I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

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.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

In her next to last film Jennifer Jones plays once again a decadent over sexed sultry figure in Angel Angel Down We Go. In the film she did a few years back The Idol Jones plays an older woman who flips for her son's friend who just looks at her as someone he wants to nail. But The Idol was classic next to this one.Jennifer Jones and Charles Aidman play a rich power couple who have a daughter Holly Near who's no Miss Junior Miss. Still her status requires she be given a coming out as any débutante must have. At that party she meets Jordan Christopher who is a second hand version of Christopher Jones's character Max Frost from Wild In The Streets. He hangs out with a group of Manson like followers that include Davey Davison, Roddy McDowall, and Lou Rawls. With her millions they welcome Holly into their group all the while Christopher takes aim on Jones.We learned here that Jeanne Crain showed uncommon good judgment in turning this film down. Watching Charles Aidman I thought he was imitating Jason Robards and maybe Jason was who was originally thought of to play the father. I guess that Aidman was having his own little joke knowing he was in a Thanksgiving Day special.The Idol and Angel Angel Down We Go were both made after the death of David O. Selznick, Jennifer Jones's second husband and career Svengali. Selznick sure had his faults but there ain't no way he would have let his wife appear in those two films, especially Angel Angel Down We Go.Jones was apparently no good at charting her own career, but her final film was The Towering Inferno where she played the part of a respectable widow who stays respectable.Jordan Christopher was imitating Jim Morrison in his role and I can't believe that they didn't give the genuine talent of Lou Rawls a song to sing.Fans of Jennifer Jones will not like Angel Angel Down We Go.

Of all the films I know from the period, by no means all of them, Angel, Angel Down We Go is surpassed in the annals of 60's camp only be Joseph Losey's Boom! and Modesty Blaise ( I have high hopes for The Angry Breed. ) Robert Thom's visual style is occasionally inspired but no match for Losey's tailgunning assaults on the retina. But he compensates with his words -- he is the Shakespeare of AIP. "Fat girls are the remembrance of things past." Can we not admit, in the age of the skeleton girls and bobbleheads, that this is at least as prophetic as the words of Elijah?Casual viewers may mistake this kind of movie as the work of indulgent, drugged-out weirdos but, sad to say, the real Hollywood reptilians make stuff like Love Story and Mission: Impossible III. Let's not forget that Bob Crane once starred in Disney films. It pains me to disappoint connoisseurs of what was once called trash, but there is always a moral component to the most outrageous camp classic. Beauty is truth and truth beauty. Valley of the Dolls ends with a parody of Ingrid Bergman in Stromboli, where Neely O'Hara is reduced to nothing and screaming for God, until she rebels and begins howling her own name! Showgirls of course is devoted to the most microscopic investigation of modern man's nostalgie de la boue. The remake of The Stepford Wives outdoes Von Trier by telling of women who perpetuate their own slavery by creating robot husbands to keep them in an idle luxury they never really wanted to give up. Almost every film by Takashi Miike is an illustration of my theory -- mocking the people who believe in a sort of "extreme cinema" divorced from spiritual context.Likewise, Thom tells it like it is -- the world he sees is a slaughterhouse draped in the latest fashions. But he is also on an apostolic mission. Out of this muck, one soul is restored to its original innocence: Jennifer Jones. Those who know anything about her tortured history will understand that this film is less a paycheck for her than a bizarre form of penance. This is a woman who, after leaving Robert Walker for David Selznick, and becoming Hollywood's most classic example of bartering her soul for fame, seems to have been a walking magnet for extreme wealth, almost as if she were being taunted. Can you imagine what it meant for her, in a fictional context at least, to trade in all her jewelry for cotton candy? Which she throws away without eating? This scene proves to the cosmos that her heart was always shielded from the lie of existence. And you can't fail to notice that this aging star, who has always attracted mystical projects, looks about nine years old in her orange jumpsuit, shortly before leaping to her death -- this scene would be the last of her career. Now you know who the angel of the title is. If you still want to see something sick and "extreme" with the same actress, leave Angel, Angel on the shelf -- for I fear it is actually boring and saintly -- and check out Selznick's wartime propaganda film Since You Went Away. There the resourceful Selznick actually cast Jones opposite Walker and made them reenact their youthful love affair under his merry, twinkling eye.

Although most people looking for the conventional "good" movie may balk at this picture's entertainment value, all I can tell you is that there's scarcely a boring moment to be had. Quintessential viewing for anyone interested in the downside of the psychedelic era with enough of writer/director Robert Thom's eloquently bad taste purple prose to keep one in a state of perpetual jawdropping incredulity.Jennifer Jones is a washed up (though rich) movie star and former porn actress married to cynical, houseboy-shtupping Charles Aidman. Overweight and screwed up Holly Near (soon to enjoy moderate folksinging fame) is their daughter. Through her, machiavellian wannabe popstar and unstated mini-cult leader, Jordan Christopher (the young hip actor who married Sybil Burton after Richard left her for Liz), worms his way into the household. He brings along his entourage, too -- which includes Roddy McDowell and Lou Rawls! Slowly Christopher amps up his mind games, and, with the aid of plenty of psychedelics, seduces everyone in this rotten-to-the-core family. Imagine Thom remaking Pasolini's TEOREMA in the AIP drive-in mindset with Southern California literary/theater pretentions and you'll get a pretty good idea of what to expect. I won't throw in any specific spoilers but Christopher wreaks havoc with all concerned. Suffice to say a couple of characters shuffle off this mortal coil (in other words, die!). Although not possessed with as much manic energy as the previous film Thom had written for AIP -- WILD IN THE STREETS (directed by Barry Shear) -- this is much more uncompromising in its bad trip vision of Southern California upper-crust-show-biz hypocrisy and the poisonous underbelly of the then-current youth culture. An appropriate movie to come out in 1969, the same year that brought us Altamont and the Manson-killings.WILD IN THE STREETS had done really well at the boxoffice and I suppose that's how Thom had convinced AIP to let him direct. Unfortunately ANGEL, ANGEL... flopped dismally finally rereleased as CULT OF THE DAMNED (under which title I recorded it on video off a censored, commercial interrupted USA Network showing back in the mid-80s -- it hasn't been on TV since, at least on the west coast). Apparently this wasn't one of the titles MGM/UA picked up from Orion (who in turn had picked up most American International Pictures rights). So, this is close to being a lost film -- although hopefully the producer, Jerome Katzman (?) may be out there somewhere with elements. If anyone's out there who knows him you should tell him this would probably do extremely well with a DVD release through someone like Anchor Bay or Image, companies who know how to promote great retro sixties trash.

A weird and hopeless mishmash of elements which will make you wonder how on earth this film ever got made and also why stars such as Jennifer Jones signed on in the first place. The plot revolves around an overweight young girl named Tara ("you know, after Gone With The Wind") whose life has been distorted by her rich parents who never loved her in the first place. She becomes involved with a rock singer and he and his group ingratiate themselves into her home and family. It is obvious that the film is supposed to be symbolic because we are continually shown a painting of the characters in morbid poses with their eyes gouged out, etc. but you would have to be on an acid trip to grasp them). Most of the lines are thrown in for shock value, and it is indeed shocking to hear Jennifer Jones (as Tara's mother) utter such lines as "I made 30 stag films and never faked an orgasm" or call her maid a "bloody sadistic dyke". A must see to believe it all but very bad cinema indeed.