User Reviews

By the mid-1980's, it took a pair of maverick movie makers to briefly revive porn's dissipated capacity to shock with this warped delight. Director Peter Vanderbilt and writer/producer Pablo Cairo, who might be one and the same for all I know, completed this film independently in 1983. Yet it would take them almost three years to find general distribution – through industry giant VCA – in a slightly watered down version.

Chronicling the downfall of one time golden boy Lee Keller obsessing over a mystery woman, they wear their richly varied cinematic influences (ranging from Jess Franco and Jean Rollin to Sam Fuller) on their sleeves. A gutsy central performance by Jamie Gillis, hardcore's Harvey Keitel, really keeps the film together, helping it over the occasional rough spot such as a slow build-up with gratuitous group sex padding, scored with horrible muzak to boot. Thankfully, this is the last helping of conventional carnality the movie has to offer.

The flick kicks into high gear as Gillis loses his sanity over dark dame Desiree Lane (never shown to greater advantage) who indeed turns out to be a disciple of the Dark One. Hey, with a title like that, I really don't believe I might be divulging any well-kept secrets here ! In rapid succession, our man Jamie gets royally ravished in the local loony bin's nympho ward (shades of SHOCK CORRIDOR), coolly witnesses gal pal Lynx Cannon's staged gang rape and goes totally balmy in a stylized S&M bar setting, brutally biting the nipple off the evening's unlucky whipping girl ! I guess that screwing a demon is about the only way any devoted pervert could hope to top that. Gillis and Lane do just that in a climax that is both eerie and romantic in equal measure, with billowing white curtains and a color scheme straight out of CAFE FLESH.

Blown up from a 16mm negative, this moodily photographed film has a gorgeously grainy texture quite uncommon to contemporary carnality. Too bad, its visionary creators disappeared without a tracé following just a few more mundane videos with the off-beat DREAMS OF NATASHA being perhaps the most memorable of the bunch.

The Dark Angel was directed by Pieter Vanderbuilt and released in 1983 by VCA Pictures. It stars Jamie Gillis as millionaire Leland Keller who has just about everything he could ask for in life. As he put it, whatever he wanted in life that he didn't have, he just bought it.....if he couldn't buy it, he'd find another way to get it. This way of thinking ultimately leads to his demise in this film as the movie revolves all around an obsession. One night, as his chauffer is driving him home from an outing with two beautiful women (the gorgeous Martina and Lynx Cannon), he spots a woman (Desiree Lane) by a lamp post on a dark night. He is immediately awestruck and captivated by her beauty. He can't put his finger on what draws him to her, but he knows at that moment right there, that he would do just about anything to be with her. She disappears almost as soon as he sees her. Days later while driving around San Francisco (the city where the film takes place), he spots her dining at an outdoor restaurant, he rushes to her, but when he gets to where she is, all that is left is a lip stick stained champagne glass. He sees her again the next day, boarding a ship, he follows her onto the ship and realizes she's gone. Is Leland losing his mind? Does she even exist? His friends and business partners invite him to a Mexican restaurant where they're discussing how business deals are going down the drain due to Leland's detachment from reality. They say it has to stop.....that he has to get over her. He tells them he just has to be with her and that's what he intends to do. They invite Leland to a sex party in hopes of getting Leland's mind off his dream girl. He agrees to go but at one point at the party he imagines one of the ladies at the party is the woman he's after.....he quickly realizes it is not and is left empty. Leland starts to slowly fade into a world of madness and depravity all brought on by this mystery woman. He first pays the night attendants of a psychiatric hospital to allow him to spend the night with the women in the nympho ward. The scene is of ravenous sex.....the sounds are almost demonic!.....The next day his lady friend Lynx Cannon takes him to an abandoned garage (or so he thinks!) where she performs a strip tease to 80's synth music, the next thing that happens, four men in masks come out of the shadows, grab miss Cannon and start to rape her. She screams at Leland to help her but he does not, instead he locks himself in the car and watches as she screams and begs the men to stop. She is left unconscious, lying naked on a mat. As the men leave Leland gets out of the car, looks over her body, lights a cigarette, disposes of it after smoking it a bit and leaves. The men come back.......they were his business associates who are actively trying to get him off by setting up sexual escapades, even Lynx Cannon was in on it. Leland is being driven home, and he sees her again....the woman. He asks her, "what do you want from me?"......he gets no answer, and she disappears again. Leland is becoming detached from reality and is realizing that he likes hurting people. The next night, he goes to an S&M bar with his friends, Leland gets in on whipping a woman in chains. Once he imagines her as his dream woman he screams " YOU!" and he proceeds to bite the woman's nipple off. She bleeds and the scene continues with all the people at the S&M bar participating in sex and all other kinds of debauchery. Afterwards, realizing what he had done and thinking he needed a break from things, he decides to head to a secluded beach to relax and collect his thoughts. As he's walking by the beach, he sees his dream woman in the distance, by the water, standing on the rocks in a red cloak. He goes up to her and asks her again, "who are you?"....she tells him "don't you know Lee?"......he follows her as she disrobes....he follows her somewhere, but we don't know exactly where. To another realm possibly? Leland and his dream woman are in a smoke filled, dimly lit room....naked, standing by a large bed with a billowy canopy of silk curtains. She asks him " IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT LEE?". He tells her, "I'd give anything to be with you.........She asks "ANYTHING LEE, EVEN YOUR SOUL?" Lee says yes. They proceed to consummate their bargain. The sex seems to go on for an eternity. It is both beautiful, and unsettling at the same time......the mystery woman's eye's seem black, filled with nothingness, however she has a large smile on her face, and a look of satisfaction. As Leland reaches climax, he seems to have a heart attack as his heart starts to slowly fade......you can hear it, beating slower and slower, until it stops.

You see Leland in his limo on a deserted road, holding his mystery woman's stiletto heel. He realizes he is left with nothing, but her shoe and the memory of the night he slept with the devil. He is left there, to wander an eternity on an endless deserted road, waiting for his mystery woman to appear once more..........

The Dark Angel 10/10.