Angel III: The Final Chapter (1988)

Angel3Angel the prostitute with the heart of gold returns for the final installment (psst—not really) to investigate the disappearance of her long lost sister. For this even lower budget third part in the “Angel” saga, all of Angel’s colorful cohorts are gone, and the narrative suffers this time around because of it. Kit Carson and Solly are nowhere to be found, and Angel is pretty much just a free agent being led to the California strip, yet again. No longer a law student, Angel is now a freelance photographer who spends a lot of her nights running around with the police taking pictures of stings and busts for her paper.

During an art show in New York, Angel comes across an older woman running the show and is shocked to learn that she is her long lost mother. At least embracing continuity, Angel whose mother ran off with a man when she was twelve (as we learned in the first film) is now in New York and has attempted to start a life as an artist. Things go awry though when she reconnects with her mother and learns that she has a long lost sister. Said sister is in huge trouble with a wealthy female crime lord.

When Angel’s mother is killed in an explosion, Angel makes it her mission to find her last living relative. Though so much more straight faced and stern than the original two films, “Angel III” is still wildly inconsistent. Sometimes it’s more grindhouse exploitation, and other times it’s a finger wagging PSA about the evils of prostitution. Angel goes deep in to porn and the streets to find her sister, oblivious to the world of drug trafficking that she’s walking in to, but Angel is thankfully a tough enough heroine who knows how to handle everyone from sleazy cops, to greasy pimps.

Mitzi Kapure does a solid job as the new “Angel” who goes through hell to save her long lost sister, it’s just sad that “The Final Chapter” is a bore. The movie slogs at a pretty monotonous pace, offering a lot of sneaking around and tacked on comedy without any action and the aforementioned films’ exploitative charms. The whole saga of “Angel” hasn’t been a compelling or exciting narrative, but I wish we could have seen the last of the heroine in a quality action thriller over what is a sub-par and utterly forgettable straight to video feature.