By Erin Free
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit that they deserve. In this installment: director Robert Vincent O’Neil, who created the Angel exploitation film series, and also helmed Wonder Women, Paco and Blood Mania.
The world of cinema is filled with great film series – or franchises, as they are now commonly called – with the likes of Star Wars, Harry Potter, Twilight, The Planet Of The Apes, Toy Story, the films of The Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the ilk ruling the box office roost and clouding the pop culture consciousness. The far less celebrated world of exploitation cinema also has its multipart jewels, particularly in the horror field with the likes of Halloween, Friday The 13th and other classics boasting rolling instalments of varying quality. In terms of sordid, salacious action, the five-part Death Wish series (which began in blue-ribbon studio territory but went well-and-truly south when schlock-house Cannon took on the property) is pretty much king, but equally compelling, and considerably less cold-hearted, is the now largely forgotten Angel series.
Produced by New World Pictures (which had just been sold by famed movie impresario Roger Corman), the Angel series was devised and written by late director and unquestionable Unsung Auteur Robert Vincent O’Neil. Released in 1984, Angel – which played in Aussie cinemas and memorably boasted a truly classic and wonderfully sleazy advertising campaign – is the supremely sordid tale of fifteen-year-old Molly Stewart (Donna Wilkes), a private school girl and A-grade scholar abandoned by her parents who pays her rent and school fees by working the streets as a prostitute under the name of Angel.
Though undeniably salacious, Angel is a lot more than its nasty premise might suggest. “High school honour student by day, Hollywood hooker by night,” screamed the posters. But despite initial appearances, Angel is also an incredibly warm, big-hearted film, as the essentially orphaned Molly creates a loving surrogate family of oddballs for herself amongst the sleaze and sin of LA’s notorious Hollywood Blvd. Looking out for fifteen-year-old (yes, again, that’s fifteen-year-old!) Molly is a crew of loveable, marginalised misfits: aging movie cowboy Kit Carson (western icon Rory Calhoun), street performer Yoyo Charlie (Steven M. Porter), drag artist Mae (a wonderful turn from Dick Shawn), fellow prostitutes Crystal (Donna McDaniel) and Lana (Graem McGavin), and Molly’s eccentric artist landlady, Solly Mosler (played with a typical lack of inhibition by cult superstar Susan Tyrell).
“I wanted Hollywood Blvd to be The Yellow Brick Road,” Robert Vincent O’Neil has said, hinting at the very peculiar and affecting brand of warmth that informs Angel. “Angel was Dorothy, and Kit Carson and Mae and Susan Tyrrell were the Cowardly Lion, etc. That was the idea. That was the concept when we came up with it. We fantasised Hollywood Blvd. The life of Hollywood Blvd…it pulsed through the movie. That was the idea.”
The hard, brutal edge of Angel comes with its lurid plotting, which sees a vicious serial killer stalking Hollywood Blvd and murdering the prostitutes that ply their trade along its illicit length. Angel and her friends soon become caught up in the killer’s web, which also sees the involvement of Lt. Andrews (the great character actor Cliff Gorman), a nice guy cop who becomes another unlikely ally to Molly aka Angel. Thrilling, chilling and utterly compelling, Angel is pure exploitation, but it’s wonderfully made and wholly heartfelt exploitation, and Robert Vincent O’Neil really makes it work. The film was a big hit, making a huge return on its low budget, and a follow-up was quickly rushed into production.
Though nowhere near the equal of Angel, 1985’s Avenging Angel (which saw Betsy Russell replace Donna Wilkes, and Robert F. Lyon sub for Cliff Gorman) is still a great piece of exploitation fun, as Angel tracks down the gangland killers of Lt. Andrews. Robert Vincent O’Neil didn’t stick around for Angel III: The Final Chapter, with fellow Unsung Auteur Tom DeSimone taking the reins instead. This saw the series head into enjoyable action-oriented territory, with another actress in the title role, this time Mitzi Kapture. A failed pilot for a TV spin-off was released directly to video as Angel 4: Undercover in 1993, starring Darlene Vogel, but wasn’t tied to the previous films, and had no involvement from Robert Vincent O’Neil.
While the under-valued Angel series is the very obvious centrepiece in the career of the equally under-valued Robert Vincent O’Neil, this gifted writer and director has a number of other fascinating titles on his resume. He debuted in 1969 with the sleazy The Sins Of The Daughter, and brought a sense of lurid flair to two horror thrillers – 1970’s The Psycho Lover and Blood Mania – before going right over the edge into pure campy exploitation with 1973’s Wonder Women, in which Ross Hagen’s insurance investigator battles an all-girl army run by nefarious surgeon Dr. Tsu, played by Nancy Kwan. O’Neil also eased off on his more prurient impulses with 1975’s G-rated Paco, the story of an orphaned Colombian boy who gets involved with a crew of young jewel thieves.
Solely as a writer, O’Neil also contributed to the scripts for 1980’s heist flick The Baltimore Bullet (starring James Coburn and Omar Sharif), 1982’s Vice Squad and 1983’s Deadly Force (two sleazy exploitation classics starring wildman Wings Hauser), and 1984’s sci-fi adventure What Waits Below. Robert Vincent O’Neil passed away on March 12, 2022, at the age of 91, leaving behind a relatively small but fascinating body of work…and an indelible, under-celebrated film series in the shady but grimly optimistic Angel.
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs Marvin J. Chomsky, Sam Firstenberg, Jack Sholder, Richard Gray, Giuseppe Andrews, Gus Trikonis, Greydon Clark, Frances Doel, Gordon Douglas, Billy Fine, Craig R. Baxley, Harvey Bernhard, Bert I. Gordon, James Fargo, Jeremy Kagan, Robby Benson, Robert Hiltzik, John Carl Buechler, Rick Carter, Paul Dehn, Bob Kelljan, Kevin Connor, Ralph Nelson, William A. Graham, Judith Rascoe, Michael Pressman, Peter Carter, Leo V. Gordon, Dalene Young, Gary Nelson, Fred Walton, James Frawley, Pete Docter, Max Baer Jr., James Clavell, Ronald F. Maxwell, Frank D. Gilroy, John Hough, Dick Richards, William Girdler, Rayland Jensen, Richard T. Heffron, Christopher Jones, Earl Owensby, James Bridges, Jeff Kanew, Robert Butler, Leigh Chapman, Joe Camp, John Patrick Shanley, William Peter Blatty, Peter Clifton, Peter R. Hunt, Shaun Grant, James B. Harris, Gerald Wilson, Patricia Birch, Buzz Kulik, Kris Kristofferson, Rick Rosenthal, Kirsten Smith & Karen McCullah, Jerrold Freeman, William Dear, Anthony Harvey, Douglas Hickox, Karen Arthur, Larry Peerce, Tony Goldwyn, Brian G. Hutton, Shelley Duvall, Robert Towne, David Giler, William D. Wittliff, Tom DeSimone, Ulu Grosbard, Denis Sanders, Daryl Duke, Jack McCoy, James William Guercio, James Goldstone, Daniel Nettheim, Goran Stolevski, Jared & Jerusha Hess, William Richert, Michael Jenkins, Robert M. Young, Robert Thom, Graeme Clifford, Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
