Alternative Film Guide

Louis Black revisits Robert Thom in The Austin Chronicle:

"The camera heads up the stairs, past artwork to shelves of clothes neatly laid out, mostly sweaters except for a row of riding boots on the bottom. It continues across the room to display a case full of equestrian medals and statues and then along a wall of photographs of such notables as Eisenhower and LBJ. It tilts down to some bathrobes and bedclothes strewn on the floor leading into the bathroom. In the shower are a young man and an older one soaping themselves up.

"The voice says, ‘It’s not true that my father was a homosexual,’ as the drums keep going.

"Now the film’s title appears. Depending on which print you’re watching, it’s either Angel, Angel, Down We Go or Cult of the Damned. Soon, the camera will plunge into a more modern art: rich crayon lines wrapped around a photo collage.

"Angel, Angel Down We Go (the title I prefer) is a masterpiece of fingernails-on-chalkboard cinema. Its layered contradictions are not only the ideal way to introduce the film but also its maker, Robert Thom, who wrote and directed. If it were all he had ever done, I’d honor his career. But there is much more."

I remember very little about Angel, Angel, Down We Go, which I saw on TV a number of years ago. I can’t even remember who the leading man was. (I just looked him up: Jordan Christopher. Holly Near is the leading lady.) All I can picture in my mind now are LSD trips of some sort of other, Roddy McDowall looking even more fey than usual, and Jennifer Jones (photo). Jennifer Jones??? Yup, Jennifer Jones, saying stuff like, "I’ve made thirty stag films and I never faked an orgasm."

Not that I have anything against either stag films or orgasms, but I do remember wondering at the time how on Earth had Jennifer Jones — she of The Song of Bernadette, Portrait of Jennie, Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, Duel in the Sun; one Oscar, four additional nominations — gotten herself involved in something that trippy. (One explanation: David O. Selznick, who’d died in 1965, was no longer around to micromanage her career.)

In truth, Jones’ previous film wasn’t much better — The Idol, made in the UK in 1966 — and her following one would be just as bad as (though much more expensive and much less colorful than) Angel, Angel, Down We Go: The Towering Inferno. Ironically, Jennifer Jones goes down in that one, falling off of an elevator. And when she dies, so does the film.

Check out this brief commentary on Angel, Angel, Down We Go (and on other Jennifer Jones films).

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