On "Angel 4"

When you collect VHS tapes as I do, you often run the risk of winding up with something rather different from what you expected in the store on the basis of the box cover. I think that having nothing to go on but that cover art is something I miss about the old days. It's hard now to not know anything about a movie, and there's no box cover. There's a picture of one maybe, but there's all this other information far more illuminating than the back of the box.

Take "Angel 4" as an example. I bought it on the strength of its absurd, lurid cover, and paid more than I ought to have. It depicted a woman with a starkly contrasting double life. By day, it claimed, she was a respectable businesswoman. by night she was a sleazy prostitute. The cover art missed no chance to hammer home the Madonna/whore thing, and I admit I was very taken with the shamelessness of that pitch. Of course I bought it.

It sat in my collection, entirely living up to its promise as far as I knew. Finally I decided to watch it. I had once made a point of saving the most promising tapes to watch with friends, but now there are so many that I cannot save tapes or else I just will not watch any of them. Anyway, I watched "Angel 4", and it was almost not at all what it claimed to be. The titular Angel was not a businesswoman of any kind, nor did she work as a prostitute.

I gather she had once worked as a prostitute in earlier entries of the series, but as of this film she works as a police crime scene photographer. By night she poses as a rock photographer and groupie in order to get close to "Piston Jones", the frontman of a rising rock band who is implicated in the murder of an old friend from her streetwalking days. She does not do anything particularly salacious, but plenty of people around her do.

I am disappointed by the movie, but I will allow that it pleasantly surprised me in other ways. The logical problems in the plot are very entertaining. A payola scheme figures largely in the plot, and yet ultimately has no relevance at all. Strangely, the bad guys keep beating up radio station employees for not playing their band's music, and yet there is no reason given why the radio station is not playing the music. Anyway, it has nothing to do with anything.

Generally, the movie is fun and worthwhile, and the ending is particularly so. I wouldn't dream of spoiling the ending, but I'll single out for praise the actor playing Piston, who is actually not the worst all the time (outside of the cartoonish drug trips he takes), and who reminds me a ton of Russell Brand (which I don't mean to sound like a slam). Don't go paying a ton of movie for this one if you find it, but enjoy it as a fine example of downscale erotic thrillers.