Thanks for the memories!

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

One of the best films I've ever seen. The film takes inspiration from some of the world's most macabre psycho murders cases and combines it with an A class script. The results is a cinema masterpiece that you don't see very often. The acting is stunning. It is very interesting and enjoyable to see the sickening mind of a demented serial killer brought to life with such a life like performance. Donna Wilkes, being one of the actors I've never heard of before, delivers one of the most touching performances I've ever seen. It is a very dark film and that is a good thing. I love films that takes its root from reality showing everything as they would in real life with all its tragedies instead of trying to create a cliché happy ending. The film is brutally honest, and that's a good thing. Everything is perfect about this film. I'm glad I've come across it. I wish every film I see is of this caliber. After watching this, I realized this is part of a trilogy. I can't wait to see the rest.

15 year-old Molly is the best in her class. Nobody suspects that the model pupil earns her money as lady of the night "Angel".The well organised separation of her two lives is shattered when two of her friends are murdered.She's the only eye witness and becomes a target. The investigating Detective helps her, not only to survive, but also to query why she does what she does....I really have no idea what I actually just saw, but after about thirty minutes, I couldn't stop myself from enjoying it.Everything about wreaks of exploitation, but it's not in your face. Never once do we see the titular character partake in any occupational traits, it's as if she spends the night with the worse cross-dresser in town, and a woman with amazing eyebrows, whilst avoiding a killer.Diehl is brilliant as the killer, and although he virtually utters no lines, he's quite a sinister presence.With films like this, there are huge unintentional laughs, and the best pedestrians on the street looking bemused, but that's what makes this film so much fun.It's bonkers, cheesy, way over the top, and short.Plus it's the best film ever to feature a Hare Krishna fight a transvestite.

In many ways, Angel is quite an understated masterpiece of the film maker's art. To be sure, it's low-budget and as such works with a lot of themes common to exploitation flicks whose primary (and quite often only) purpose is to make a quick and tidy profit. Tell any prospective viewer from B-movie fandom that this movie is about an underage hooker being hunted by a necrophiliac serial killer, and he (or in some cases she) will probably think he (or she) knows what to expect. In the absence of expensive special effects, we can expect to see lots of exposed female flesh and gratuitous sex scenes and the killer knocking off our protagonist's fellow hookers in increasingly gruesome and inventive ways, with only a minimal plot stringing these scenes together to justify calling them a movie, right?Wrong! The true genius of this film is how it defies such expectations. For all the rather titillating advertising on the cover, Angel is neither a slasher flick nor a skin flick. Yes, there's some killing, and yes, a few scenes have some female nudity, including some full-frontal. However, the camera never lingers over the killings longer than necessary, and for all the potentially prurient subjects this movie examines, there are no actual sex scenes. Angel, in fact, seems deliberately designed to swat the viewers' libidos in the very places where other exploitation flicks would tend to pander to them. Considering that it was a 25-year-old (!) Donna Wilkes playing the 15-year-old protagonist Molly "Angel" Stewart, and the other streetwalkers shown were indicated to be at least in their early 20s, Robert Vincent O'Neill certainly was at liberty to throw in a sex scene--or several of them--if he so desired. That he didn't suggests he was deliberately taunting more lecherous viewers by presenting the aforementioned nudity to us at only the most thoroughly unappealing moments. One of this movie's most impressive achievements has to have been making a scene showing half a dozen of Molly's nubile young classmates showering together and prancing around naked in a girls' locker room feel like nothing but an unwelcome distraction from the story.Another impressive achievement is how this movie follows Molly's exciting adventures as a Hollywood hooker without making her occupation seem particularly glamorous. As attractive and sympathetic a protagonist as Molly is, Angel is not some clichéd "hooker with a heart of gold" story. Once again, the scripting seems intended to frustrate lechers, with the camera regularly following a small gang of Prostitutes Who Don't Do Anything; the only times we actually see them plying their trade is when they're about to run into the killer or (in Molly's case) some of his grisly handiwork. The story thereby brings the difference between "excitement" and "enjoyment" into stark relief: yes, turning tricks as a prostitute is rather exciting, in the same sense that being a bank teller during a heist or a soldier on the front lines during a war is exciting. Most of us, however, would rather not experience such excitement firsthand. Molly makes clear in numerous scenes that she knows just how risky prostitution is, the only reason she's in this business at all is to pay her bills, and otherwise she's trying to steer clear of it.While O'Niell and Wilkes each deserve considerable praise for keeping us focused on Molly as a person rather than a sex object, the rest of the cast certainly deserve some acclaim for all having played such colorful characters so effectively while helping keep the story on track. Lieutenant Andrews provides us with a strong moral center to the story and his sometime partner Collins gives the movie a hint of the feel of a buddy cop film. The killer, nameless and voiceless until the very end, manages to be both pathetic and loathsome to behold in every one of his scenes. The only John we ever see with Molly is amply rude and obscene to help kill off any lingering romantic notions we might have had about prostitution, and the disgusting jerk jock Ric Sawyer and his gang make excellent secondary villains for us to love to hate."Mae" the transvestite and Solly the butch landlady provide a bit of comic relief with their bizarre personalities and (dare I say it?) a hint of heterosexual tension between them in several scenes where they argue like an old married couple. (Heterosexuality between a manly woman and a womanly man? It makes a twisted kind of sense, I guess.) Kit Carson and the Yo-Yo man turn in excellent performances as well and serve to remind us that one doesn't have to be a hooker or serial killer to appreciate some of the local color in the Hollywood Boulevard, with the bit parts of a "Jesus Peddler" and some Hare Krishnas helping round out the setting. Even the school guidance counselor Patricia Allen gets a moment in the limelight in a dispute with Solly, and Molly's adorably nerdy classmate Wayne garners a bit of sympathy at the beginning when she lets him down easy from his awkward attempt to ask her out on a date.About the only fault I can find with Angel is that some of the language, particularly from Mae, Solly, Andrews, and Allen, was a lot fouler than it needed to be. Also, while the gratuitous nudity was cleverly made as unappealing as possible as mentioned, cutting it out altogether (as in the edited-for-TV version rumored to exist) could only be an improvement. Ultimately, seeing this movie made clear to me why it did so well at the box office and so poorly with its critics: the general public doesn't watch pornography for a well-written story, and doesn't go looking for pornography in a well-written story. The critics went looking for pornography in a well-written story, and were duly disappointed. Had they been looking for a good story as I was, they would have found Angel a lot more satisfying.

*SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT*I bought this video for three bucks. You don't know how long I've been staring at the video box cover of "Angel" and wondering when I was going to get around to watching it. The front cover of "Angel" is pure exploitation. It has Angel on the left side of the cover wearing pigtails and holding some schoolbooks. The right side of the front cover has Angel in high heels and a short red skirt. The tag line is "High School Honor Student by day. Hollywood Hooker by night." Classic! This is a film that no sleazy film lover could possibly resist.One thing you can say about the tag line for "Angel": It didn't lie. So Angel is a high school honor student by day and a Hollywood hooker by night. She hangs out with other ladies of the night and tries to earn some money. A mad killer is stalking Hollywood Blvd. and wants to slice and dice some hookers. Angel won't stand for it. She's got a gun that's bigger than she is and she can't wait to use it.Well, I wanted to love this movie but it just wasn't sleazy enough for me. I should have known the video box cover was too good to be true. The main problem with "Angel" is that Angel does not get naked. Does NOT get naked. I found this to be troublesome since she was supposed to be a Hollywood hooker. Not only that, she doesn't have any sex scenes in the entire movie. No sex scenes for a Hollywood hooker movie? She even says at one point, "I've had sex with hundreds of men…" When was that Angel? Was that in a different movie? Why is Angel being so shy?That's the basic problem with "Angel". It's trying to be a real movie when it should have been sticking to being extra sleazy. "Angel" gets pretty emotional for a Hollywood hooker flick. Angel tends to cry a lot about her family life or lack thereof. Not to seem heartless but I don't really want to see Angel weeping uncontrollably. There are a few scenes of gratuitous female nudity at the high school locker room and some decent fight scenes but overall "Angel" was kind of a letdown.Great video box cover. So-so B-flick.