10 Things You Didn’t Know About Angel Town
I was pleasantly surprised when I learned that the MVD Rewind Collection was giving 1990’s Angel Town starring Olivier Gruner the Special Collector’s Edition treatment. Too many action movies from the 1990’s are relegated to living on YouTube or in a super compressed format on multi-packs found in the $5 DVD bin at your local retailer. These movies were beloved in the days when Blockbuster ruled the world and they deserve much better. I am hoping the Angel Town Blu-Ray is the start of a new trend.
I have been a big fan of the titles I own from the MVD Rewind Collection and their Angel Town release was no exception. As always they load these things up with exclusives, like interviews with key players both in front of the camera and behind the scenes, plus archival audio commentary with Director/Producer Eric Karson, “Making of” featurette and interview with the star of the movie himself, Olivier Gruner.
These special features were the source material for today’s post as I present, 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Angel Town…
1. Olivier Gruner and Director/Producer Eric Karson became quite close during the filming of Angel Town, with Karson becoming a father figure of sorts to Gruner. As his movie career continued, Gruner would often call Karson for advice and counsel.
2. Olivier Gruner’s character Jacques has a friend in Los Angeles named Harry Lee (Peter Kwong, Never Too Young to Die), who owns and operates a gym. Lee’s Gym in the movie is actually the gym owned by Benny “The Jet” Urquidez in Van Nuys, California. This is also the gym that Olivier would train at during the filming of the movie.
3. Eric Karson shot down the long standing rumor that Angel Town was written as a vehicle for Jean-Claude Van Damme. Van Damme did make two movies with Imperial Entertainment, Black Eagle and Lionheart, but there were never any plans for Van Damme to star in Angel Town.
4. The writers of the movie spent some time with Olivier Gruner before the script was finalized, so they could incorporate some of Gruner’s real life experiences into Jacques’ backstory. This was done to give the first time actor, Olivier Gruner, a level of comfort and allow him to more or less play himself in the film.
5. Angel Town was primarily shot in East L.A. and at one point the producers needed to cut a deal with The Bloods and The Crips to allow them to shoot in their neighborhoods without interference.
6. Local graffiti artists were hired to paint some of the fences and walls, to add an extra element of “gang culture” to the film.
7. Composer Terry Plumeri, who got his first composing job on Black Eagle and would go on to compose music for movies like Death Wish V: The Face of Death and Soldier Boyz, provided the orchestration for Angel Town. Eric Karson’s brother Gil Karson wrote all of the songs that were featured in the movie, including the title song “Angel Town”. Gil Karson and his band The Hot Heads also appear in the movie as the band playing at the frat party.
8. The main protagonist in the film, Angel Diaz (Tony Valentino), is driven around his turf in a pimped out lowrider with the license plate “ANGEL 11”. That license plate hangs on the wall of Eric Karson’s office and can actually be seen during Karson’s interview in the special features.
9. Speaking of cars, Olivier Gruner fell in love with the 1974 Fiat that his character drove in the movie and actually cut a deal to keep the car after the movie wrapped.
10. The helicopter seen at the end of the movie’s big action finale was an actual LAPD helicopter responding to a disturbance one street over, Director Eric Karson took advantage of it and shot the helicopter and incorporated it into the movie.
