Angel Heart (1987)

In writer/director Alan Parker's supernatural-mystery film noir - a twisting, metaphysically-confusing film set in the mid-1950s in New Orleans, LA. Parker's own screenplay was adapted from the 1978 novel Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg.

The plot line was simple but still very complex and twisting - a NYC PI was hired to conduct a missing persons case (for a man named Johnny Favourite), and during the case in New Orleans, he encountered a series of brutal murders. It offered the cryptic tagline: "It will scare you to your very soul. Harry Angel has been hired to search for the truth... Pray he doesn't find it."

It was immediately controversial for the nudity and sex scenes of one of its stars, Lisa Bonet in her film debut, who was a child star as Denise Huxtable in the family TV show The Cosby Show. With a budget of $18 million, its domestic box-office revenue was only $17.2 million.

• in the film's opening sequence, a dog found a bloody corpse in an alley
• in the year 1955, ragged and seedy Brooklyn PI (private detective) Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) met in Harlem with mysterious, enigmatic client Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro in a masterfully-acted devilish and satanic role), with long fingernails and a pentagram ring Cyphre hired Angel for a missing persons case; Angel was to find the whereabouts of a missing person, disgraced singer/bandleader and WWII draftee Johnny Favourite (nee John Liebling), known as the "guy with the golden tonsils"; Favourite, who was reportedly suffering neurological damage (shell shock) from military-related war injuries, and was admitted to a Poughkeepsie Nursing Home
• from then on, Favourite became a "disappearing act" after signing a contract with Cyphre in post WWII; Favourite had been secretly transferred out of the private hospital in late 1943 with fake documents provided by one of the doctors (Dr. Fowler) and the help from two individuals (later identified as the Krusemarks); Favourite had allegedly skipped out without paying Cyphre a debt
• [Note - Spoiler: It was revealed that Favourite had actually promised his soul to the Devil in exchange for worldly success and stardom, but then tried to renege, cheat the Devil, and hide his identity in someone else.]
• shortly later during a NYC diner scene, Cyphre remarked: "Some religions believe the egg is a symbol for the soul" -- before meaningfully biting into a hard-boiled egg, and offering Angel $5,000 for his efforts

Egg-Eating Louis Cyphre - Satanic Figure (Louis Cyphre = Lucifer)

• after being hired by Cyphre, during Harry Angel's investigations in upstate NY (Poughkeepsie) and in New Orleans to track down Favourite and his many contacts, he delved into the black arts of voodoo; there were many brutal murders or deaths of the individuals he questioned or came into contact with

Margaret Krusemark (Charlotte Rampling)

Toots Sweet (Brownie McGhee)

Epiphany Proudfoot (Lisa Bonet)

• during the course of his work, Harry encountered an illegitimate, 17 year old, half-Creole, teenaged voodoo practitioner Epiphany Proudfoot (Lisa Bonet), reportedly the mixed-race daughter of both Favourite and Evangeline Proudfoot (a now-deceased black voodoo queen); Angel witnessed Epiphany's participation in a voodoo ritual in which she was scantily-clad as she slit a chicken's throat and let the spurting blood drip down her face, neck and breasts
• in the film's well-known plot twist, missing piano player/singer Johnny Favourite's identity was revealed; Johnny Favourite had sold his soul to the devil (Lu-cifer) for fame and stardom, but then reneged on the contracted bargain, hid out, and took the alias of Harry Angel; through a satanic black magic ritual (involving consumption of a beating heart), Johnny evaded Satan by murdering and stealing the soul of a young WWII GI soldier in Times Square on New Years' Eve in 1943; Favourite had planned to assume the dead soldier's identity and name (Harry Angel), but was drafted and then injured overseas
• the revelation in the film was that Favourite had actually transferred his soul through a Satanic ceremonial ritual into the original Harry Angel's body twelve years earlier; Favourite had randomly picked WWII GI Angel off the street, and assumed Angel's identity; Then, because of the war, he was traumatically brain-injured, hospitalized, had extensive facial surgery; he also suffered amnesia so that he was unrecognizable and couldn't remember who he was; Favourite 'forgot' that he was Harry Angel (and henceforth fooled others about his real identity)
• the film included a notorious, steamy sex scene (originally NC-17-rated, but trimmed for an R-rating) of abandoned sexuality (with the theme of blood sacrifice) between Angel and Epiphany. They made love on a bed with raindrops (and chicken blood) dripping from the ceiling through the leaky hotel roof during a rainstorm, while listening to the radio playing the sultry tune "Soul on Fire" by Laverne Baker; he was unintentionally having incestuous sex with her; and then Harry 'woke up' and found himself strangling her

