Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Console best movie i've ever seen.

Senteur As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

JohnHowardReid Written and directed in a somewhat freewheeling style by Robert Thom who induces some good acting from his players that in turn increases the weird sort of horrible fascination that this film has. The empty, loveless but passionate real is cleverly juxtaposed with the nightmarish surreal. There are also some memorable characterizations, not least from Jordan Christopher as a flirting-with-Fate pop singer, and Holly Near as the fat and lonely little rich girl.Jennifer Jones here plays with an amoral bite that is far, far removed from her "Song of Bernadette".This film was obviously lensed at MGM Studios, using some of their technicians -- and that would certainly account for both the technical credits and the film's production values being well above AIP's average.

Wizard-8 American-International Pictures during the 1960s usually had a good idea of what their drive-in audience would like to see, but they really missed the boat with "Angel, Angel, Down We Go" (a.k.a. "Cult of the Damned"), which was a box office disappointment. Studio head Samuel Z. Arkoff theorized that the failure of the movie was because the characters in the movie simply were not sympathetic, and the movie was extremely downbeat. That's certainly true, but the movie has additional problems. It's also pretty slow, with its thin story stretched out to the breaking point. Also, I am not sure what point the movie was trying to make, unless it was that life is a real downer. The movie is sometimes directed in an eye-catching manner (particularly the opening minutes), but it doesn't manage to hide that the story and characters are drab and uninteresting. It took a long time for this movie to get a home video release, though if you ask me, it could have stayed in obscurity.

ian-milliss This must be one the greatest, least recognised trash films of all time. It has such a strange mixture of truth and pretentious phoniness that it is in a class of its own. What Hollywood film of the time (or now even) would dare show anything as pornographic (for Fat Amerika) as Holly Near's binge eating scene at her birthday party? Yet the incredible tackiness of it all perfectly illustrates the tackiness of late 60s rock culture, even if it gets all the details wrong, oh so wrong. I love it, it's one of my top ten all time favourite films.

chrisdfilm Although most people looking for the conventional "good" movie may balk at this picture's entertainment value, all I can tell you is that there's scarcely a boring moment to be had. Quintessential viewing for anyone interested in the downside of the psychedelic era with enough of writer/director Robert Thom's eloquently bad taste purple prose to keep one in a state of perpetual jawdropping incredulity.Jennifer Jones is a washed up (though rich) movie star and former porn actress married to cynical, houseboy-shtupping Charles Aidman. Overweight and screwed up Holly Near (soon to enjoy moderate folksinging fame) is their daughter. Through her, machiavellian wannabe popstar and unstated mini-cult leader, Jordan Christopher (the young hip actor who married Sybil Burton after Richard left her for Liz), worms his way into the household. He brings along his entourage, too -- which includes Roddy McDowell and Lou Rawls! Slowly Christopher amps up his mind games, and, with the aid of plenty of psychedelics, seduces everyone in this rotten-to-the-core family. Imagine Thom remaking Pasolini's TEOREMA in the AIP drive-in mindset with Southern California literary/theater pretentions and you'll get a pretty good idea of what to expect. I won't throw in any specific spoilers but Christopher wreaks havoc with all concerned. Suffice to say a couple of characters shuffle off this mortal coil (in other words, die!). Although not possessed with as much manic energy as the previous film Thom had written for AIP -- WILD IN THE STREETS (directed by Barry Shear) -- this is much more uncompromising in its bad trip vision of Southern California upper-crust-show-biz hypocrisy and the poisonous underbelly of the then-current youth culture. An appropriate movie to come out in 1969, the same year that brought us Altamont and the Manson-killings.WILD IN THE STREETS had done really well at the boxoffice and I suppose that's how Thom had convinced AIP to let him direct. Unfortunately ANGEL, ANGEL... flopped dismally finally rereleased as CULT OF THE DAMNED (under which title I recorded it on video off a censored, commercial interrupted USA Network showing back in the mid-80s -- it hasn't been on TV since, at least on the west coast). Apparently this wasn't one of the titles MGM/UA picked up from Orion (who in turn had picked up most American International Pictures rights). So, this is close to being a lost film -- although hopefully the producer, Jerome Katzman (?) may be out there somewhere with elements. If anyone's out there who knows him you should tell him this would probably do extremely well with a DVD release through someone like Anchor Bay or Image, companies who know how to promote great retro sixties trash.