Angel, Angel, Down We Go (1969)

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

American-International Pictures during the 1960s usually had a good idea of what their drive-in audience would like to see, but they really missed the boat with "Angel, Angel, Down We Go" (a.k.a. "Cult of the Damned"), which was a box office disappointment. Studio head Samuel Z. Arkoff theorized that the failure of the movie was because the characters in the movie simply were not sympathetic, and the movie was extremely downbeat. That's certainly true, but the movie has additional problems. It's also pretty slow, with its thin story stretched out to the breaking point. Also, I am not sure what point the movie was trying to make, unless it was that life is a real downer. The movie is sometimes directed in an eye-catching manner (particularly the opening minutes), but it doesn't manage to hide that the story and characters are drab and uninteresting. It took a long time for this movie to get a home video release, though if you ask me, it could have stayed in obscurity.

In her next to last film Jennifer Jones plays once again a decadent over sexed sultry figure in Angel Angel Down We Go. In the film she did a few years back The Idol Jones plays an older woman who flips for her son's friend who just looks at her as someone he wants to nail. But The Idol was classic next to this one.Jennifer Jones and Charles Aidman play a rich power couple who have a daughter Holly Near who's no Miss Junior Miss. Still her status requires she be given a coming out as any débutante must have. At that party she meets Jordan Christopher who is a second hand version of Christopher Jones's character Max Frost from Wild In The Streets. He hangs out with a group of Manson like followers that include Davey Davison, Roddy McDowall, and Lou Rawls. With her millions they welcome Holly into their group all the while Christopher takes aim on Jones.We learned here that Jeanne Crain showed uncommon good judgment in turning this film down. Watching Charles Aidman I thought he was imitating Jason Robards and maybe Jason was who was originally thought of to play the father. I guess that Aidman was having his own little joke knowing he was in a Thanksgiving Day special.The Idol and Angel Angel Down We Go were both made after the death of David O. Selznick, Jennifer Jones's second husband and career Svengali. Selznick sure had his faults but there ain't no way he would have let his wife appear in those two films, especially Angel Angel Down We Go.Jones was apparently no good at charting her own career, but her final film was The Towering Inferno where she played the part of a respectable widow who stays respectable.Jordan Christopher was imitating Jim Morrison in his role and I can't believe that they didn't give the genuine talent of Lou Rawls a song to sing.Fans of Jennifer Jones will not like Angel Angel Down We Go.

The main reason to savor this deliciously decadent dress rehearsal for the entire career of John Waters is the very guilty pleasure of watching Jennifer Jones not only perform an homage to Gloria Swanson in "Sunset Boulevard" but apparently actually LIVE the role. Ms. Jones (nee Phylis Isley when she began her career as John Wayne's leading lady 30 years before this cuckoo classic was release)may NOT have been certifiable when she agreed to appear...but I for one can't think of any other logical explanation.The widow of David O'Selznic plays "The richest woman in the world" who is also "the most beautiful woman in the world" (personal quotes from the character...read with complete conviction by the actress...as is the admission to being "45"...Jones was 50...)...The character has an pudgy daughter named "Tara" (another quote from Jone's character "I LIKED 'Gone With The Wind'")...could the whirring sound I hear be The sound of Selznic rotating and revolving in his grave?? Why this grotesque but utterly fascinating slash at "Hollywood Royalty" is not known better under either of it's titles ("Cult of the Damned" was on the print I saw) is beyond me...it should have been a spookily prescient harbinger of the collapse of "old Hollywood" especially since it was released only ten days after the town (and the world) went reeling in the Horror of the murder of Sharon Tate...a crime it is impossible to avoid thinking of while watching this study of L.A. high society brutally invaded upon by a group of sadistic drug addled musicians.If you need more reasons to watch how about sweet little Roddy Mcdwell bearing his behind and playing gay (his lines about being rejected by the draft board aren't skating on this ice...they are more like dancing on it in toe shoes!!).All in all...a film so amazing and appalling...that it might be a masterpiece of schlock!

Of all the films I know from the period, by no means all of them, Angel, Angel Down We Go is surpassed in the annals of 60's camp only be Joseph Losey's Boom! and Modesty Blaise ( I have high hopes for The Angry Breed. ) Robert Thom's visual style is occasionally inspired but no match for Losey's tailgunning assaults on the retina. But he compensates with his words -- he is the Shakespeare of AIP. "Fat girls are the remembrance of things past." Can we not admit, in the age of the skeleton girls and bobbleheads, that this is at least as prophetic as the words of Elijah?Casual viewers may mistake this kind of movie as the work of indulgent, drugged-out weirdos but, sad to say, the real Hollywood reptilians make stuff like Love Story and Mission: Impossible III. Let's not forget that Bob Crane once starred in Disney films. It pains me to disappoint connoisseurs of what was once called trash, but there is always a moral component to the most outrageous camp classic. Beauty is truth and truth beauty. Valley of the Dolls ends with a parody of Ingrid Bergman in Stromboli, where Neely O'Hara is reduced to nothing and screaming for God, until she rebels and begins howling her own name! Showgirls of course is devoted to the most microscopic investigation of modern man's nostalgie de la boue. The remake of The Stepford Wives outdoes Von Trier by telling of women who perpetuate their own slavery by creating robot husbands to keep them in an idle luxury they never really wanted to give up. Almost every film by Takashi Miike is an illustration of my theory -- mocking the people who believe in a sort of "extreme cinema" divorced from spiritual context.Likewise, Thom tells it like it is -- the world he sees is a slaughterhouse draped in the latest fashions. But he is also on an apostolic mission. Out of this muck, one soul is restored to its original innocence: Jennifer Jones. Those who know anything about her tortured history will understand that this film is less a paycheck for her than a bizarre form of penance. This is a woman who, after leaving Robert Walker for David Selznick, and becoming Hollywood's most classic example of bartering her soul for fame, seems to have been a walking magnet for extreme wealth, almost as if she were being taunted. Can you imagine what it meant for her, in a fictional context at least, to trade in all her jewelry for cotton candy? Which she throws away without eating? This scene proves to the cosmos that her heart was always shielded from the lie of existence. And you can't fail to notice that this aging star, who has always attracted mystical projects, looks about nine years old in her orange jumpsuit, shortly before leaping to her death -- this scene would be the last of her career. Now you know who the angel of the title is. If you still want to see something sick and "extreme" with the same actress, leave Angel, Angel on the shelf -- for I fear it is actually boring and saintly -- and check out Selznick's wartime propaganda film Since You Went Away. There the resourceful Selznick actually cast Jones opposite Walker and made them reenact their youthful love affair under his merry, twinkling eye.