Black Angel (1980) User Reviews

Nice short, but not much more than that.

[peefyn · 6/10 · 11 November 2015]

Unlike many of the other reviewers, I had not seen this before. The short is quite light on plot, Sir Maddox comes home, only to hear that many are dead due to raiders and disease. He heads out after these raiders and has some "supernatural" experiences.

The cinematography in this short is great, as is to be expected as the director was most known for his cinematography work. The short does not rely on characters as much as it does mood, ambiance, and so on. I'm sure it was nice to see this in cinemas because of this. The costumes are nice as well.

The story is sadly not that interesting. Almost like a fairytale or a legend, it ends without really going anywhere. Things happen, but not memorable or that interesting.

Immersive

[Mr-Fusion · 7/10 · 14 May 2015]

"Black Angel" was never on my radar back in 1980 - mostly because I was in utero, but also because it didn't play in the U.S. But I'm a sucker happy stories of lost media being rediscovered, and this short film is also tied to "Star Wars" history; so it's right in my wheelhouse.

It's just a simple sword-n-sorcery tale of a brave knight traveling through his plague-stricken land and ultimately doing battle with a demonic wraith, but this is all about the ethereal fogs and Scottish locales that really suck you into this world. All sorts of stuff to really draw your eye. This thing's got killer atmosphere and it's a rock solid story.

7/10

What a great movie The Black Angel was. Must see it again.

[abryan · 10/10 · 17 August 2004]

The Black Angel had quite a profound affect on me, more so than The Empire Strikes Back. I remember the Angel itself as being a fantastic creation, ultra decayed evil, in the same style as Tolkien's Black Riders. I also remember the cinematography was stunning, very dark and moody.

I've been trying to get in touch with Roger Christian about the movie through both Warner Brothers (who didn't want to know), and Stonelock Pictures (company behind his current project, Gilgamesh). I'm still waiting to hear from them. My only other option, I can think of, is to try George Lucas, being as it was originally shown with The Empire Strikes Back and he was involved in funding the project in the first place.

I'll keep you posted chaps. But any help and advice would be gratefully received.

@ndy.

28/7/08 Update

Well I'm pleased to say after years of searching and metaphorically banging on peoples doors, I've had a result, and it really does restore your faith in the power of the internet. I have managed to contact Roger and quizzed him about the film.

Here is the response I got:

Dear Andy, it has touched me as i received many letters like yours at the time it was released with Empire Strikes Back and since then they continue. It was made specifically for the movie as George was upset about the short film with Star Wars. I am trying to find the 35 mm master to convert it, but somewhere in vaults in the Uk there is a beta copy and one day when I return there i will get some DVD's run off. It is interesting really as when it was shown industry people like ?David Putnam hated it and told me i should stop directing, but it was the response from the public who were deeply touched by the film that made me go on as a film maker. I will somehow let everyone know when I do get a DVD copy. all best and thank you again for your kind words. Roger Christian

Now how cool is that :) Roger, you the man...!!!!!

12/3/10 Yet another update.

Thought you might be interested in this interview with Roger which he talks at length about Black Angel, and the possibility or a release.... or not. Roger, please release this in some form..!!! :)

http://www.shadowlocked.com/index.php? option=com_content&view=article&id=134: exclusive-interview-the-worlds- of-roger-christian&catid=47: movie-interviews

I've had to split up the URL a little in order to be able to post it. You'll need to put it back together before visiting the interview page.

31/12/12 The best update yet...!!!!

This is stunning news. The original negatives have been found at Universal, and to quote "Christian is still debating how to share Black Angel with fans...".

More info can be found here: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/12/20-12-pl_blackangel/

Thanks to David Freeman for the heads up :)

10/01/2014 Another fantastic update thanks to Mark Grey.

According to Wikipedia the movie will be available on Netflix and iTune early this year (2014). Finally :)

20/05/2014 Final update.

At long last this movie is now available on iTunes. Only £1.99 for the HD copy. :) Very happy person...!!!!

