DVD review
Directed by Alan Parker
Starring Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, Lisa Bonet, Charlotte Rampling
Release date Out now

Private investigator Harry Angel is hired by the enigmatic Louis Cyphre to track down singer Johnny Favourite…

Alan Parker’s most interesting film relocates a large portion of William Hjortsburg’s supernatural detective novel from New York to New Orleans, allowing a more alien exploration of the story’s Voodoo backdrop.

Like the more recent Skeleton Key, this two-disc DVD set gives up a lot of space to a re-contextualising of Voodoo, stressing its positive, life-affirming religious aspects over the nasty, satanic Hoodoo portrayed frequently on film (including here, in Parker’s ghoulish take). As such, you get less on the film than it deserves, with most of disc two devoted to this redressing.

There are a lot of little featurettes about the movie but they tend to be archive and brief. Even an interview with Parker is only eight minutes long. Luckily the avuncular director is on-hand for a well-balanced commentary that is particularly vivid when describing working with the “two prize fighters of American acting,” Robert De Niro and Mickey Rourke.

The film’s colour noir looks glorious and the mood is sultry and dangerous. The famous sex scene involving Rourke, The Cosby Show’s Lisa Bonet, a chicken and its blood still has the power to shock nearly 20 years later. Richard Matthews

VERDICT: 7/10
The film scores an unadulterated ‘9/10’ but the package is lacklustre and not reverent enough for this magisterial genre piece.