Angels of the City is about a group of kids in their late 20s going to USC, but acting like they're in their early 20s. They get an assignment from their sociology professor to interview people from another level of society from themselves, so two guys decide to interview a lady of the night. Their girlfriends (Kelly Galindo and Cynthia Cheston), on the other hand, are pledging a sorority, and part of their initiation is to pretend to be ladies of the night for an evening. Both the guys and the girls end up in the middle of a turf war between two rival pimps, though the ladies get it much worse when they're kidnapped by one of them, and have to fight for their lives in some of the worst places of LA. Will they make it home alive?
This is quite a movie. Yes, it has the low-budget look of early PM, and you definitely see them trying to make the best of limited resources, like in an early scene where a lady of the night is being chased by some baddies on Hollywood Boulevard, and we see reused footage and locations being looped to extend the chase. But the thing is, the scope of what LHJ and company were trying to do here is admirable, and I think they pull it off in a lot of ways. Essentially it's a darker version of the 80s teen romp film, where a bunch of rich kids run up against the seedy underbelly of the city, but instead of that underbelly being a bunch of caricatures and stereotypes, they're complete people, while the kids, especially the two young ladies, see just how much they've started life on third base. I think the other issue is this movie has a 30-minute epilogue, and while it resolves itself well, there is a sense of "how did we end up here?" Grading PM on a curve though, between the ambition to want to do this commentary on 80s teen romp comedies, and the novelty of watching early PM--including a great death scene for Cole S. McKay--this is worth checking out.
Usually we start with the Hall of Famers, but I wanted to spotlight the film's director, co-writer, and co-composer Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs. In his review, Mitch mentioned that the same year this came out, his Welcome Back Kotter costar John Travolta had Look Who's Talking released in theaters, and while I know LHJ would've loved to have had a film like that himself, I liked that he took advantage of the platform PM was giving him to try to do something deeper. And it felt like everyone else at PM was into it and onboard, perhaps because it's the story of LA that wasn't often told. It's not just that there's a seedy underbelly, but that seedy underbelly exists right next to places like USC where some of the richest kids live; but also that that seedy underbelly is composed of actual human beings who didn't have it as lucky as those rich kids at USC, and to see that juxtaposition come through in every scene, even in what felt like a tacked on epilogue, was really impactful. The only other film he directed after this was Coldfire, but considering the kind of social commentary he demonstrated here, it would be nice if someone else gave him the platform to do more of this.
Many of the PM names you know and love are here. We have Rick Pepin on cinematography, furthering a template that PM used with him, and later Ken Blakey, where you could have an actor without a lot of directorial experience take the helm, and lean on either Pepin or Blakey as their DP. It also serves to give us the "PM look" we know and love later on, even if the quality of the film stock on this early one isn't quite what they use later. We also see Cole S. McKay doing stunts, including a great death scene as one of the rival pimp's goons; plus I've finally tagged stunt coordinator Michael J. Sarna, who starts off with 28 tags! When we look at the PM stunt coordinators, he's right there with McKay, Spiro Razatos, and Red Horton and "Broadway" Joe Murphy, so his tag was long overdue. Paul Volk, someone who probably should also be tagged, does editing duties on this, which I think he earns his money on some of these scenes where things are happening in different locations, and he needs to make them appear to look like one. Finally, Addison Randall was an assistant director, a name we see a lot of in early PM. If you look at their first handful of films, other than this one with LHJ at the helm, all of the other films were directed by either Joseph Merhi, Charles Kanganis, or Addison Randall.
I was trying to think of teen romp films that this could be answer to, and the two that first come to mind are License to Drive and Adventures in Babysitting. Another could be Risky Business. There's a cutesy, Hollywood idea of what sex work is, and what it means to be pushed to the margins of society, and the main characters experience it, live through it, and end up on the other side sleeping in their comfortable beds, while the people who are struggling no longer exist. And I think maybe that's why LHJ wanted the 30-minute epilogue, because it wouldn't have felt right to him to just roll credits after the young ladies escape their ordeal. He adds another layer in that epilogue too, where the sociology professor is more fascinated by what the girls experienced than concerned, so even he's coming from a place of seeing sex workers and other people struggling as more a novelty than as actual people. Ten years later when I was in college studying anthropology, my professors seemed more sensitive to this, making sure we looked at people as fellow human beings, and not subjects in a case study for a paper, and maybe that was why I was more sensitive to what LHJ and company were going for with the professor character in this film.
Finally, at the beginning of the film the radio announcer mentions Magic Johnson, and later a guy delivering Chinese food is wearing a Magic Johnson jersey. In 1989, the Lakers were a year removed from winning their fifth title with Magic, and despite the rise of the Pistons and the Bulls, plus the Trailblazers in the Western Conference, there was no reason to believe that run wouldn't continue. Two years later they lost to the Bulls in the Finals, and then Magic revealed he was HIV positive, and that was it. Now, no one should feel bad for Lakers fans, because they've won six more titles since 2000, which puts them in a tie with my Patriots for the most among the US Big 4 sports during that time, but it is interesting to think how we get so used to the world being one thing--that Magic Johnson had to retire early because he was HIV positive--that it's hard to put into perspective what that time capsule looked like right before it. Yes, the Lakers were declining a bit from their 80s dominance, but there was a sense that they still had another six or seven years left with Magic, they just needed to retool and within a couple years they'd be back. But alas it never happened, and the 90s were a lost decade for the Lakers, until they drafted Kobe and traded for Shaq. Again, not feeling bad for Lakers fans, just saying the mentions of Magic Johnson here forced me to look back at that slice of time and think about how different things were.
And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this free on Tubi here in the States, which I think is a great way to go. Between the novelty of early PM, and just the scope of what Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs and company were going for, I think it's worth checking out.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099042
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