If you have to watch a short, over and over...

[heckchap · 28 December 2002]

...Then it better at least be good!

I saw this short...countless times, as it was released in the UK spliced onto the front of "The Empire Strikes Back". I must have viewed this about 30 times, as a consequence.

This short film, which had a Princess held in thrall to a supernatural creation, sticks in my memory long after other shorts have been been long forgotten.

Medieval in tone and filmed on wind-blasted landscapes, watery glades, and

decrepit turrets, I remember the Princess phrase to the hero: "I am bound, to the Black Angel", as if it were yesterday.

I'd love a copy of this movie!

Absolute waste of time

[charliegeeza · 1/10 · 4 June 2015]

The film is available on Youtube (legally) for free. Just go there and search for Black Angel.

This is one of the worst short movies I've seen. For something 20 minutes long, it manages to include an awful lot of time wasting.

It starts with a 5+ minute "intro" where nothing happens as the film follows some benign horse ride. I found myself skipping ahead trying to work out where the actual story begins, or what little there is of it.

The fight scenes are atrocious. They include repeating footage (and this is a SHORT!) and the kind of hammy choreography that William Shatner would have been proud of back in the day. Whilst Star Trek had a more fun outlook for context, this piece is trying to be serious so it's just cringeworthy.

The story itself is not worth much. It is barely enough for a short film. This has not aged well and I'm amazed anybody can watch it back and say that it is either thought provoking or entertaining or anything.

Don't waste your time.

Lasting impression

[Kolskegg · 10/10 · 19 April 2006]

I saw this in the UK when it was the opening act for "The Empire Strikes Back". That was back in the day when you got a double-bill of two movies, or at least a movie and a short. A full generation has passed and I can still remember it vividly, even after seeing it only once.

At first I thought I was watching some time filler on the topic of pony-trekking... and then I noticed the rider had an axe by his saddle. Ahah; my interest immediately jumped a few notches. The things I recall most readily are the hero's helm with its entwined snake, his opponent's unusual maul for a weapon, and the armour which seemed grey with spider webs. In fact the armour was really something to see, being very dark but not quite black.

I do hope this comes out on DVD at some point. I had read many years back that it might be done as a full-blown movie. Either way, I want to see it.

Should have stayed lost

[Med-Jasta · 1/10 · 24 July 2021]

First of all, for a short it was way too long. Could have been half of the length and been much more effective. Instead of shooting itself in the foot with scenes that went on with far too long to lose their effect. It felt like Christen was trying to make a fantasy in the style of Leone but didn't understand that while Leone's scenes are long and drawn out, they also have a lot going on in them. It's not just watching a guy ride around on a horse for several minutes with nothing gained. An example is the fight. It was horrible. So long and repetitive. No choreography to speak of. Just the same back and forth swings over and over again. I wonder if they had a commitment to the length and didn't have enough story for this and stretched it out in editing.

Second, the story was very odd. He goes on a quest to avenge his family and then along the way decides to help some girl? He said that she saved him but when he was in the water I didn't see her pull him out. It could have been the poor quality on youtube though. Then he gives his life for her? With no real way to show that he achieved this. Then he goes in the water like before? Was he dead already and was trying to get into the afterlife or something? I thought the old man was the girl and the Black Angel? But she was there next to the BA at the end? I don't even know if Christen knows.

I didn't expect this to be Star Wars quality but I thought it would be cool since it was Lucas approved. But like Obi-Wan, "I was wrong." Lucas was smart to put this before Empire. By comparison it made his movie look even better.

excellent little short that should be avail.to the public!!

[sword_of_conan · 9/10 · 16 June 2003]

The best short film that i can remember was this little gem.Beautifully shot and very moody, this flick was very interesting to the eye, as well as having a simple, but effective storyline. This without a doubt should be released to the public in the form of a collection of other shorts or just by itself on DVD.

