As Angel’s notorious tagline says (and says it all), “High school honor student by day. Hollywood hooker by night.” Played with babyfaced conviction by Donna Wilkes (Jaws 2), the straight-A Molly ditches the pigtails and shortens the skirt for her extracurricular activities, turning tricks as “Angel” on Hollywood Boulevard. More or less orphaned, she feels she has no other choice. It’s a living …
… until it’s not. Currently, the nighttime streets are a feeding frenzy for a necrophiliac serial killer (John Diehl, Jurassic Park III) who slays only hookers, and a couple of Angel’s pleather-wearing colleagues already have fallen prey to his twisted desires, going from the mattress to the morgue. Assigned to crack the case is Lt. Andrews (Cliff Gorman, Night of the Juggler), who becomes something of a father figure to our title character in the process.
Forming a surrogate family along the Hollywood Walk of Fame is Angel’s greatest asset, particularly with the amusing performances from comedian Dick Shawn (1967’s The Producers) as a cross-dressing prostitute and Rory Calhoun (Motel Hell) as an aging, possibly mentally ill cowboy who roams the sidewalks as if he were El Lay’s unofficial deputy sheriff.
But family schamily — Angel ain’t no touchy-feely drama. Directed and co-written by sleaze specialist Robert Vincent O’Neill (The Psycho Lover), the crime thriller soaks in a general malaise of sickness, sin and dysfunction, and is energized by bursts of action. (Surprisingly, almost all of its bountiful female nudity takes place in the girls’ locker room at school than with the ladies of the night at work.) In other words, Angel, which spawned three sequels, is a quintessential ’80s product of New World Pictures. I miss the times when trash like this earned a wide release, even though I was too young at the time to see it. Luckily, its themes are still relevant because the world’s oldest profession … well, let’s just say its product remains in high demand. —Rod Lott