Angel Heart (1987)
A rather obscure film starring Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro, this devil worship/possession movie scared the bejesus out of me when I first saw it and to this day it still disturbs me. Set in 1950’s New Orleans, the mood and atmosphere of Angel Heart is dark, humid, and pregnant with malice. Mickey Rourke stars as Johnny Angel, a private detective hired by Robert De Niro to find a man with whom De Niro has unsettled debts.
Rourke is drawn more and more into madness and the brutal world of brujeria (no, spellcheck, I did not mean “breweries,” thank you), witchcraft, and Satanism. Angel Heart removes the glamour from devil worshipping and makes movies like The Craft (starring Neve Campbell in a depressingly non-nude role) seem like an instruction manual in teenage goth masturbation. Angel Heart is twisted, scary, nauseating, and – worst of all – unforgiving.
