Blending Awareness with Exploitation: A DVD Review of Lucifer Valentine’s The Angela Tapes from Black Lava!
Lucifer Valentine happens to be one of those people who will cause a bit of a discussion or debate upon the underground. He’s practically blacklisted for numerous reasons which I won’t go into here. If you don’t know, check out Mr. Google.
All I’ll say is, I can name immediately, if asked, two directors who are as vile as this guy, for other reasons and similar ones. To me, in my reviews I’m not going to give myself a pathetic high five for bad mouthing someone when the film presented doesn’t merit such behaviour. Hell, I’ve given some opinion of his vomiting dolls shit before, and I’ve complimented his other films because not everything sits on the same shelf Check my double bill review for Black Mass of the Nazi Sex Wizard & A Perfect Child of Satan here.
The Angela Chapters falls within a category alongside his amazing Black Metal Veins. What can you do with the subject of heroin addicts? I know from experience, via old friends and work, you can rarely help anyone with an addiction like that. Support and be friends – someone to listen, money, it mostly goes out of the window near enough immediately.
Black Metal Veins certainly doesn’t glorify the life of an addict (I could name another director who does that as if it’s the ‘70s and ‘80s again), nor does it make the whole ordeal a patronising public service announcement. The film shows it raw, dirty, and nasty.
The Angela Chapters is exactly the same. The girls we meet (a couple appear in Black Metal Veins by the way), are desperate and badly damaged. Wherein Lucifer Valentine’s early creations do show battered souls and lost women, in this we get such a deep insight into what brought each of them to this dark lower level of shit. These are stories from the cesspool streets, humanity making subhuman victims. There’s a complete dickhead on IMDb who reviewed the movie, saying how it lacks vomit and gore, and features the least attractive females in the series. The stupid bastard missed the point. I do love how fans will have checked this with high expectations of his usual tirade of madness and were likely left dumbfounded midway. This reminds me of when Combat Shock was marketed as an action war flick. Ha, I bet that fucked a few heads up.
Obviously, The Angela Chapters is divided into chapters. The first few feature a lady called, Candace White, someone who Lucifer knows, and she has reached the lower level. How much of the tales are real and how much are prewritten doesn’t matter because there’s many Candace Whites in the world.
Using his fast, sometimes almost nausea inducing fast edit style, she tells her life story and how she ended up so desperate to do anything for his camera for money. It helps that she’s willing because she’s a pain junkie. She can take anything given out and Candace explains why along the way, how it makes her feel. This is quite important as the visuals become crueler.
“I was desperate. I would have done animals at that point. I’m doing what I do to survive.”
The soundtrack is so superb with noises, echoes, and no true form. It runs constantly through the chapters. Candace speaks of her past relationships, the trauma and the endings, her lack of money then into her childhood. She grew up in chaos and violence. Said violence has become her escape, her fetish. She accepts choking and pain. After being raped, she loves to act out rape fantasies. “The feel of the knife was so incredibly hot!” It’s all about her willingness to be controlled and loved.
Candace goes through her parts in the film being strangled, beaten, and dominated. We are of course aware she has a safe word in case it gets too much, but if she uses it, she’ll only get half of her cash. As an added rather fucked up desert, after mentioning epilepsy and how she feels it makes her a freak, she’s told that she’ll look hot having a fit, then strobe lights are used to trigger one.
Sister S takes over for Chapter 4, Sorcerer of Piss. She’s a blonde sex slave, extremely submissive and of course loves pain. Her nude body is a roadmap of old and fresh scars from self mutilation. As we see, she drinks a lot of her own piss as well. “Tell me what to do.“
“Choke me harder.” more strangulation and slapping to the face. Sister S feels she is protected by Satan as she gave her soul to him. When cutting she goes into a trance, feeling nothing other than it feels right. “I want to be perfect for you.” She is beaten by a belt. “I love pain.”
The segment concludes with her sucking up piss whilst being whipped. My Partner in Gore, Willow, and I noticed her false smile, and her empty goat eyes throughout. She is deadened to existing in this world.
Angel Abuse is the longest chapter, running just over an hour and it opens to a cadaver in a bath, bloody and bashed. A hammer laid to rest on top. We see photos of the main girl, Babycat, sounds of screaming looped forever, plus fast editing. Oh, we’re going into hardcore Lucifer Valentine territory now. The screams merge into a dark electric guitar.
Babycat verges on dangerously skinny, she’s tattooed and constantly hits herself. “I hate you! I hate you!” Looking like an early career, PJ Harvey, we see her vomit as she narrates gems, “Fuck me like a ghost.”
