MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Night Angel’ Pretty to Look at but Has Eclipse of Humor

The moral of “Night Angel” (at selected theaters), a fast-paced, elegant thriller of the supernatural for the viewer is: Beware lunar eclipses.

For filmmakers it is this: When you’re spinning lush, erotic horror stories don’t forget your sense of humor--or to weigh the implications of what you’re evoking. Visually, “Night Angel” is terrific, but director Dominique Othenin-Girard and writers Joe Augustyn and Walter Josten take themselves both too seriously and too thoughtlessly.

According to Talmudic fable, Adam had a first wife named Lilith, who refused to submit to him. She left Paradise and haunts the night to this day. The filmmakers’ Lilith is a standard issue horror movie monster who emerges from a bog during a prolonged eclipse and takes the form of a beautiful woman (Isa Andersen) who proceeds to wreak destruction on the staff of a fashion magazine through her irresistible sexual allure.

Apparently, she figures that getting her picture on the cover on a trendy mag--before that eclipse is over--is somehow the perfect way to spread evil for evil’s sake. What the film gives us is yet another myth of Woman as the Destroyer, with the inference that in this instance she is a lesbian who pretends to have a feminist agenda. In any case, neither lesbians nor feminists nor women in general deserve to be given this retrograde image.

Andersen comes on with the solemnity of Theda Bara, the original screen vamp, or the campy ‘40s movie goddess Maria Montez. Having led two male Siren Magazine staffers to grisly deaths, Andersen’s Lilith zeroes in on art director Linden Ashby and his jewelry designer girlfriend Debra Feuer, whose sister Karen Black is Siren’s publisher.

Ashby, Feuer and especially Black acquit themselves as real pros, throwing themselves wholeheartedly into this hokum, as does Helen Martin as an elderly lady who is the one person who has Lilith’s number. Available credits for “Night Angel” (rated R for sex and violence) are scant, but among its various skilled craftsmen cinematographer David Lewis deserves singling out for his virtuoso contribution in making the film look better than it is.