Angel of Destruction (1994)

Angel of Destruction (1994)
Aka: Furious Angel

 

Starring: Maria Ford, Charlie Spradling, Jessica Mark, Antonio Bacci, Chanda, Jimmy Broome, Bob McFarland, Chuck Moore, Timothy D. Baker, James Gregory Paolleli, Jim Moss
Director: Charles Philip Moore
Action Director: Ronald Asinas

 

It’s not uncommon to see some directors remake their own films. Eugène Lourie remade his seminal film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms not once, but twice: first as The Giant Behemoth, and then (to a lesser extent) as Gorgo. Spanish sleaze peddler Jesus Franco was notorious for this sort of thing. For example, his version of Jack the Ripper was little more than a scuzzier version of his own Awful Dr. Orloff. Shin Sang-ok, the South Korean director who was shanghaied to North Korea, where the made the kaiju film Pulgasari, remade it as The Adventures of Galgameth after he defected to the States.

I’m sure the reasons for doing so are money and creative bankruptcy, although in some cases, a director may feel that his vision was obstructed by studio interference and try to do it again in another project where he has more creative control. Gorgo in some respects was Lourie making it up to his daughter for killing the monster in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. I’m pretty sure that Shin Sang-ok thought that nobody in the States would ever see Pulgasari, so he made Galgameth as a way to tell the same story to a different audience.

Angel of Destruction comes very close to being a scene-for-scene remake of Don “the Dragon” Wilson’s Blackbelt, which was made two years earlier. It was also written and directed by Charles Philip Moore, who had directed the previous film. I’m guessing that New Concorde wanted to keep costs down—as Roger Corman was wont to do—and decided to keep things simple by making female-centric remakes of other films in their catalog. Thus, Bloodfist became Angelfist, and Blackbelt became Angel of Destruction.

The film is set in Hawaii (played by the Philippines). We open with a towering blond man (Jimmy Broome, in the Matthias Hues role), taking an Asian hooker to a hotel, where she strips for him. He tells her to hold on a sec, and excuses himself from the room. He goes to the other room and beats several men inside to death before throwing an old man out the window. Something about the guy having left him and his friends to die in Angola some years before. He returns to the room and has escort put on a wedding veil for some kinky “post-marriage” sex.

That evening, singer Delilah (Jessica Mark) is doing a concert, whose routine involves her and her girlfriend, Reena (Chanda, of Lap Dancing and Dark Secrets), singing while topless. Delilah apparently was a big star at one point, but her last two albums have bombed. She’s hoping that by taking the Sharon Stone (this was two years after Basic Instinct) approach to singing, concerts and music videos, she might be able to get back in the limelight. Well, several years later, Lil Kim would be doing this sort of thing at her concerts, so maybe she was just before her time. Anyway, she arrives in her dressing room after her performance to discover a severed finger left for her as a gift, courtesy of the creepy blond man.

Delilah and Reena go to see private investigator Britt Altwood (Charlie Spradling, of Erotic Dreams 3 and Caged Fear), whom we met in an earlier scene where she beat up some sleazy types in order to rescue a young girl from prostitution. Delilah requests that Britt be her bodyguard. Although, Britt is initially reluctant, but when her ex-beau Detective Aaron Sayles (Antonio Bacci) informs her from the hotel crime scene that Delilah’s plight might be related to the hotel murders, Britt agrees. Before she can do anything, the creepy blond man pays her a visit. Exit Britt, stage left[1].

Enter her sister, Jo Altwood (Maria Ford, of The Wasp Woman remake and Necronomicon), an undercover cop. We never see her go undercover, although she does spend the film reporting to duty in a sports bra or a midriff, so there’s that. Jo takes up the bodyguard gig for Delilah, while Detective Sayles, who she’s been boinging, investigates the hotel murders. At this point, the film breaks off into two separate conflicts…three if you count Delilah’s asshole boyfriend/manager Danny Marcus (James Gregory Paolleli, of Raiders of the Sun and Beyond the Call of Duty).  The main conflict is the creepy blond psychopath, whom Sayles and his partner, Sgt. Roony (Jim Moss, of Robo Warriors and Terminal Virus), discover to be Robert Kell, a former Green Beret who snapped after his Vietnamese wife was brutally murdered.

