Black Angel (1980)

As Good As It Gets

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

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.

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 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.

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.