Angel's Flight (1965) User Reviews

Anything east of La Brea is Film Noir.

[mark.waltz · 7/10 · 2 August 2018]

I remember passing by Angel's Flight in 1983 when I first moved to L.A., fascinated by a feeling I got about it, and sad that it sat there all closed off, not in use for years apparently. Downtown L.A. was fascinating for me, much like parts of San Francisco and Mahattan would be on later exploration, and as I began to study film noir, the one aspect of that film genre that fascinated me was the location footage used, either real or studio bound, but recognizable as a real site none the less. Whether it be Joan Crawford running up and down the streets of San Francisco in fur and heels, K.T. Stevens on the Brooklyn bound side of the Manhattan Bridge right above East Broadway in Manhattan in "The Port of New York", or Barbara Stanwyck escorting her husband through L.A.'s Union Station in "Double Indemnity", location footage is a fascinating document of how cities remain the same and how the night can lead to murder on those dark and mysterious quiet streets.

"Angel's Flight" is a very low budget thriller about a troubled young woman's past being exposed through her sudden murderous activities, and it takes place mostly in that small area of downtown Los Angeles where a sudden hill changes the look of one of the oldest neighborhoods there. Seedy bars, filled with party girls and perverted men looking for cheap thrills, are always a great setting for film noir, and for pretty blonde waitress Indus Arthur, that seedy bar is a metaphor for the angry abused woman hiding mysteriously inside her that she seems to be unaware of. In the very first seen, she's seen kissing a man, but suddenly brandishes a knife and slices his whole neck. It's the third such murder in the area of Bunker Hill, and while the old lady who rents Arthur a room screams upon seeing it happen, it is obvious that she doesn't recognize her as the killer. Drunken reporter William Thourlby is on the scene to get every scoop he can on this story, and as the mystery grows, more bodies are added to the list of Arthur's victims.

Outside of one sequence in the flatlands of Griffith Park (probably just above Western Ave. off of Los Feliz Blvd., all of this takes place in that little section of downtown L.A. and the atmosphere, whether at day or night, is captured with a viewpoint that screams "seedy". One bar sequence features a very young Rue McLanahan as a boisterous party girl having far too much fun, and it is obvious that she is doing more than just being chatty for free drinks. I've visited a few seedy L.A. bars in my time that seemed to open just as dawn was breaking, and they get the character down perfectly with sad people drinking from morning until passout time, waking up just to start again. Indus Arthur, whose only other major role was as Lee Baldwin's troublesome step-daughter on "General Hospital", is sadly pathetic as her troubled character which makes her mesmerizing, and the actual tram that goes up and down Angel's Flight is so much a part of the story that it virtually becomes a character.

Man Killer

[kapelusznik18 · 5/10 · 8 August 2016]

***SPOILERS*** Long forgotten movie filmed in the long demolished Bunker Hill District of L.A at the Angel's Flight rail pulley station that has to do with man hater and stripper Liz who's on a mission to murder, by slashing their throat, any handsome man that she comes in contact with. It's the dead drunk reporter Ben Wiley who comes across Liz's latest victim after a night of heavy drinking and collapsing, on a pair of garbage cans, in the streets. It's later after sleeping it off at his hotel room, that he's behind in the rent,Ben staggers down to Nate's Bar to-what else-have a couple of drinks to get himself started. It's then that he sees the morning paper where the so-called "Bunker Hill Slasher" claimed his or her latest victim that he soon realizes he was a witness to!

The film has Liz after attending church services at the 3rd Street Chapel go out looking for handsome men to murder for reasons that had to do with her childhood when she was raped by a gigolo or ladies man who took advantage of her. Seeing , when he sobered and cleaned himself up, what a good looking man Wiley is Liz planned to make him her next victim. This after she added two more notches on her straight edge razor, that she uses to murder her victims, horse player Harry Badger and her good friend who in fact tried to help her bartender Nate. It's Nate whom she accidentally pushed into traffic and got run over after he tried to talk some sense into her confused head.

