The Sex Gourmet – Angel Heart (1987)

#4 Mickey Rourke & Lisa Bonet

Never before has a film captivated me as much as Angel Heart. At an early age I started a polygamous relationship with it, marrying three of my favorite things: Mickey Rourke, the Occult and Chicken. My relationship with the latter is really quite simple, each Sunday a chicken is roasted, covered in gravy and consumed with gusto. The former, not so straight forward. I cannot slather Rourke in gravy and lick him all over although heaven knows I have fantasied about it. Nor can I satiate my shadowy curiosity by throwing myself to the dark arts, engage in sex magick and banter with Beelzebub. Since my heart is just too pure and scared for that shit, I am so grateful for dirty, bloody films such as these and the dread that comes with them.

Harry Angel, played by Mickey Rourke, is your brother Shamus on a twisted search for the crooner Johnny Favourite, his charge is to find out if he is alive or dead. Hired by a ‘Foreign Gentleman’ Louis Cypher, played by Robert DeNiro, Harry Angel is led through a complicated maze of ritualistic bloody murders and dark, repetitive visions that would scare even Emperor Nero. Despite his woes, he saunters through New York and New Orleans with a sexy swagger. Whether he is wet with New York rain, or the blistering humidity of New Orleans, I’m watching him. My face getting hot, wishing my tongue is licking that sweat off his upper lip. Or brushing that wet furlock of hair from his brow while he lights a cigarette with bloody hand and straight razor. I never said I liked a good boy.

His doomed sexy counterpart is the alluring 17 year old Voodoo priestess Epiphany Proudfoot played by a young Lisa Bonet. Probably encouraging boners since her later days on the Cosby show, she is in full force in this film. Lithe body, corkscrew black curls, skin like mocha and the most delicious tits that would surely make Baphomet weep. Before we watch their bloody union, we see the nubile Epiphany at a Sabbat dance, covered in blood from sacrificed chickens and howling and gyrating with the sexual force of her possession. Just your average Wednesday.

Between the twists and turns, our two cursed characters find themselves in a room together. They discuss Harry’s fear of chickens and Epiphany’s first dance with the Devil. LaVern Bakers’ ‘Soul on Fire’ is playing in the background. For once, there is relief from the gory and disturbing, and as they dance together, for a moment we forget that that things are a bit tricky for Harry Angel. Epiphany’s teenage body is hoisted up around Angel as they dance and kiss, her tongue like a serpent flicking over his lips. The music continues, however it is fading more into the distance as this scene picks up its murderous pace. The bedroom, coloured like their own flesh begins to drip with water as both are increasingly aroused. As we hear the plink plink of drips we see Ephiphany arch her back and she cowgirls’ Angel like a starved nymphomaniac. The water drips faster and then becomes a steady stream covering the walls. Harry Angel, now in the absolute throes of lust, is penetrating Epiphany, hard, fast and without grace. With each violent onslaught, the water dripping from the walls turns red, the whole room now a bloody flesh wound. The music has faded completely and replaced with the industrial sonic boom of imagined hell and heartbeat. Each thrust of Angels body incites screams and blood from Epiphany, he is now feverishly raping and killing her. Alongside the violence he is inflicting on her, we see visions of orgies, dark figures in churches, the ever present rotating fan, and the final destination of our unlucky P.I.

This sex scene was cut down to achieve its R rating and I am pretty disappointed to never have seen the final cut, but nothing is lost here, both Rourke and Bonet have gravity, the attraction already being established in an earlier scene when Angel watches Epiphany wash her hair, perky breasts peeping out from a wet vest and their eyes casually fucking each other over dust, heat and sunshine.

This felt real, as did the metallic taste in my mouth after I succumbed to the darkside of horny, watching my girlhood crush take a journey through blood, murdered chickens and a bottomless elevator shaft.

5/10 – Points lost for never seeing Mickey Rourke’s Mickey.

by Claire Fagan