I'm back! Tis Halloween month with four weeks left to go exactly, so I've got a couple of candidates in mind that caught my eye a while ago, but I just semi-recently saw the film, so now I can make it proper. This is my thirteenth (ooh, spooky) proposal overall, there are eight active at the moment plus a removal, and with all that in mind ladies and gentleman, I present to you... another duo (played by Robert De Niro and Mickey Rourke, two of my favorite (it's in the name haha) actors, who ironically enough apparently hate each other's guts in real life). But that also said, I'm happy to make another proposal, I've been dealing with some personal problems as of late that I don't wish to delve into too much, but I've done my best to recover, and I'm doing better at the moment, but with that said...
What is the work?[]
Angel Heart is an interesting little supernatural neo noir thriller film released in 1987 based on the 1979 novel Falling Angel (which I've never read, though maybe I should). It stars the aforementioned Mickey Rourke at his career best, and Robert De Niro as also mentioned above, as well as Lisa Bonet and Charlotte Rampling among others, including a famous blues musician. Written and directed by the late Alan Parker, who is also known directing films like Midnight Express and Mississippi Burning (which may have some PE candidates themselves, though I've not seen them yet), and musical type movies.
Who are Louis Cyphre and Johnny Favorite? What have they Done?[]
Private detective and WW2 veteran Harold "Harry" Angel is hired by the mysterious Louis Cyphre and his lawyer Herman Winesap to find a missing Crooner named Jonathan Liebling, or better known by his stage name of Johnny Favorite, who disappeared and hasn't been seen for quite some time, and also owes Cyphre and unspecified debt. Harry accepts the case, (there would be no movie without it) and it leads him to numerous sources, including one Dr. Albert Fowler, who worked at a hospital Johnny was being treated in, and forged documents to get him out after being paid to do so by an unspecified man and woman, Fowler is also a drug addict. Harry interrogates him for information, and learns the above mentioned intel, and ties Fowler to his bed, then goes to get some food. When Harry returns he sees that Fowler was killed via gunshot wound to the head, possibly suicide?
Harry meets up with the illusive Cyphre once again in a restaurant, and is reluctant to continue searching, but is convinced to by Cyphre, who offers him a boiled egg, and tells him that there some are some religions which believe that eggs contain the soul, and offers it to Harry, who refuses, while Cyphre proceeds to munch down on the egg. Harry's search eventually leads him to Louisiana, where he meets Margaret Krusemark, the woman who along with her dad, got him out, Favorite's illegitimate Epiphany Proudfoot who also has a infant son of her own, who was conceived through an affair with with one now deceased Evangeline Proudfoot, and a blues musician Toots Sweet. after Harry talks to them, Margaret and Toots end suddenly, and brutally murdered, Toots by being castrated and fed his own genitals, Margaret by having her heart cut out.
Harry encounters Cyphre yet again at a church, and believes that Johnny his dropping his associates like flies to cover his tracks, while Cyphre bemusedly chastises Harry for using profanity in a Church. Harry goes to talk to Epiphany again, who he'd previously seen conduct a ritual involving a chicken, (Harry has a strange fear of chickens) and she claims that her mother said that Favorite was "as close to true evil" as Evangeline wanted ever wanted to get, and they have sex. Harry then has visions of horrible things happening, including Epiphany's own murder, and Winesap getting murdered by having his head thrown into a fan and decapitated. The sex gets increasingly rough to the point that Harry almost strangles Epiphany, but fortunately it stops.
Two polices officers who had been tailing Harry and the murders question him again, while one of them makes it clear he doesn't like race mixing in Louisiana. He eventually meets Ethan Krusemark, who had previously been trying to scare him off through attack dogs and thugs. Ethan reveals that Johnny Favorite made a deal with the devil so that he could achieve success as a jazz singer, and it worked for a time, but before the devil could collect that debt, Johnny, with the Krusemark's help, kidnapped a soldier the same age, and who look similar to Johnny, where Favorite cut his heart out and ate it so that he could steal his soul and identity, and was later drafted into WW2, and suffered brain injuries which lead to him catching amnesia. Before Ethan can say who it was, Harry has another episode, and vomits, and discovers that Ethan has been drowned to death in boiling hot water.