The other conflict is with Delilah’s record producer, Sonny Luso (Bob McFarland, of The Showgirl Murders and Carnosaur 3). Luso has invested a few million dollars into Delilah’s career and despite her initial success, two failed albums are a bit much for him. He’s convinced that her “Stripper Rock” routine is passé—if only he knew about “W.A.P.”, Sexyy Red, and Sukihana—and that it will cost him his entire investment. Since she refuses to budge on her creative instincts, he decides to hire a bunch of hitmen to take her out and collect on her life insurance policy to recoup on some of his losses. Lots of action, nudity and sex ensue.

All of the major plot contours of Blackbelt are here, from the ritualistic killings performed by the main villain to the conflict between the singer character and her boyfriend-manager and record producer. The opening scene of Angel of Destruction is a carbon copies of Blackbelt and the premise of the climax—the hero(ine) rescuing the kidnapped singer and fighting the villain’s mercenary buddies before confronting him a final time—are also the same. As I recall, both movies feature a fight with the record producer’s cronies at the singer’s mansion, with the villain sneaking in to kill the men, too.

There are few changed details. The suggestion that another high-kicking female was going to take up the case before getting murdered by not-Matthias is new twist. In Blackbelt, the conflict between the singer and the record company was more about trying to force her to renew her contract instead of becoming a free agent. In this film, it’s basically the opposite: they want to drop her because her Erotica-Pop is costing them money. In Blackbelt, Matthias Hues is deranged because he was sexually abused by his own mother. Here, Jimmy Broome kills as a sort of deranged mourning for the premature death of his wife—which sorta explains why his victims are all Asian prostitutes (although the fact the film was made in the Philippines might explain that).

Although Blackbelt had a few explicit scenes, this film cranks up the sleaze past Angelfist levels. We have two naked prostitutes, two musical numbers sung while topless, a sex scene with Maria Ford, Maria Ford performing an entire stripper routine, and a topless fight scene with Maria Ford. My understanding is that Maria Ford was one of those DTV actresses from the 1990s who was always sort of bitter about the fact that she was typecast into roles where she had to show off her breasts. On the other hand, her contemporaries, like Julie Strain, the two Shannons, Brinke Stevens, and Linnea Quigley, seemed to take it in stride.

As the film doesn’t skimp in one type of action, it also doesn’t skimp on the other. The action sequences were staged by Ronald Asinas, who had worked on Angelfist the year before. The fights are a lot more convincing than those in Angelfist, probably because (according to A.I.), Maria Ford actually held in a black belt in some style. Her punches hit harder than Cat Sassoon’s, and although she doesn’t do as much kicking in her fights, the ones she performs are a lot less “wobbly” than Cat’s were. Like Angelfist and TNT Jackson, this film features a topless martial arts fight—apparently Jo Altwood prefers to sleep wearing only a g-string.

My biggest qualm about Don “the Dragon” Wilson’s Blackbelt was that it boasted of having a bunch of champion kickboxers in the cast, and then wastes them in a lackluster climax. This film corrects that mistake by not promising us anything at all. The climax is a big gunfight between Jo Altwood, Detective Sayles, and a small army of Robert Kell’s mercenary pals. There are a few moments of hand-to-hand here and there, but with no previous expectations to deliver on, it ends up being more entertaining. The question of how a skinny policewoman can take down an ersatz Terminator-cum-Green Beret is resolved by allowing her to get in some good hits, but making it clear that she needs help from her friends. It’s not quite as good as Don Wilson vs. Matthias Hues, but it works. Not quite an exploitation classic, but it comes close.

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[1] - The IMDB suggests that there was another actress slated to leave, but was fired from the production for being an unholy terror to the cast and crew. I wonder if it was Spradling. I mean, why go through the trouble of giving her character an introductory action sequence if you’re going to kill her off in the next scene?