Angel Heart is a 1987 American psychological horror film written and directed by Alan Parker, and starring Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, and Lisa Bonet. The film is adapted from the novel Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg, and is generally faithful to the novel with the exceptions being the introduction of a child of Epiphany Proudfoot conceived at a voodoo ceremony by "a devil", and that the novel never leaves New York City, whereas much of the action of the film occurs in New Orleans.
A highly atmospheric film, Angel Heart combines elements of film noir, hard-boiled detective stories and horror.The movie opens in New York City, in January 1955. Harry Angel (Rourke), a downtrodden private investigator, is contacted by an attorney named Herman Winesap (Dann Florek) and instructed to meet a client named Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro) in a Harlem church. While a competent detective, Angel is noteably unshaven, unkempt and slovenly; he avoids looking at himself in mirrors. Cyphre could not be more different, he is an an elegant, mysterious man who affects a beard, long hair and nails, and carries a cane. He tells Angel about a popular pre-war crooner named John Liebling, known as Johnny Favorite, who suffered severe neurological trauma resulting from injuries he received in World War II. Favorite's incapacitation disrupted a contract with Cyphre regarding unknown collateral, and Cyphre believes that a private upstate hospital where Favorite was receiving radical psychiatric treatment for shell shock has falsified records, deliberately preventing the contract from being fulfilled. He hires Angel to discover the truth and locate Favorite's true whereabouts.
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