Angel Heart (18)

A richly atmospheric fusion of film noir, psychological horror and the occult, Alan Parker’s adaptation of William Hjortsberg’s novel Falling Angel remains one of the most distinctive American thrillers of the 1980s. Mickey Rourke, at the height of his screen magnetism, stars as Harry Angel, a hard-boiled private investigator whose seemingly routine missing-person enquiry, commissioned by the enigmatic Louis Cyphre (a superbly sardonic Robert De Niro), leads him from the rain-soaked streets of post-war New York to the humid, voodoo-inflected world of New Orleans. There, amid ritual killings, decaying urban landscapes and hidden histories, Harry’s investigation gradually becomes a journey into metaphysical terror. Parker balances the conventions of detective fiction with an unusually explicit erotic charge, heightened by Lisa Bonet’s striking performance as the enigmatic Epiphany Proudfoot, whose appearance marked a dramatic departure from her wholesome television persona. Sumptuously photographed and steeped in an atmosphere of mounting dread, Angel Heart transforms the classic noir mystery into an unsettling meditation on guilt, identity and damnation.