Okay, but maybe a bit too long for its own good

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 20 April 2017]

"Black Angel" is a 27-minute movie from 1980, so this one is already almost 40 years old. It was written and directed by Roger Christian, a 2-time Oscar nominee in art direction and he won the trophy once for his work on George Lucas' Star Wars. But this one here has really not much in common with this saga, except the fact that they are both fantasy films. This one here has a lot more to do with knights and princesses than with extraterrestrials as we follow the ways of a man named Maddox and what happens when a supernatural appearance saves him from drowning. The consequence is that he goes up against a dark knight (no pun intended!) and the outcome is somewhat interesting for a change as an ending like this is nothing you see in medieval films very frequently. If you can call this one medieval, that is. It's probably set in a different time and space perhaps. Anyway, Christian was a much more prolific filmmaker than most people know, but honestly judging from this one here I am not too mad that I am not really aware of his work either. The film had some lengths, even for a movie under half an hour, and is never as artistically impactful as I would have expected it looking at who's the man in charge. Story-wise, there is also nothing really memorable except the ending. I read that this film here may be turned into a new movie at some point in the near future, but it's all very vague. Cannot say yet if I have an interest in checking that one out if it does. Christian is still making films these days, so there is a possibility he could be directing here too. Being in the mid-70s should not keep him away. Back to this one here, I thought the uninteresting is more frequent than the interesting eventually and that's why I have to give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.

superb! want more!

[bobbrown-1 · 10/10 · 7 July 2004]

moving, memorable, ultra-Gothic - the sort of imagery that shapes lives this is a short that walks in your nightmares ...

but WHERE OH WHERE has it gone? I can still see much of it in my mind's eye even after almost a quarter century, but I'd love to be able to watch it again - and again - and again ...

ROGER: please please consider including BlackAngel as some kind of 'bonus track' on the eventual DVD release of your latest project "Gilgamesh"

please?

B.

A real curiosity.

[emox73 · 8/10 · 20 May 2003]

I saw this film like other people as a short before The Empire Strikes Back, and I must say I found it a curious but extremely dark and memorable pairing up. Its medieval and gothic overtones certainly coloured my experience of Empire, for good or bad. I would love to see it again, as an adult instead of a, then, scared and bewildered 6 year old. Worth a look, if you get the opportunity.

I loved this film

[sferrand · 10/10 · 24 April 2003]

I saw Emprie Strikes Back many times at the cinema - so I saw Black Angel just as many times. I'd love to see it again - can anyone out there help me? Does anyone know who the cast were?

I found the images from this film so striking that I can still see some of them now.

a lasting shock for a small child

[logtoad · 10/10 · 30 May 2007]

Like the others who have commented, this film remains deeply embedded in my mind, a quarter of a century after I saw it for the first and last time.

It would be fascinating to see how it has aged, and to exorcise the partially submerged memories of various elements that feature in this short film. The helmet sequence at the end - if I remember it correctly - is one of the few images I can still recall with clarity. The rest of the film lurks somewhere inside my being like a musty odour inaccessible to anyone's nostrils, including my own.

Today's kids would probably find this woefully tame, and it probably is nothing more than a load of old faux-medieval tosh with heavily filtered skies like a proto-Robin of Sherwood. However, at the time - for a child - there was something that resonated very strongly with the subsequent mood of the swamp scene in Empire Strikes Back... which, arguably, was more alarming with its Freudian dream sequence of Skywalker decapitating himself / his father, if I recall correctly (another one I haven't watched for a very, very long time).

What on earth was the Lucas-Christian axis trying to do the minds of toddlers back then? Whatever it was, it mashed my head so much that I am now compelled to drone on about it on a popular internet film forum such as this one, as if I am at an AA meeting or similar support group.

As you were.

UPDATE 18/10/13

Well, after 33 years I was finally able to revisit 'Black Angel' at the restoration premiere last Sunday at Throckmorton Theatre, Mill Valley Film Festival. An extraordinary film - and an extraordinary experience collapsing the gulf of time between viewings into a few short minutes and finding some core images reasonably intact, with other elements archetypal enough to be strangely familiar, without directly accessible memory. "I'm going to bypass your forebrain and appeal directly to your amygdala."

