Fallen Angels Series Review
by Kevin Tipple
Fallen Angels aired on Showtime back in the nineties and can be seen now on YouTube where both seasons are available. Season One consists of six episodes. Season Two consists of nine though the final episode, “Red Wind” is blocked and unplayable in the United States. These episodes are noirish and based on short stories from various authors. The actual tale that served as inspiration for the teleplay is not always credited. Settings range from the late 20’s to the late 40’s and each one is pretty good. These are men who are men in their smoking/drinking/violent glory, the women are always beautiful and dangerous, and the double crosses are plenty. Each episode is either just under thirty minutes or a few minutes over that mark.
Season One opens with “Dead-End for Delia” and is based on a short story by William Campbell Gault. This first episode stars Gary Oldman as Police Detective Pat Kelly and Gabrielle Anwar is Delia. After a sultry narrative voice over to introduce the tale (as is done in all the episodes of the first season) and set the mood, the episode opens in the street outside The Dreamland Club. For Sergeant Pat Kelly, the sight of his estranged wife lying dead on her back in the street is tough to take. He wants the case and intends to find out who did it one way or another. Haunted by memories, he works the case until all is revealed in a savage twist at the end.
Episode Two titled “I’ll Be Waiting” is based on a short story by Raymond Chandler. A lot is going on at the Windermere Hotel. Hotel detective Tony Resnick (played by Bruno Kirby) has seen many things on the job. But, nobody quite like the mysterious redhead Eve Cressy (Marg Helgenberger) who is supposedly there in the hotel waiting for her ex-con boyfriend to show up. She is not the only one waiting for him. Directed by Tom Hanks, who also has a small role in the episode, this one features multiple surprises.
Episode Three titled “The Quiet Room” is based on a short story by Frank E. Smith (writing as Jonathan Craig). Crooked cops have always been an issue. Detective Carl Streeter (Joe Mantegna) has teamed up with Sally Creighton (Bonnie Bedelia) so they can get theirs. Sally is a police matron and thus handles the young hookers that come into police custody. Sally is more than a bit sadistic and very much enjoys making the young women talk. She gives the info on the johns to Streeter who makes a visit to them and discusses what he needs, cash wise, to keep things quiet. It is a great racket. Until it isn’t.
Episode Four titled “The Frightening Frammis” also features a plan that goes horribly wrong. Based on a short story by Jim Thompson, and directed by Tom Cruise, Mitch Allison (Peter Gallagher) lifted $25K from his wife. Bette (Nancy Travis). She is a con artist and worked hard to make the money happen. He is a grifter and is sure that he can double the money by hitting marks on a train to Las Vegas. The plan went wrong, almost from the second he stepped foot on the train, and then massively escalated in a bad way.
Episode Five is titled “Murder Obliquely” and is based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich. Annie (Laura Dern) is single, lonely, and very quickly attracted to Dwight (Alan Rickman) who also happens to be rather wealthy. Unfortunately for Annie, Dwight is far more interested in Bernette (Diane Lane). Beautiful and twisted, she likes having men wrapped around her finger. The more men the merrier. Everyone in this tale is pushing their own agenda and that gets somebody dead.
The final episode of Season One is “Since I Don’t Have You” (incorrectly listed as “Cause I Don’t Have You”) and is based on a short story by James Ellroy. Gary Busey is Buzz Meeks and he does whatever the rich and powerful tell him to do whether they be Howard Hughes (Tim Matheson) or gangster Mickey Cohen (James Woods). Unfortunately, for Buzz Meeks, they both want the beautiful Gretchen Rae Shoftel (Aimee Graham) and want Buzz to make it happen. He tries to collect the cash while also trying to stay out of the middle and keeping the babe alive. If that is not enough, his bookie, Leotis, wants him to pay off his gambling debt quick. Everybody has a deadline for Buzz and that means he does too.
Season Two marks a stylistic change. In addition to a small change in the graphics, the narrator was changed to a male announcer. This change was certainly not an improvement as they should have stuck with the female narrated intros. The voice was sexy and set the mood. Instead, they went with some guy, who on several episodes, comes across as some sort of creep. It flat out does not work.
The first episode of Season Two is “Love and Blood” and is based on the short story “Return” by Evan Hunter who also wrote under the Ed McBain moniker. Boxer Matt Cordell (Kiefer Sutherland) was a force in the ring though these days not so much. He remains haunted by the fact that he caught his beautiful wife (Mädchen Amick) in their bed with another man. He still loves her though, so he does not slam the door in her face when she shows up at his cramped apartment saying all the right things. Kiefer Sutherland is also the director for this episode.
Episode Eight titled “Professional Man” is based off a story by David Goodis and directed by Steven Soderbergh. Johnny Lamb (Brendan Fraser) has a respectable day job as an elevator operator. At night, he is a contract killer. He’s good at both jobs. Sometimes the kill assignment does not sit well with him. Life is not simple and things are getting more complicated by day and by night.