***SPOILERS*** The movie ends where it started at Angel's Flight train station where Liz now on the run from the police as well as Ben who tried to help her falling to her death as the movie's slow motion theme song Angle's Flight pays-what seems like off key- in the background. Liz for her part suffered from a split personality complex that caused her to go out and work as a stripper at the 3rd Street Night Club by night and go to church services, and light a candler, by day to ask for forgiveness for the crimes that she committed. Really messed up in the head Liz lost it when she met the handsome Ben Wiley who by him trying to help her kept Liz from murdering him which ironically turned out to be, with Ben being the one responsible for her death, her fatal flaw.

A Smoggy Bunker Hill Noir

[mgtbltp · 7/10 · 24 December 2015]

This film along with 1964's The Glass Cage are quite possibly the last of the Film Noir to feature Los Angeles' seedy Bunker Hill neighborhood before it was wiped off the face of the earth forever by the Community Redevelopment Agency.

Originally a wealthy residential suburb with panoramic views of the Los Angeles River and the Los Angeles basin, Bunker Hill retained its high tone exclusivity up to the end of the First World War. As the city exploded in growth and with commuting made easy by an extensive streetcar network, the original inhabitants absconded for greener pastures leaving the absentee landlord, crumbling old Victorian and Queen Anne mansions to be sliced and diced, converted into low rent apartments, rat trap rooming houses, residence hotels, and flops for the lower income denizens. The two funiculars Angels Flight, and a few blocks further North the Court Flight (which went defunct in 1943) provided easy access up the steep slopes of the Bunker Hill escarpment. This film even more so than The Glass Cage is particularly anchored to the intersections and buildings above the Third Street Tunnel at the top of the Angels Flight at Third & Olive.

During the Classic Film Noir period, a shot or sequence featuring Angels Flight in Bunker Hill was a Los Angeles visual signifier of desperation, poverty, decadence, the abode of winos, addicts, degenerates and criminals. It functioned, much like the Third Avenue El would do for New York City based Noirs, or the el's of Chicago's Loop. What's really a bonus, in this particular film for geographical nerds like myself, is that you can really get a sense of the physical layout of the neighborhood, you see the four corners of the intersections, the street signs, the buildings in reverse angles, the layout of the land so to speak, that you don't get in the fleeting shots from other Film Noirs that used Bunker Hill (Criss Cross, Cry Danger, Losey's remake of M, The Hollow Triumph, Act of Violence, Kiss Me Deadly and The Glass Cage).

Ex newspaper reporter and alcoholic Ben Wiley, scratches out a living typing out ten cents a word stories for pulp fiction rags. He drinks because he's trying to blot out the memory of his lost love who is dead. One night, while on a bender, as he stumbles his way in the dark back to his residence hotel he runs face to face into a fleeing woman who he calls an "Angel" a beautiful luminous blond who pushes him away and into some garbage cans hidden in the shadows.

A loud clatter spills tin cans, bottles, and Ben himself off the curb and onto the pavement. His "Angel" looks back at him briefly before scurrying down an alley up a stairway. It's Liz a young troubled stripper who has just used a straight razor to slit the throat of a man who had the misfortune to pick her up.

The next day we see Liz at the edge of Hill Street, crossing in front of the Third Street Tunnel. She then boards Angels Flight and rides to the top terminal at the intersection of Olive and Third. She appears to be in a daze. While she is in the car riding up, she attracts the notice of a man in a light linen suit and wearing a Panama Hat. Panama Hat pauses at the top to stoop over and get a drink of water from a public fountain, but he keeps his eye on Liz and watches as she crosses the street and enters the Angel's Flight Cafe/Bar kitty corner to the funicular.

At the café she is comforted by Jake the bartender a sort of surrogate father figure to Liz. He pours her a glass of orange juice and tells her to get out of the stripping business. You get the sense that he's told her this many times before to no avail. He also senses that something else is wrong. That night at the Third Street Strip, Panama Hat sits at a table leering at Liz while she does her act, she's not very good at it, just going through the motions, but her attraction is her youth and innocent look. Panama Hat is found dead that night.