Things are looking good for this film being made much more widely available in 2014 - I'd advise anyone who sees this once again (or for the first time) to be especially careful with spoilers, as there will be quite a few people from the UK, Scandinavia and Australia eager to experience their own "chronological vertigo"... 33-year-old spoilers are the absolute pits :)

Can remember it perfectly nearly 30 years on

[jonathanmelia · 9/10 · 27 November 2009]

Great stuff this. I kept going back to see "Empire" as much for this short as for the film itself. (Tony Vogel's kids went to my school: I even remember having cello lessons with his daughter Anna...) Loads of fog, castles, an ethereal maiden and a bizarre "grim reaper" type figure watching over her. "Spare the child!!! Take my life instead!!!" Can't wait to see it again. It also had good music, trying to emulate "gothic" style voices, the kind you associate with the Hyperion music label. I was 12 and a half years old, and simply couldn't get it out of my mind. Even Excalibur, which came out exactly one year later, just seemed gratuitous and silly by comparison. I really hope the master is found so a DVD transfer can be made: let me know when it happens....

A tremendously atmospheric short film

[mark.saunders6 · 9/10 · 9 September 2006]

A can't really add very much to what others have written about the plot, except for my very vague memory of what may be the final scene. For that reason, please do not read on unless you want to see a possible spoiler! (assuming I've remembered it right!).

SPOILER! SPOILER! SPOILER! SPOILER!

I saw this just once 27 years ago and I've never forgotten it, even though I couldn't remember the title again for a long time (until today!). A fantasy set in medieval times, it had the same kind of realistic but romanticised "feel" of something like John Boorman's Excalibur or the Robin of Sherwood TV series, with the use of dark filters to make the film moody and atmospheric. The "knight" (presumably the Black Angel of the title?) was, I think, dressed a bit like the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail ("It's just a graze!"), with one of those archetypal flat-topped helmets with an eye slit, and black armour. I think he may have been on some sort of "quest", although my memory is so vague that I may be confusing it with Arthurian stories like Excalibur.

Unlike other people, I remember seeing the film as a support to the ecological horror film Prophecy (1979). Remembering the title of that film (Prophecy) and the year it was made led me eventually to work out that this film's title was Black Angel, released the same year. Presumably, it made sufficient impact for it to be used to support The Empire Strikes Back the following year? The only scene I seem to remember from it is what I think may have been the ending. The "knight" is killed (maybe blown up somehow or shot by arrows? - I said my memory of the film was sketchy!), and after his body flies through the air (in slow motion, probably) it ends up sinking to the bottom of a lake..? That may be completely wrong, but as I say this is a 27 year old memory!

A similar but expanded story set in the same period and filmed in the same style might have made a great feature film.

This is one film I would love to watch again to see if it was as awesome as I remember, but being a short it seems unlikely, unless it's perhaps been posted on the internet somewhere..?

Well worth 25 minutes of your time if you ever get the opportunity.

A very special film

[ServalanQueen · 8/10 · 21 September 2013]

Like others, I saw this film as a child just before watching Empire Strikes Back,and to be honest until I read the recent news about it being rediscovered by Universal, I had forgotten it was a real film - it was so dream-like and ethereal. I have also seen 'Gawain and the Green Knight' and 'Excalibur' a few times and I guess all of them have become a bit mixed in my mind. The Black Angel was definitely a haunting piece of cinema, and I can't wait to see it again, and show it to my son - I am sure it would appeal to children today, even if it may seem a bit old-fashioned. I miss the custom of having a short film with the main feature - it was a nice tradition, although sometimes the short might seem a bit 'random'. Not this one though - it was excellent.

I would buy this if it was released on DVD!