“I look at myself in the mirror and I see you, Master.” Her slaps create a nosebleed. Fucking hell, the music is intense! More belt strapping, Babycat can really take a beating.
The death of her mother from overdose began her downward spiral from a very early age. She only has vague splinters of memories of her mum. She uses various substances however uses coke so she can be closer to her mother. She feels if she was still alive, they’d use together.
We next meet Raven and Autumn Misery, both from Black Metal Veins. Switch and change back forth between them, their heroin, crack, schizophrenia, prison, violence, ex-relationship nightmares… “I learnt how to murder myself.”
In this segment, Babycat is becoming a whore. The two street veterans are teaching her. Babycat is fresh meat but excited. “I would let them (clients) choke me, slap me, spit on me, cut me, punch me, burn me with cigarettes…. A lot of people don’t want to do that sexually, but I’d let them.” She admits to liking all of the above.
We hear about customers, then they snort powder. “Never kiss a trick.” Babycat is taught how to blowjob properly via strap on, then takes a severe fucking. As this ends, she cuts her forehead Manson style, shaves her cranium, then plays with a toilet full of chuck.
The last chapter, I Need a Teacher is tedious, running like an OnlyFans video with Babycat.
Reality and fiction constantly collide together. It all runs one way; all streets lead to Angela. The making of Angel Abuse is a chapter unto itself. Babycat explains first contact with the director via Facebook after seeing his works. She needed to get involved. She trusts him and will do anything he says. She particularly enjoyed his belt. Lots of the home vids where she’s hitting herself came from deep within, totally improv.
Is this exploitation? Yes and no. I’ve known girls like this in my life. This is a showcase of lives lost and empty. Seen as a warning to others, as a sad record of the damaged human spirit, The Angela Chapters is an epic. Seen as a voyeur glimpse into submissive broken dolls willing to do anything that men want to do to them for any kind of attention and connection, it’s a fetish parade of sorts.
Anyone who has endured abuse of some kind may see a jigsaw piece of themselves somewhere inside this. There’s a lot of hypocrisy going on. Like I said, there’s far worse directors out there, one especially is worshipped though his films are a paradise of sadism, pure fucking real sadism but it can be seen as art so it’s all hunky dory. Lucifer Valentine isn’t art; it cannot be called that. It’s a window to shit and self loathing. The cast of Lucifer Valentine films are mentally unstable, with reasons behind everyone. However, they seem to need this, not just the money.
The Angela Chapters is far more complex than what internet comments, the aftermaths of cast members or old quoted interviews would have you believe. There’s a lot of angry people who have known someone, or have had direct dealings with him, the painting will likely never be complete. He isn’t a shining innocent light, far from it, if even a small fraction of what he’s been accused of is accurate (it will be), he’s a total absolute scumbag, but this review is about what is presented on screen. The rest is up to the viewer.
The Angela Chapters isn’t for everyone, but it’s grim and gritty. There’s truth regardless of how it was made. The cast are all over the place, every city, every country and this makes sense to many of the skeletal remains or dead eyed people you see. It reminds me of the Mark Lanegan autobiography, Sing Backwards and Weep. As his drug habits totally bombard his life, pages 145-146 have a graphic description of his frustration as his veins close off around his body and his desperate battle to find more serviceable ones.
Black Lava’s European Collectors Edition doesn’t have much in the way of extras, other than a couple of making of things and trailers, but the bright packaging is funky. We so wished for a separated soundtrack though. That would have been an amazing addition. Please, if anyone has this, lemme know.
The Angela Chapters cannot be taken lightly, nor used for a wank. It would be a struggle to stay excited. We found it a record of the lost, the broken and blackly comical in parts. “The length some people will go to feel something, or nothing at all. Some people want to feel something but can’t. Yet there’s those who don’t want to feel anything, but they do. This goes deeper than anything I’ve seen.” summed up Willow.
Directed by: Lucifer Valentine
Written by: Lucifer Valentine
Produced by: Lucifer Valentine
Editing by: Lucifer Valentine
Special Effects by: Lucifer Valentine
Cast: Candace White, Babycat, Autumn Misery, Raven
Year: 2020
Country: USA
Language: English
Colour: Colour
Runtime: 3h
Distributor: Black Lava Entertainment
DVD SPECS:
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Region: Region Free
Audio: Dolby Digital
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL:
– Trailer
– Making of The Angela Chapters
– German subtitles
– Booklet