Angel Heart Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, Lisa Bonet Director: Alan Parker
Several of Robert De Niro's film roles take on demonic elements. As a mafia-backed gaming boss in 1995's Casino, he shows smouldering sadistic tendencies. In 1991's Cape Fear, as an ex-con, he wreaks scary vengeance on the vulnerable. The list goes on - even in the Meet the Parents films, a glint in his eye and an occasional turn of phrase keeps a glimmer of innate evil on a low simmer.
But in Angel Heart there's no suppressing it. Adding some unnecessary corniness to the fact that he plays the devil in disguise is his character's name: Luis Cyphre (Lucifer, get it?). Cyphre hires private detective Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) to track down a missing male lounge singer. As Angel investigates, he unearths baffling satanic practices that surround the disappearance.
Rourke's performance is convincingly emotional in this psychological thriller - and a huge step up from the mumbling one-dimensional waster he played in Rumble Fish a few years earlier.
Set in 1950s America, with Angel's investigation taking him between New York and New Orleans, the violent and sexual content is explicit. Before the film's release, several rounds of cuts were needed in order to keep its US rating as 'R', to get as wide an audience as possible.
Lisa Bonet, of television's The Cosby Show, turns in a strong performance as the daughter of a voodoo priestess, and is involved in the erotic content that caused a stir with censors in 1987.
