No Surrender Cinema: Angel of Destruction (1994)
A serial killer setting his sights on a rising pop star. A badass ex-cop enlisted to help the singer. A badass current cop out to avenge the death of her sister. Soldiers getting left behind. The Philippines posing as Hawaii. All of this sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Like we’ve been down this road before? Well get ready for a film that does so much recycling that even Captain Planet himself was jealous. There’s a strong sense of deja vu in this edition of No Surrender Cinema as I blow the dust off an action rarity from a beloved era, 1994’s Angel of Destruction!
Featuring B-movie queen Maria Ford as the top billed star, Angel of Destruction is another film in a long line of collaborations between two of the most prolific low budget film auteurs in history, Roger Corman and Cirio H. Santiago. The two men teamed up on a number of films, especially some of the more notable entries into the late 80’s/early 90’s golden age of video store action. The duo is responsible for kickstarting Don “The Dragon” Wilson’s career as an action leading man thanks to launching the Bloodfist franchise, not to mention Blackbelt, a movie that Angel of Destruction is almost a complete rehash of!
I say almost because there are definitely some differences here, but I can’t say for certain if the changes were intended, or due to the producers having their hands forced. The first 20 minutes or so of Angel of Destruction follows the Blackbelt storyline to a T; some creepy guy postpones his hotel rendezvous with a hooker to go down the hall and thrash a bunch of guys who also happen to be staying there. Then, a girl is about to be gang-raped by some fat creep and his friends, only for cop turned gun-for-hire Brit Alwood (Charlie Spradling of Ski School fame) to show up and clean house on the would be rapists and return the girl to her mother in a very brief, awkward exchange made even more odd by the “girl” who was being trafficked being portrayed by an actress who was easily in her mid-30’s. This wasn’t a 90210 situation either, kids; this woman looked every bit of middle age. Hell, she looked older than Spradling, and in reality might have been!
Sticking to the previously established Blackbelt formula, we’ve also got a singer that a serial killer, who just so happens to be the guy who went looking for a fight before he got his money’s worth from a hooker, is obsessed with. Another difference here, besides the gender-swapping of the film’s hero, is that the singer in Angel of Destruction is not doing updated covers of 60’s songs like Shanna did in that film. In this movie, the singer, Delilah, is doing some avant-garde, semi-pornographic music video stuff, complete with her and her best friend/lover writhing around topless. It’s the exact type of stuff you’d see in other late night Cinemax movies of the era, but really served no purpose here, other than to get more boobs on screen. Just call this the T&Angel of Destruction!
Speaking of the titular character (and no, that’s not meant to be a boob pun), have I mentioned that we haven’t even met her yet? You might notice that I haven’t mentioned Maria Ford, the #1, first in line, numero uno star of the film during my rundown. That’s because Spradling, as Brit Alwood, was slated to be the star and the heroine here, which is why she was put in the Don Wilson role of saving the trafficked girl and getting hired by Delilah to protect her after the singer finds a severed finger in her dressing room; a gift left for her by a guy named Bobby Kell, aka the hotel fighter and hooker killer from the beginning. Well, ol’ Delilah better hope she gets a refund, because as it turns out Brit Alwood won’t be protecting her after all, because Bobby Kell strolls right up into her office and confronts her while she’s on the phone with her cop sister, Jo. Brit, who has not yet encountered Kell, brawls with him and ends up with her neck snapped, all while her sister listens on the other end. Word on the street is that the film took this detour from its original format due to attitude issues with Spradling on set. She was apparently difficult to deal with and outright refused to do a scene that would require her to bare her bust and battle a bunch of guys during a home invasion while wearing nothing but a thong. This meant that Maria Ford was elevated to the starring role and we got a somewhat hasty transition to her taking over as the protagonist. In a span of minutes, she replaced Brit Alwood as Delilah’s protector, while also on her own mission of vengeance, while also now having sexual tension with Detective Aaron Sayles, whom also had a past with her sister! This also means that we now have the actress who was paired with Don “The Dragon” Wilson in the first 2 Ring of Fire movies now being slotted into the same role he had in Blackbelt! Corman nearly broke the space-time continuum with that decision!
Jo immediately starting digging for dirt on Bobby Kell, discovering that he’s a combat vet surrounded by a pack of peers willing to do his bidding. This leads to a bar brawl between Jo and Sayles vs. Kell’s crew, a fight that was instigated by none other than former kickboxing champion Tim Baker, aka Jason Stillwell’s sad sack father from No Retreat, No Surrender! Admittedly, despite Baker’s previous appearances in Corman productions (Bloodfist II, Blackbelt) I was surprised to see him here, if only because Angel of Destruction didn’t have his, or anyone’s, kickboxing credentials (real or otherwise) plastered all over the opening credits.