Episode Nine titled “A Dime A Dance” is based off of the short story, “The Dancing Detective” by Cornell Woolrich. Directed by Peter Bogdanovich, the tale is built around taxi girl Ginger Allen. In the period that the tale is set “taxi girls” refers to women who were paid to dance with a guy. In this episode, the pay is a dime a dance hence the title. Ginger Allen (Jennifer Grey) does not believe in fairy tales. Then, police detective Nick Ballestier (Eric Stoltz) comes into her life and she begins to contemplate the fact that he might just be her prince sent to rescue her. Dancing with strangers for money was a crummy job. It wasn’t supposed to lead to something more.
Episode Ten titled “Good Housekeeping” is based on the short story, “No Escape” by Bruno Fisher. Directed by Michael Lehmann, this is another tale where the fairy tale and the reality are two very different things. Helen Fiske (Dana Delaney) thought she knew her husband Ralph, played by Adam Baldwin. Then Paco (William Petersen), a blind gangster, Molly (Marcia Gay Harden), who is his moll, and George (Benicio Del Toro), who is his henchman and not terribly bright, break into the house looking for Ralph. He is not home. They want answers as does Helen Fiske.
Episode Eleven titled “Fly Paper” is based on short story by Dashiell Hammett and a teleplay by Donald E. Westlake. The Continental Op, played by Christopher Lloyd, is tasked with the job of finding Sue Hambleton (Kristin Minter). The missing socialite is thought to be with petty gambler, Babe McClure (Michael Rooker). Suddenly, after a year she has turned up in LA by herself. But, is it really her? Things get very complicated very fast.
This is the only Continental Op story in the bunch and it is a really good one. It really worked well. it is unfortunate that more were not done.
Episode Twelve titled “Tomorrow I Die” is based on a short story by Mickey Spillane. Directed by John Dahl who also directed the previous episode, it is about a guy who drifted into town looking for a cold beer after a hot bus ride. He (Bill Pullman) may or may not be the movie star Ricky Thurber. He never wanted to be mixed up in a bank robbery. But, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and now the bank robbers have misidentified him as a local politician they can make do their bidding. All he wanted was to be left alone. Everyone should have left him alone.
Episode Thirteen titled “Fearless” is based on a Walter Mosely short story where Paris Minton (Giancarlo Esposito) comes to Los Angeles at the request of his friend, Fearless Jones. Paris owes Fearless (Bill Nunn) so he came as fast as the bus would get him there. On arrival, he learns that Fearless wants to help Deletha (Cynda Williams) take back (steal) her singing contract from a shady nightclub manager named Johnny Truelove. Fearless is in love with the sultry singer and Paris knows she is bad news in every way possible. But, you do what you need to do when it is a friend, Fearless Jones, who saved your life one night after you came home from the war and wandered into a new battle at home.
Episode Fourteen and the last one that can be seen on YouTube is titled “The Black Bargain” and is based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich as was Episode 9. It is bad when you have to hide out because your enemies have been wiping out your foot soldiers and they are coming for you. It makes things much worse when your own mind is playing games with you as well. Such is the case here for Miguel Ferrer who is the boss in hiding and losing his mind by the second.
This is a very creepy episode that reminds one of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits type shows. I never much cared for that sort of thing and have only seen a couple of each here and there. Losing one’s grip on reality was always too much like a horror thing for me and just not my interest at all. Predictably, I did not much care for this episode at all. I only watched it because of the need to do so for this review. It should be noted that the episode is done very well. Miguel Ferrer is very good in the role and intense. This kind of episode is just not my sort of thing.
Episode Fifteen is titled “Red Wind” and is blocked in the United Sates. No details are provided at YouTube about the episode or why it is blocked.
The two seasons and fourteen viewable episodes of Fallen Angels: The Complete Series are good ones. I think it was a mistake to switch to a male voice over on the intro for the episodes of Season Two. If they were going to do that, then they should have changed the imagery and not stayed with the images of a woman slowly and seductively getting dressed. The new male narrated version comes across as a bit creepy and weird.
Not only did they keep the imagery while changing the narrator, they added a screen with the phrase “PERFECT CRIMES” into the graphics. That also makes zero sense because there were never any perfect crimes in any of the episodes. What we have here are plans. Those plans were for various crimes, the fallout from crimes, and those plans were never perfect. Those plans were never perfect and often seemed doomed to fail from the start.
Occasionally, a plan succeeds, but usually not in the way it was originally intended. These episodes are stylishly done noir. Often in black and white, though there are occasional flashes of color cinematography. In all the cases, the beautiful women know they are beautiful and use their beauty as a weapon against guys who are men in every sense of the word. The men drink, smoke, kill — sometimes for love, sometimes for greed, sometimes for a desperate solution — and often find that they were played in some way by one or more of the beautiful women in their life. These are not tales to give you a warm and fuzzy feeling about others. These are tales where, regardless of gender, you do what you need to survive, while using whatever assets and talents you have to make that happen.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, violence often makes that fact clear. Highly entertaining and well worth your time, Fallen Angels: The Complete Series is available on YouTube. It may be available elsewhere on other streaming services or via other providers though I was unable to find it when I was working on this piece.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2021
Photo by Ante Samarzija on Unsplash