Ben has sobered up and fallen in love with his vision when he finds out that Liz is a residence at the same hotel he approaches her. She is standoffish at first but they soon warm up into a relationship. Ben makes progress with Liz but he is concerned about her because he discovers a series of portraits that she paints of the same face, a dark ominous man with a broken nose. Flipping through a True Crime magazine he comes across a photo of the same face done from a police description of a rapist He finds out that Liz was raped near the Angel's Flight half a year ago and he now knows that she is the slasher, killing the rapist over and over again whenever a strange man approaches her. Indus Arthur, is good in this film as the melancholy troubled young woman (it's her first film), the rest of the cast is adequate enough to be believable.

The world depicted is the now lost world of the tobacco users and heavy drinkers, a time when sleazy women trolled dive bars for laughs and tricks. A low budget existence of greasy burgers and cheap beer, where you listened to torch singers, and strippers danced to live bands. It's Noirsville.

This film is a visual treat for Noiristas, it definitely needs a restoration, these screen-caps are from the Youtube upload, there is a DVD available from Pressplayhouse DVDs I'll be picking this up for sure and see if the picture quality is any better, a 7/10.

A Black and White Time Capsule

[Rathko · 8/10 · 10 April 2006]

An American Cinematheque presentation at The Egyptian.

Ultra low-budget late-noir flick that seems to blend the mood of classic noir with the sleaze of early drive-in exploitation; Hershell Gordon Lewis channeling Howard Hawks. Rightfully heralded more as a priceless historical record than as a quality movie, it provides a fascinating glimpse into the Bunker Hill area of downtown Los Angeles on the eve of its destruction. The seedy tenements, streets, bars and strip clubs are wonderfully evocative of a lost place and time.

The lurid and preposterous story, for what it's worth, involves Thourlby's recovering alcoholic being used as bait (he's a 'pretty boy', you see) to lure and capture a violent serial killer stalking attractive lotharios on Bunker Hill. In the process, he is drawn to the damaged and peroxided Liz, a particularly inept stripper at the local titty-bar.

The whole thing comes to a very sudden halt, the result, it turns out, of the film crew being busted by the police for filming without a permit.

As a no-budget thriller, 'Angel's Flight' is surprisingly enjoyable, not least because of some genuinely bizarre and at times charismatic performances from the leads, and a raucously sleazy jazz score. But the movie's real value is to Los Angeles history buffs as a brilliantly evocative record of Bunker Hill. It is in this latter role that I award it so highly.

Dark, seedy post-noir, surprisingly well tendered on a microbudget

[EyeAskance · 2 June 2003]

*spoilers*

"Angel's Flight" is like a bad hangover...so sweaty, dark, and gritty, you'll feel like taking a shower when it's over. Although its strongest foothold is in the noir ethos, the film could also be regarded as an early prototype to what we now know as the slasher subgenre(with a fat pinch of sexploitation for good measure).

The late Indus Arthur is lovely in this, her film debut, portraying Liz... a stripper with a childlike innocence who is driven to murder when aroused by men. It's eventually revealed that her psychosis is the sad result of a memory-repressed violent rape which occurred years earlier. William Thourlby(the original Marlboro Man and star of the cult classic "The Creeping Terror")plays a crapulent writer being used as bait by the authorities in an investigation of the killings. He unexpectedly finds ill-starred romance with the pitiable, knee-jerk murderess, and aims to seek professional help for her dangerously burdened mental state.

ANGEL'S FLIGHT is better than one might expect...an ugly, unhappy trip into the seedy underbelly of L. A.'s long-gone Bunker Hill area, once the gateway to the Angel's Flight railway system where much of this was filmed, likely without permits. Don't blink, or you'll miss future Golden Girl Rue McClanahan's bit as stumbling barfly. The film ends abruptly(possibly unfinished?) with key matters left unresolved, but I still recommend this rather oddball rarity to fans of skid row noir\neo-noir.

5/10.