In addition to protecting Delilah from Kell, Jo also has to contend with her shady boyfriend (who she keeps around while also maintaining a relationship with her girlfriend) and a mob boss manager who determines that Delilah’s overtly sexual image is a bad career move, thus making her worth more dead than alive. This leads to the aforementioned Topless Thrashing of the flunkies who break in to try and take out Delilah, not knowing that they would soon be defeated by a cop whose too cool to put a bra on for a brawl! Neither Jo nor the goons were expecting the interference of Kell either, who much like the character of John Sweet in Blackbelt, had decided that the star singer was his prey and his alone. Eventually, as you’d expect, he gets his hands on Delilah, and it’s up to Jo, with an assist from Sayles, to fight through a gauntlet of crazy Vietnam vets and save her from the psycho once and for all.
The only really strong complaint I have about Angel of Destruction is the Bobby Kell character. He makes unsettling, eye-popping faces every time he’s in a fight, I guess to show just how cRaZy he is, but it makes him look like a podunk indy wrestler playing heel. There are actually two different IMDB pages for Jim Broome/Jimmy Broome, who played Kell, and according to them his career consisted of this, and small roles in both Ultimatum and Stranglehold (another Corman copycat scenario), or this and nothing else. I’m not sure which is correct and I’m honestly not bothered to fall down that rabbit hole, because the only impression the guy left on me is that he looked like an off-brand Alan Tudyk. Remember at the end of Dodgeball, when Steve The Pirate gets all cleaned up with a haircut and new wardrobe? That’s your psycho villain in Angel of Destruction.
I should also note that aside from Broome, the rest of the supporting cast were one and done after Angel of Destruction. Jessica Mark, who played Delilah? Gone. Antonio Bacci (who played Aaron Sayles) and his fantastic, out of place in the mid-90’s mustache? Never seen or heard from again. We don’t know where they came from or where they went off to, but I do get a chuckle out of the fact that their “big Hollywood break” isn’t exactly a film you can sit around and show the grandkids. Especially Bacci, who got to enjoy a love scene with Ford that was replete with slow motion effects that did nothing to hide the sheer amount of overacting that was going on in it.
The direct to video market was big business for producers like Corman up through the late 90’s, and I swear he must have made a killing just by Xeroxing the same stack of scripts, changing the title, and slapping a new star on the cover. Blackbelt was a big success? We’ll do a girl cop version! Jerry Trimble got to do not one, but two different Don Wilson vehicles, as Live by the Fist was basically Bloodfist III, while Full Contact dare I say managed to surpass the original Bloodfist from which it spawned from. There are even, God forbid, ideas sprinkled throughout Angel of Destruction that appear to have come from the unrelated, nowhere near as enjoyable as the first film Blackbelt II: Fatal Force, a film that we rightfully roasted recently on the Bulletproof Podcast. I can deal with Kell being made about soldiers being left behind, and the Philippines masquerading as Hawaii here, because at least Angel of Destruction wasn’t taking years old footage and trying to pass it off as something new. You would think Spradling’s exit would have given them the out to try and satisfy the video market’s need for action with another cut and paste job, but instead we got something that was a mix of Corman’s best known works; a merger of action film and late night nudie flick.
For all of the lack of originality, behind the scenes drama, and nothing close to what I’d call “polished” action, Angel of Destruction turned out to be more fun than I thought it would be. Ford was the perfect choice for something like this, and her prior roles as the love interest of “The Dragon” did sort of lend credibility to the action audience. Yes, there’s some “comedy” that’s not intended to be (Jo shutting down Sayles’ confession of love for her with a simple “I know”, Sayles literally taking a nap during the final fight) but let’s face it folks, we’re not sending this one to the Academy. I’m probably one of a select few who has thought this hard about the film and read into it so deeply, because as a viewer this is exactly the type of turn your brain off fodder that would have me wearing the VHS out (and no, it wouldn’t just be for the boobs, sickos). The best comparison I can make, aside from the obvious “inspirations” that have already been mentioned in this column, would be that Angel of Destruction is Corman’s answer to Anna Nicole Smith’s PM Entertainment filmography. Maria Ford’s leading lady status might predate Anna Nicole’s by a couple years, but I’d probably put them neck and neck as far as a spot on the B-movie food chain. Who wouldn’t love an Angel of Destruction and Skyscraper double feature?
Angel of Destruction is currently on YouTube. For physical media fans there are VHS and DVD copies that are OOP, so if you were looking to pick it up, be prepared to spend more than a few dollars to get this one in your collection.