Harry goes back to Margaret's place, and discovers the truth that the movie asks that we pray that he doesn't find, that the soldier was in fact Harold Angel, and that he is Johnny Favorite. Harry reacts in terror, he can't possibly be this satanic killer he's been searching for, but then Cyphre comes along. Harry deduces his name being a pseudonym for Lucifer, and Cyphre admits to being the devil of the bible we all know, or Mephistopheles, which he claims is such a mouthful in Manhattan. Harry refuses to believe it, he couldn't be, he couldn't have killed this people, and Cyphre is only pretending to be the devil for theatrics! Cyphre murdered those people to frame Harry! Though as Cyphre reveals, Harry/Johnny did in fact kill those people, guided by Cyphre, naturally. Harry promises to tell Winesap what happened, but just like in his vision, Winesap's dead, in an apparent accident! Cyphre jokes that no one will mourn the loss of one less lawyer in the world, and then puts on a musical record of Johnny's own song Girl of my Dreams while a frantic and teary eyed Harry looks in the mirror, something he'd had trouble doing for most of the movie (he even punched and broke one earlier), and all the lost memories return, and Johnny stops crying and resurfaces for good, remembering everything, signifying that Harry Angel is no more, and Johnny's back!
Johnny hurries over to Epiphany's hotel room, but the cops are already there, with Epiphany dead, raped and shot in the vagina, by Johnny himself, who icily admits to what he had done, and that Epiphany is his daughter. They bring her son out, and tell Johnny that he is going burn for what he's done, Johnny's only response: "I know... in hell." Johnny sees his grandson, with the same glowing yellow eyes that Cyphre had, which could imply that the boy is in fact Cyphre's (though Cyphre could have possibly been possessing the boy, or using illusion tricks to frighten Johnny). The movie ends with Johnny taking the elevator ride to hell, while Cyphre eerily whispers both Harry and Johnny's names. One can only imagine what's in store for Favorite when he reaches the bottom.
Redeeming Qualities?[]
Cyphre is impeccably polite in all of his conversations with Harry/Johnny, and that stays the same even as his true colors are revealed, and while he does have a wicked sense of humor (like when he chastises Harry for cursing in a church, but he's obviously enjoying it), it's only that though, no comic relief moments or anything like that. He's here to claim Johnny Favorite's soul for his end of the bargain that they made and Johnny deserves hell for what he has done, but that's because Cyphre wants to claim what is his, and because he is the devil who is evil, rather than a sense of justice, and he never shows any obvious sympathy to the real Harold Angel. Interestingly, he does tell Johnny, "You were doomed the moment you slit that young boy in half", but this seems to be more a matter of fact thing rather him wanting to avenge poor Harold Angel, especially considering the psychological torment he inflicts on the Harry personality while the latter is still Harry. If he had done nothing, Favorite would have likely stayed buried, but Cyphre wants his soul, leading the latter to murder more. He's not an angel of vengeance or justice or anything like that, and leaves innocent bodies in his wake as well, namely Epiphany and Winesap, and it's strongly implied that he can't take Johnny's soul until he remembers who he is, and as long as Harry/Johnny doesn't and continues to live on as Harry, he's safe from the devil.
Favorite is a tricky one to say the least. As you most likely noticed in the proposal itself, I mostly talked about Harry rather than Johnny. Well, you see, that's because for most of the movie, Johnny isn't Johnny, but is instead Harry, the gruff but lovable Private investigator. But that's because Johnny killed the original Harry, ate his heart and stole his soul and identity, and then he suffered amnesia from the injuries that he received while overseas, which allowed Harry (or, what was left of him at least) to take over. Besides that, we hear all sorts details about Johnny even before the reveal, he's got a clearly established motive, (he wants to experience all sorts of hedonistic pleasures enough that he willfully offers his soul to the devil so that he can achieve fame and fortune as a jazz musician, then seeks to escape from the devil, and kills off all of old his associates to cover his tracks, and anyone else who could pose a threat to his identity), and he is obviously calculating, considering his plan to kill and usurp the real Harry Angel, and is implied to have cut out Margaret's heart at least partially as an intentional message to her father Ethan. And when he resurfaces absolutely at the end, he emotionlessly admits to raping and murdering his own teenage daughter, and well, I don't know if anyone else noticed this or if they would agree, but when he says "in hell" at the end, he kind of looks like he has a sort of half-grin on his face when he says so. And what really sells how different they are as characters for me, is the fact that he goes from sobbing his eyes out as Harry, all the while teary-eyed and screaming "I know who I am!" to his ice-cold psychopath murderer self as Johnny, who as mentioned above, did those things to his daughter, and others, especially since Harry blacks out whenever Johnny kills somebody.