[sabre_pg · 10/10 · 14 August 2008]

*THIS POST CONTAINS POSSIBLE SPOILERS*

I remember watching this short in the cinema supporting The Empire Strikes Back. Although a little fuzzy now after a quarter of a century, I seem to remember the main character, some kind of knight, had a horse called Richard, and was wearing a large heavy helmet which didn't do him much good when he fell into a stretch of water and couldn't get it off. Before he drowns he manages to free the helmet from his head and scrambles back onto dry land and thus go's off on some quest involving a girl. Ultimately he ends up fighting his evil nemesis and during the battle is returned to the water to drown wearing the same helmet. I think the film is trying to suggest the knight did drown but was hallucinating during the event, hence the quest.

I may be wrong so lets hope it appears on DVD sometime soon!

Short but great

[Thomas-Musings · 10/10 · 4 January 2021]

Short but sweet. Very elegant costumes and a simple but heartfelt story.

masterpiece

[snowfrogg · 10/10 · 10 August 2010]

i remember it with empire strikes back but i saw it in London as well playing in front of firefox, i remember about 2 seconds of this film but so want to see it again, lets hope it turns up somewhere :)... The only part i remember is a long shot of the knight on a horse facing some sort of enemy, and the knight drowning but apart from that, nothing at all, i know i need to see this again as it made a lasting impression on me as a kid, if anyone has the rights to this small lost masterpiece then do the right and honourable thing, release it as an extra with something else i think it would do well on a DVD, I for one would go out and get it just for that extra...

For anyone who likes fantasy.

[e-mphasis · 9/10 · 1 June 2021]

A very moody, atmospheric piece of fantasy great for anyone who is into fantasy.

The storyline is simple yet very endearing, the soundtrack and the setting are spendid and drag you into the world.

A mystical quest to save a maiden from the clutches of the Black Angel?

[Bodule · 10/10 · 28 February 2014]

34 years ago I went to the cinema to see one of the big box office films of the day. Back then they still had a short film before the main feature. I saw something that day which has stuck with me through the years. It made a huge impression on me but I couldn't remember what it was called or which film I had seen it with. There were just images in my mind, a knight slowly falling through black water, and the feeling that I had seem something special that day. It turns out the big box office film I saw after the short was The Empire Strikes Back.

The short film itself was Black Angel but I didn't know it until the evening of 27th Feb 2014. Then I was lucky enough to be in the audience, including other folks like me who had seen it and had it lodged in their minds for 34 years, for the screening at the Glasgow Film Festival. I finally got to see it again and on the big screen to boot. To most it is probably of no interest but it is a cracking little mystical tale of a knight on a quest to save a maiden in distress. I would like to thank Andy Bryan, for tracking down the film, and Roger Christian, the writer and director, for giving me the chance to see it again. I don't know what you will think of it but it is a lost treasure found for me.

Dark, Brooding, Atmospheric

[imdb-73-573849 · 9/10 · 6 May 2015]

This movie has stayed with me ever since seeing it as a teenager when it was played as an accompanying short film to "The Empire Strikes Back". I thought it was absolutely brilliant however I also remember the comments of "Eh?" and "I don't get it" I overheard at the cinema.

It is dark, moody, brooding and atmospheric. Something to be experienced and slowly digested rather than passively watched - much of what a viewer will take out of this movie will be based upon what they themselves read into it.

I am so glad to have finally found out what the movie was called and even better to have found it is finally available. I am downloading it on iTunes as we speak!

Visually Stunning Cinematic Art

[AllNewSux · 8/10 · 31 July 2015]

If you're looking this movie up you probably already know the story of George Lucas' art director making a short film to show before 'The Empire Strikes Back'. For years it was thought lost and luckily it was found again in the 21st century. Although a bit thin on plot this director puts more scenery into a 20 minute film than most directors can put into their 2 hour long movie. The Scottish scenery is absolutely gorgeous, but for some reason the film seems other worldly. The overall plot may feel a bit familiar, but the twist ending just seals this up as a great work of art. The few actors involved are good, the action sequences are done very well and the bleak and creepy atmosphere make for a good film, but it is Roger Christian who makes it great. Christian went on to make a few decent movies, but this is his masterpiece.