Much like my culinary appetite, I find my appetite for stories sizable, but more noteworthy, to be heavily influenced by seasonal hallmarks.  Just as the 10^th month of the year brings an insatiable taste for anything with a particular orange gourd as an ingredient, so to does October fortify my craving for creepy, sinister, and macabre tales. Naturally, it culminates on the 31^st, before turning to the heartwarming, playful, and jolly stories that draw my fancy through the remaining holidays of the year.

With Halloween just days away, many dark, enticing tales cross my mind, but one that emerges as not only scary, but interesting to ponder is the film Angel Heart (1987). *  Though I’ve seen it multiple times, and years ago, it still stands as a complex story with themes and details worth revisiting and contemplating from time to time.

It stars a barely recognizable Mickey Rourke, to those familiar with the actor today, alongside Robert De Niro and Lisa Bonet. Rourke portrays Harry Angel. On the surface he’s an easily identifiable, hardboiled private detective – struggling to pay his bills, chasing beautiful women, and bedding a few in order to pursue his latest investigation.  But that’s only where the character begins. The missing person case that falls into Angel’s lap takes him, and us, on a dangerous path of secrets, corruption, and murder. Besides putting Angel’s own life in jeopardy, the story leads to darker territory including voodoo, deathly fortune telling, and devil worship.

This alone is enough to distinguish the story from a Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe case, and to push this film into the October-appropriate realm of Horror, but this is only the surface appeal of the film. Angel Heart goes further, and doubles the detective’s investigation, with all its peril, as also a voyage of self-discovery.  As Harry Angel must go to dark and sinister places, so to must he uncover dark and sinister truths about himself.

This elevates the story from entertaining to contemplative, and is the reason this film can not only give you a welcome Halloween chill, but also leave those of you who love a good story as much as I do, ruminating on its themes and psychological consequences for years to come - revisiting this meaty morsel whenever your appetite for the menacing and direful surfaces.

* Note this film was based on William Hjortsberg’s novel Falling Angel (1978).  My familiarity lies with the film and my discussion is limited to it, though I’m sure the novel shares most of the film’s admirable qualities, as well as possesses many of its own. Perhaps appropriate for a future post...