Now with that said, does Johnny himself have any? Well, he did have a relationship with Evangeline Proudfoot, who seemed to love him enough to await his return, but Johnny, in the few times we see him properly, is never shown to hold such sentiment towards her, and well, considering that he raped and murdered their daughter without remorse, I'd say it's a moot point to say if he does or not. That does bring me to another thing though, that being that he has kind of a shocked facial expression when he sees the police bring out his grandson, but... seeing as he quickly goes back to his ice-cold state, that shock could easily just be chalked up to a spur of the moment reaction, as maybe he just wasn't expecting to see him, or wasn't thinking of him at the moment until he saw him, and seeing the boy threw him off, and he doesn't show any evident sympathy for the boy or anything, and he did witness him with demonic eyes, so that might have played a part in it. And as mentioned above, He's the one who orphaned the poor boy to begin with by killing his mother. While he does seemingly accept his damnation with dignity at the end, that's mostly just because he knows that there is nothing more that he can do it at this point, he is just accepting the inevitable, and he can't escape his fate any longer. While he may be killing them at least partially to preserve himself, he got himself in that situation to begin with by willingly selling his soul to the devil, and he kills them without remorse, and more violently than he needs to for the most part (only Fowler's death wasn't over the top horrific, who he killed by shooting him in the head with a revolver), Winesap and Epiphany were complete innocents who had nothing to do with his past and don't seem to know who he is. His descent into hell isn't really played for sympathy either as he deserves it for all that he'd done. You might take pity on the true Harold Angel, but not Johnny boy.
Heinous Standard?[]
General Standard[]
Are you kidding me? It's absolutely ridiculous how easily they pass, here: They have seven (mostly shared) kills apiece. Johnny kidnapped, and then cut out and ate an innocent boys heart to steal his soul and identity and escape from the devil, then along comes Cyphre twelve years later, who orchestrates Johnny's resurgence, resulting in the latter brutally murdering six more, including his own teenage daughter whom he had sex with, and then raped before hand, and leaving her son an orphan. And it's not just their kill count that makes them stand out, it's how they do it: Toots was castrated and fed his own dick, Margaret had her heart cut out, Winesap was decapitated by a fan, (the guy who kills him is wearing a beige suit like Harry/Johnny wears, whereas Cyphre only ever wears black, and it's in Harry/Johnny's vision so I'm counting that as a personal kill for Johnny too), Epiphany is shot in the vagina with the revolver shoved up her, and Ethan is drowned to death in boiling hot water, all so that Johnny can resurface and be executed so that Cyphre take his soul to hell. None of their crimes are offscreen villainy either, we see the effects and plot relevance that they all have, and for the most part we see the crimes themselves, or evidences or glimpses of them at the very least.
In-Story Standard[]
I think that they should be fine here too, I believe they do enough to stand out from each other. Cyphre, while I maintain that he did not possess Harry/Johnny to commit his murders per se, what seems to be the case is that he pulled the strings necessary for Johnny to resurface so that he could kill all his associates, while Cyphre is obviously having a blast watching the carnage Johnny unleashes, and he may have deliberately arranged targets for him if Winesap being one of the kills is any indication. That, and he psychologically torments the Harry Angel personality, taking glee in his hysterical crying. He arranges for Johnny to be executed so that he can take his soul to hell, which like in the bible as we understand it, he is the ruler of, and given his own gleeful monologue about how death is everywhere these days, it can be safely assumed that collecting souls for hell (which he clearly does out sadistic cheer rather than divine justice), maybe even making deals for them, is all normal for him. And he has implied crimes as well, he may have impregnated Epiphany, and he may have taken the innocent Harry Angel with him, though these are not confirmed. On one hand, he whispers both Harry and Johnny's names, and on the other hand, we only see one person (Johnny) in the hellevator, he could have just been referring to him by both names as an homage to the fact that he spent the majority of the film as Harry (Cyphre does have a twisted and morbid sense of humor after all, like I mentioned up above already). He should still be bad enough even without the implied crimes though. On the fridge horror note though, he may have taken the souls of some of the others who weren't exactly saints themselves, namely the Krusemarks.
Johnny, on the other hand, commits seven murders with varying degrees of cruelty (while Cyphre may have given him the push needed to wake up, there still Johnny's kills first and foremost), and is a cannibal, and an incestuous rapist, and him cannibalizing Harry Angel was done without Cyphre's immediate input, (though he did do it to escape from him from a deal he willingly made), and he has less resources than Cyphre due to being a normal human, whereas Cyphre is (obviously at this point) the devil himself. Also, I believe a chicken may have been a part of the ritual Johnny used, giving him animal cruelty as well, and it would certainly explain why Harry dislikes chickens so much.
System Standard[]
Cyphre has no problems here. Johnny was part of a satanic cult, and had help in his human sacrifice ritual, namely from the Krusemarks, but he was the most evil member of the cult, what he did to the original Harry Angel was his thing first and foremost, all they did was assist. And then add in Favorite's other crimes and kills on top of that.
Final Verdict[]
These guys may be the most interesting duo I've proposed yet, but I'm ultimately a yes for the both of them. Regardless, it's good to be back with another proposal (and to kick off the season no less)!