Incestuous Rape-Murder of Epiphany

• the film shockingly concluded with Epiphany bloodied and dead on the bed (with a gunshot to the groin), with Harry's military 'dog-tags' (HAROLD ANGEL) around her neck; after the rape-murder, Harry had killed his own daughter, the teenaged daughter of Evangeline Proudfoot
• without a memory of committing the crime, Harry rushed back to his hotel room - the murder/crime scene (notice a black-cloaked figure sitting in the hallway - a clean-shaven Cyphre!); he viewed Epiphany's half-naked body, and the bed drenched in blood
• Angel revealed to racist Detective Deimos (Pruitt Taylor Vince) that he was the murderer - the film's final lines of dialogue:

  Detective Deimos: "Why'd you come back?"
  Harry: "I live here."
  Detective Deimos: "Who is she?" (He reached for the dog tags and read the identifying name) She ain't 'Angel, Harold.'"
  Harry: "She's my daughter."
  Detective Deimos: "Bulls--t. Who is she?"
  Harry: "She's Epiphany Proudfoot. She stayed here for a little while."
  Detective Deimos: "Long enough for you to kill her, right? Or ain't that your gun up her snatch? You're gonna burn for this, Angel."
  Harry: "I know. In Hell."

• it was now very clear that Harry Angel was actually Johnny Favourite, the evil man he was being paid to find; and Louis Cyphre was a gloating and knowing 'Lucifer' - waiting for Angel to realize or remember that his true identity was Favourite, so he could claim his immortal soul; Harry, however, was convinced that Cyphre was framing him for the murders:

  Harry: Do you think posing as the devil, just because it scared some superstitious old guitar player, and that witch, and that nutty old man, do you think it's gonna scare me? Hah. It ain't, because I know who I am. And you killed them, and you're tryin' to pin it on me. I know who I am.
  Cyphre: If I had cloven hooves and a pointed tail, would you be more convinced?
  Harry: You're crazy. I know who I am. You're trying to frame me.
  You're trying to frame me. Cyphre, I know who I am. You murdered them people. I never killed nobody. I didn't kill Fowler, and- and I didn't kill Toots, and I didn't kill Margaret, and I didn't kill Krusemark, I didn't kill no-one!

• Cyphre did admit that he had "guided" Harry to commit the numerous murders - after Johnny had killed Harry Angel and took over his soul: ("All killed by your own hand. Guided by me naturally. Frankly, you were doomed from the moment you slit that young boy in half. Johnny - for 12 years, you've been living on borrowed time and another man's memories...The flesh is weak, Johnny. Only the soul is immortal, and yours belongs to ME!") (Cyphre's eyes turned a glowing pale yellow - a sign of the demonic, as he pointed his long-nailed index finger at Harry!)
• then, Cyphre challenged Harry to look back at his own actions: "However cleverly you sneak up on the mirror - your reflection always looks you straight in the eye"; a flashbacked montage followed of all of the murders Harry had committed, during which Cyphre played a 78 rpm recording of Johnny singing "Girl of My Dreams"; Harry killed all of them -- all magic and voodoo practitioners who were involved in Johnny Favourite's escape from the hospital and cover-up; he had failed in an attempt to keep his identity as Johnny Favourite a secret - both a secret from others and a secret from himself!
• at the crime scene, Sterne's partner Detective Sterne (Eliott Keener) carried Epiphany's toddler son, Harry's grandson, into the bedroom; the boy had glowing eyes - strongly hinting that the boy was fathered by 'Lucifer' (Satan had impregnated Epiphany during a voodoo ceremony) - and he pointed at Harry
• presumably, Harry - who descended down a very lengthy elevator shaft as the film ended (during the entire credits sequence) - was convicted of the murder of Epiphany and doomed to the electric chair - and afterwards fated to burn in Hell. At the end of his ride, with the final black screen, one could hear a very faint exchange (in voice-over): "Harry?" "Johnny?"