It's amazing how sometimes one piece of information can change your opinion on something. When I first picked up Welcome Says the Angel at my local video store, I didn't look too closely at the DVD box. As I watched it, I thought it was something from the late 1970s that had been re-issued because that's what studios do now. They find anything they can and burn it onto a DVD in hopes that some poor sucker somewhere will buy or rent it. But when I got to then end of the credits, I saw it was made in 1996 and I got a brand new perspective on this movie.
The story concerns Joshua (Jon Jacobs) a British douchebag wandering the Earth in search of nothing in particular. You can tell this guy's a douchebag because he wears a pirate earring and a vest with no shirt. If he had one of those little ponytails, he'd be like a black hole of douchebaggery from which not even light can escape. Anyway, Joshua wrecks his motorcycle and finds himself walking through Los Angeles. He goes into a restaurant and proceeds to get almost-falling-down drunk on fat bottles of beer. A pretty blonde with crimped hair named Anna (Aysha Hauer) is amused by Joshua and invites him back to her place. It turns out her place is an abandoned warehouse which Anna has decorated in the style of Martha Stewart with a meth habit. She invites Joshua to share her bed platonically but when he wakes up the next day, Joshua is chained to the bed and watches Anna walk out the door with all his money. I don't know about you, but that would freak me out. Joshua, however, is remarkably nonplussed about the whole thing. Being held hostage is not that big a deal to him. Anna returns to the warehouse and an indeterminate amount of time passes where, I guess, we're supposed to believe Joshua and Anna are falling in love, even though Joshua disapproves of Anna's heroin habit. Eventually Anna lets Joshua go but, and I know you can see this coming, he returns to the warehouse and chains Anna to the bed to force her to kick her addiction. I know you can also guess whether she gets sober and whether or not she ends up falling off the wagon, so who needs to go into that.
When I thought this movie was made in the 70s, I was willing to give it credit for being engaging even though it wasn't very good. Though their characters are mostly ridiculous and their dialog is unmemorable, Hauer and Jacobs have a certain chemistry. They don't seem like healthy people falling in actual love, but like pathetic, desperate people thrown together in need. Even though the "loser douchebag tries to save seriously screwed-up girl" story is crude and simplistic at best, I have to admit it held my attention. And when I thought this film was made in the 70s, I could give it more credit for that.
But when you know it was made in 1996, it's hard to get past how primitive the storytelling is. The characters are cliché, the dialog is pointless, the plot is predictable and the story doesn't actually end, the movie just stops. As far as the filmmaking, everything is in focus but the rest is like the work of a dim witted student after their first semester in film school.
There are some decent sex scenes and if you want to see a shot of a woman's unshaven armpit, you'll find it here. But unless you can pretend this movie was made in 1978 and make allowances for the cruddiness of its form and style, there won't be much point in watching Welcome Says the Angel.
The story concerns Joshua (Jon Jacobs) a British douchebag wandering the Earth in search of nothing in particular. You can tell this guy's a douchebag because he wears a pirate earring and a vest with no shirt. If he had one of those little ponytails, he'd be like a black hole of douchebaggery from which not even light can escape. Anyway, Joshua wrecks his motorcycle and finds himself walking through Los Angeles. He goes into a restaurant and proceeds to get almost-falling-down drunk on fat bottles of beer. A pretty blonde with crimped hair named Anna (Aysha Hauer) is amused by Joshua and invites him back to her place. It turns out her place is an abandoned warehouse which Anna has decorated in the style of Martha Stewart with a meth habit. She invites Joshua to share her bed platonically but when he wakes up the next day, Joshua is chained to the bed and watches Anna walk out the door with all his money. I don't know about you, but that would freak me out. Joshua, however, is remarkably nonplussed about the whole thing. Being held hostage is not that big a deal to him. Anna returns to the warehouse and an indeterminate amount of time passes where, I guess, we're supposed to believe Joshua and Anna are falling in love, even though Joshua disapproves of Anna's heroin habit. Eventually Anna lets Joshua go but, and I know you can see this coming, he returns to the warehouse and chains Anna to the bed to force her to kick her addiction. I know you can also guess whether she gets sober and whether or not she ends up falling off the wagon, so who needs to go into that.
When I thought this movie was made in the 70s, I was willing to give it credit for being engaging even though it wasn't very good. Though their characters are mostly ridiculous and their dialog is unmemorable, Hauer and Jacobs have a certain chemistry. They don't seem like healthy people falling in actual love, but like pathetic, desperate people thrown together in need. Even though the "loser douchebag tries to save seriously screwed-up girl" story is crude and simplistic at best, I have to admit it held my attention. And when I thought this film was made in the 70s, I could give it more credit for that.
But when you know it was made in 1996, it's hard to get past how primitive the storytelling is. The characters are cliché, the dialog is pointless, the plot is predictable and the story doesn't actually end, the movie just stops. As far as the filmmaking, everything is in focus but the rest is like the work of a dim witted student after their first semester in film school.
There are some decent sex scenes and if you want to see a shot of a woman's unshaven armpit, you'll find it here. But unless you can pretend this movie was made in 1978 and make allowances for the cruddiness of its form and style, there won't be much point in watching Welcome Says the Angel.
