MonsterHunter

Black Angel is based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich whose works have provided material for movies as diverse as the classic Rear Window to the atom bomb with Antonio Banderas and Angelina Jolie called Original Sin. As luck would have it, Black Angel falls closer to the Rear Window side of the coin than to the Original Sin side.

It tells the tragic tale (is there any other kind in film noir?) of Martin Blair, a drunken piano player who gets embroiled in the murder of his wife. She refuses to see him one evening at her swanky apartment building (I know it’s swanky because it’s got a large doorman that Martin threatens) so Martin has a gigantic heart-shaped broach sent up that was so gaudy no one but that great-aunt who smells like diapers when she tries to kiss you would think about wearing in a million years.

As Martin is leaving the building he spots a rotund grease ball that can only be Peter Lorre, going up to see her. After that, another dude, Kirk Bennett rolls up to see her, but he finds only her strangled body. Somehow or other the killer manages to steal the heart shaped broach while Kirk is lollygagging around in the room, so that Kirk notices it has been swiped. He leaves and eventually gets tapped for the crime, but we have our hook. Whoever has the broach is the killer. Let’s get that search warrant for the flop house room the estranged husband who has a temper and likes the hooch has!

Once rejected again by his wife, Martin goes on a binge and ends up back at his room at this no-so swanky-by-the-week place. His pal Joe knows that it’s best to lock Martin in his room leaving Marty on his certainly urine-stained mattress so that he doesn’t go out and do anything crazy while under the influence of the firewater, like say, I don’t know, strangling his wench of a wife.

Meanwhile, Kirk Bennett’s wife, who is a lot less perturbed that Kirk was having some type of affair with this dead woman than she ought to be (Can you say “doormat with low self-esteem?), is convinced that Kirk is wrongly accused. Since he is wrongly accused, he is convicted in about a week and sent to the Big House where they’ve booked him a reservation in the gas chamber for something like two weeks from now.

Even though Kirk’s wife, Catherine, is a dunderhead when it comes to men, she knows how to investigate a crime! She immediately rolls up to that drunk Marty to find out what he knows. His buddy Joe says don’t sweat it toots, I’ll alibi him up for you. Catherine sees what a washed up drunken lout Marty is and slides some money under the door. Heck, that’s good work if you can get it, Martin! Of course, Martin’s got more pride than puke-stained shirts might otherwise indicate, so he makes tracks to Catherine’s house to give her the money back. Once there they chit chat about this and that, about murders and wrongly accused philandering husbands and Martin agrees to help Catherine find the “real killers.” Thanks Juice.

Using a mysterious phone number that was on a matchbook that Mavis had, they figure out that they need to go down to this nightclub run by Marko (Lorre). Martin thinks that maybe he’ll see the man that was going up to Mavis’ apartment as he was being kicked to the curb by the doorman. At first he sees Marko’s right-hand man, a beefy, bouncer type and Martin says that he doesn’t think that’s the guy. No crap? Then he sees Marko and says that’s the guy! In a scheme that reeks of one of the better episodes of Hunter, they decide to go undercover as a nightclub act!

She used to be singer so she uses an assumed name and I guess hopes that no one’s been reading the papers about the big murder and these two get jobs as a piano and singing duo at the nightclub. This allows them investigate and to slow things down with a bad song or two. Lorre has her up in his office and lets her watch as he opens up the safe that he keeps a box in marked “Incriminating evidence - do not open!” Later, Lorre goes out on a date with a male gossip columnist so Catherine goes up to his office and gets into the safe. She also calls the cops. Marko comes back unexpectedly and it turns out the business with the safe was all a set up!

Before anything can happen, though, Captain Flood shows up. Flood is the cop who busted Bennett and Catherine is trying to get him to reopen the case. Flood is one of those cops who plays by his own rules which means the Constitution is so much buttwipe to him as he makes Marko open up the box. There is no heart-shaped broach, only some pictures and documents about Marko’s daughter. Marko didn’t want anyone to know that he was her father since he’s a convict that goes out on dates with male gossip columnists. Mavis was blackmailing Marko about this and she was also blackmailing Kirk Bennett about their affair. It also turns out that Flood had already talked to Marko and had been watching him and knew he didn’t do the dirty deed on that scummy Mavis. As you might imagine, this little fiasco ends Martin’s and Catherine’s nightclub career.

Well, Martin figures that since Marko didn’t do it, maybe that Kirk Bennett guy did do it. With him getting gassed tomorrow it sure seems like a waste to have this blonde (and more than a little homely!) widow out there all by her lonesome, so he makes his move and she just shoots his ass down! She doesn’t want to give up on her no-good husband and she says he is the only man for her! Marty checks his watch and notices that it is now officially beer-thirty and will be for the next several days! Binge time! You get a pretty sweet montage of Marty getting ripped all over L.A. which consists of him not combing his hair, sweating a lot and getting a three o’clock shadow on his pretty little mug.

He has an encounter during his bender that causes him to go crazy and he gets himself locked up in the nuthut. This gives him time to reflect on what has happened. Flashback time! Through the hazy-fog of his on-going alcohol detoxification he sees what really happened that night Mavis was whacked! One crazyhouse bust out later, a little explaining, and Flood gets on the phone to the governor’s mansion to tell them to call off the execution!

Dan Duryea (Criss Cross, Too Late For Tears) elevates this movie from it’s fairly tawdry True Detective-type story and turns what could have been merely a pathetic character into someone that fails in life in spite of his own heroic efforts. Duryea, who looks a little like William H. Macy and sounds a bit like Willem Defoe, gives us a performance where we believe that the character of Martin Blair is a drunk and when not drunk, fragile enough that he may go careening off the wagon at the first sign of trouble.

When we meet him, a woman has done him wrong, and we presume that that is what caused his drunkenness in the first place. It takes another woman who shares his interests (singing, finding real killers, etc.) to dry him out. But even so, the specter of the bottle is not far away. A scene in Catherine’s house while Martin is waiting for her shows him ready to go on a bender once he locates the booze in her place. He hesitates long enough that Catherine appears and he doesn’t give in, his interest in her stronger perhaps than the booze. Naturally, Blair returns to the only comfort he’s ever truly known when Catherine ditches him, his sobriety a result of only finding happiness with someone else. When it’s taken from him, everything falls apart.

Obviously, as in many film noirs, women are portrayed as the great destroyers of men. Marko survives everything precisely because he hates women. Paradoxically, that trait is limited only to evil characters - heroes and good guys always just want to be loved by women, even though it seals their fates. This film and so many like it recast the mating game into a protracted dance of death, women basically portrayed as actual black widows who mate then destroy. You know, I don’t remember selling the rights to my life story for this freaking movie!

© 2008 MonsterHunter