly, she resumes the role of Angel to avenge her savior’s death. She reconnects with old friends Solly (Tyrrell, Bad) and street performer Yo-Yo Charlie (Porter, Leprechaun 5: In the Hood) who inform her Kit Carson (Calhoun, Motel Hell) is locked up in a sanitarium. After breaking him out (in a scene played for comic effect), they go about tracking down Andrews’ killers with the help of an eyewitness, flamboyant street performer Johnny Glitter (Pearl, Grease). Think of him as Hollywood Blvd’s answer to Rip Taylor only slightly less exaggerated.
It turns out the man behind the killing is Arthur Girard (Lambert, Death Wish II), a mobster buying up a lot of real estate along the Boulevard. The triggerman was Gerard’s son Miles (Doubleday, Escape from New York). He’s the psycho now leading the search for the elusive Johnny Glitter.
I guess the filmmakers realized the whole premise of Angel was pretty ridiculous and opted for a comical approach to Avenging Angel. Look at the sequence where Molly/Angel, Solly and Yo-Yo break Kit out of the sanitarium. They drive there in Solly’s car, a hearse from a pet cemetery. Molly wears the tightest, sexiest nurse outfit that I’ve ever seen outside a porno movie. With Solly overplaying the part of a grieving widow, they convince the guard at the front gate they’ve come to collect Kit’s body. They find Kit and start to take him away on a gurney. When the head nurse and orderlies give chase, they run down the corridor with Kit riding the gurney like a bronco, hootin’ and hollerin’ and whooping it up. It seems out of place in a vigilante movie, but the filmmakers aren’t going for realism here.
The funny stuff in Avenging Angel is quite a contrast to other plot elements like the 13YO runaway Cindy (Chandler, Teen Wolf Too) that finds herself in a dangerous situation with one of Girard’s cartoonishly psychotic hoods. That’s about as close to social commentary as Avenging Angel gets.
I won’t lie, there’s a fair amount of violence in Avenging Angel, but the cartoonish tone taken by returning director Robert Vincent O’Neill undermines this particular aspect of it. Not that it’s a bad thing. It’s not. Despite the odd tonal disparity, it works as long as it’s taken on its own terms. There’s a lot more action this time as Molly/Angel and company get involved in many shoot-outs with the villains.
I almost forgot, something else has changed since Molly/Angel left town. Solly became a mother. Hold on, it’s not what you think. One of her former tenants, a prostitute, left the baby boy with her and was later found dead of an overdose. Well, what did you think it was, Immaculate Conception? You know as well as I do, Solly is no saint. She does get off some of the funniest lines in the movie like when she yells at Molly and Yo-Yo, “You woke up the f—–‘ baby!” If that doesn’t scream Mother of the Year, wait until you get a load of this exchange:
Solly: “Can you imagine me a mother? At my f—–‘ age?”
Molly: “What are you going to do?”
Solly: (cooing) “I’m gonna get rid of the little bastard, that’s what I’m gonna do because he’s a pain in my ass.”
Yo-Yo: “I know a guy at welfare. He can help ya.”
Solly: “You touch that phone and I’ll break your dick!”
You gotta love dialogue like this.
While the supporting characters are still entertaining, there’s some major overacting here. Tyrrell plays Solly as a super-butch lesbian whose vocabulary would make a truck driver blush. Calhoun is, once again, in rare form as the old cowboy storyteller. At his age, I wouldn’t be surprised if he really believed he was living in the Old West. As Johnny Glitter, Pearl makes Richard Simmons look macho. Honestly, I didn’t understand his character. What is it he does on the Boulevard? Is he some kind of storyteller? Based on the scene where he entertains bums and winos in a seedy flophouse with fairy tales and glitter, that might be it.
In the title role, Russell delivers the goods in a big way. She’s sexy, beautiful, intelligent and totally bad ass. Take my advice. DO NOT SCREW WITH THIS WOMAN! She’ll take you out. It turns out she’s more than adept with a handgun. Based on what she does in Avenging Angel, Russell should have been a major female action star. How is it studio executives missed it? Doubleday is a decent character actor as is Tim Rossovich, who you might recognize from movies like Looker, Night Shift, Cloak & Dagger and Stick. Older football fans might remember him from his days as a Philadelphia Eagle, the San Diego Charger and the Houston Oiler. New additions to Molly/Angel’s extended family include transvestite couple/nannies Pat (Austin) and Mike (Andrews, Malibu Express). BTW, you do realize the climax of Avenging Angel will have the baby in peril, right? I won’t say exactly how, but it looks damn close to child endangerment to me.
Avenging Angel is flashier and slicker than its predecessor. I especially like the sequence where the gangsters head out to take care of the undercover cop while the Bronski Beat song “Why?” plays over the soundtrack. It’s a great song. It sets the right mood and puts the viewer in the right frame of mind. How did the gangsters find out about the undercover cop? Obviously, there’s a rat in the LAPD that provides Gerard with information.
Avenging Angel is solid B-movie entertainment. It’s uneven at times in trying to find the right balance of action and comedy, but it’s still a solid three-star exploitation movie. If you like the first Angel, chances are you’ll like Avenging Angel as well. Just don’t get on her bad side.