Effective time and timeless capsule noir

[HEFILM · 8/10 · 9 April 2006]

I just saw what was said to be the first screening of a more complete cut of this film here in 2006 as part of the noir festival. Let me mention real briefly that the post synced dialog, at least in this version, wasn't bad at all, and the motives for the killings are not what is stated in one of the other comments here. This film feels a bit cheap at first but the performances and the film quickly grows on you. What you have is a film shot in the early 60's that seems to have never been released, shot in Black and White with more of a modern sick city undercurrent to it that renders the whole thing fascinating. The grunge of the soon to be demolished buildings are like the story about to degenerate into the chaos of the 60's. It has elements, like the title song, that are pure 40's but the frank, if not explicit, sexual back story--not to give anything away, are more modern. So it works well as a later noir. The location photography with a handful of memorable shots and one cool police flashers superimposed in the eyes of the killer moments work well. The script is pretty well done and other than a sort of wide eyed crazy old lady--who adds to the fun but takes away from the other better actors--this holds together as drama. The end is abrupt but totally works. This should be released on DVD, the back-story of the film and filming are as noir as the film itself. Worth seeing and better made than either Blast of Silence or Dementia.

saved from obscurity, and well worth it

[goblinhairedguy · 8/10 · 31 October 2005]

First there was "Dementia", then "Blast of Silence", and most recently, "Angel's Flight" -- obscure, independent, late-period noirs which gained minor cults due to their unavailability, little-known origins, and eccentric handling of the genre -- each now revealed to us through the magic of home video. And my goodness, each one lives up to and even surpasses one's expectations.

Despite its technical limitations (the post-sync dubbing is particularly distracting), "Angel's Flight" evinces a rich visual imagination, submerging us in a demimonde of smoky bars, fleapit hotels, sleazy trysts and the randomness of life. The narrative is intriguingly oblique, almost cubist in approach, and the dialog is replete with ripe gutter-philosophy. The plot presages many a future slasher movie, particularly the great "Ms 45". Like the best low-budget noirs, it possesses that edgy oneiric quality of a world seen through the haze of a few too many cheap bourbons and loves lost -- and the futile hope for redemption by our own personal angel. Cornell Woolrich would have appreciated it.

Indus Arthur is perfect as the otherworldly angel/devil. Look for Rue McClanahan in a small role as a barfly.

Headed for DVD

[560 · 8/10 · 10 April 2006]

The title "Angel's Flight" has a marvelous double meaning...the late, quaint funicular railway in downtown Los Angeles, and the film's emotionally scarred "angel", Liz. Made on a shoe-string budget over a period of several years, Deane Romano's script is a mature, non-exploitation story of a serial-killer in L.A.'s seedy side. Eschewing gratuitous violence, the killer's psychological turmoil is revealed by her relationship with a local newsman and the help of the good-guy detective. Excellent cast (especially the gorgeous Indus Arthur), well-devised plot and unique locations far overcome some spotty photography and uneven directing. On balance...good entertainment!

Bad Writing, Bad acting, Bad Editing - Great Locations!

[Hoohawnaynay · 10 April 2006]

Well, after seeing this movie over the weekend on a big screen in Hollywood I have to say it's not the worst movie I've ever seen but close! The writing is full of clichés, the editing looks like it was done with a machete and the directing was either non-existent or he was loaded while filming. The lead actress, Indus had maybe two expressions throughout the whole movie. She wandered around the old Bunker Hill section of Los Angeles in a stupor most of the time. Her strip scene was a laugh riot. She was supposed to be looking seductive and instead looked like she was grimacing from a gall stone! There is a nosy old woman who lives in her building who overacted to the point I thought she was auditioning for Halloween Haunted House. Her hair perpetually up in curlers and a face that looked like Peter Lorre IN DRAG! Plot concerns a stripper who gets murderous at the same time she gets aroused. The only thing interesting about this movie was the great seedy locations provided by Bunker Hill, a location that city officials should have been executed for destroying instead of restoring. Great old Victorian Homes that were bulldozed in the late 60's to make way for tall office buildings. Watch this curio piece for that alone. I laughed out loud at the intended high drama!