Like the others who have commented, this film remains deeply embedded in my mind, a quarter of a century after I saw it for the first and last time.
It would be fascinating to see how it has aged, and to exorcise the partially submerged memories of various elements that feature in this short film. The helmet sequence at the end - if I remember it correctly - is one of the few images I can still recall with clarity. The rest of the film lurks somewhere inside my being like a musty odour inaccessible to anyone's nostrils, including my own.
Today's kids would probably find this woefully tame, and it probably is nothing more than a load of old faux-medieval tosh with heavily filtered skies like a proto-Robin of Sherwood. However, at the time - for a child - there was something that resonated very strongly with the subsequent mood of the swamp scene in Empire Strikes Back... which, arguably, was more alarming with its Freudian dream sequence of Skywalker decapitating himself / his father, if I recall correctly (another one I haven't watched for a very, very long time).
What on earth was the Lucas-Christian axis trying to do the minds of toddlers back then? Whatever it was, it mashed my head so much that I am now compelled to drone on about it on a popular internet film forum such as this one, as if I am at an AA meeting or similar support group.
As you were.
UPDATE 18/10/13
Well, after 33 years I was finally able to revisit 'Black Angel' at the restoration premiere last Sunday at Throckmorton Theatre, Mill Valley Film Festival. An extraordinary film - and an extraordinary experience collapsing the gulf of time between viewings into a few short minutes and finding some core images reasonably intact, with other elements archetypal enough to be strangely familiar, without directly accessible memory. "I'm going to bypass your forebrain and appeal directly to your amygdala."
Things are looking good for this film being made much more widely available in 2014 - I'd advise anyone who sees this once again (or for the first time) to be especially careful with spoilers, as there will be quite a few people from the UK, Scandinavia and Australia eager to experience their own "chronological vertigo"... 33-year-old spoilers are the absolute pits :)
It would be fascinating to see how it has aged, and to exorcise the partially submerged memories of various elements that feature in this short film. The helmet sequence at the end - if I remember it correctly - is one of the few images I can still recall with clarity. The rest of the film lurks somewhere inside my being like a musty odour inaccessible to anyone's nostrils, including my own.
Today's kids would probably find this woefully tame, and it probably is nothing more than a load of old faux-medieval tosh with heavily filtered skies like a proto-Robin of Sherwood. However, at the time - for a child - there was something that resonated very strongly with the subsequent mood of the swamp scene in Empire Strikes Back... which, arguably, was more alarming with its Freudian dream sequence of Skywalker decapitating himself / his father, if I recall correctly (another one I haven't watched for a very, very long time).
What on earth was the Lucas-Christian axis trying to do the minds of toddlers back then? Whatever it was, it mashed my head so much that I am now compelled to drone on about it on a popular internet film forum such as this one, as if I am at an AA meeting or similar support group.
As you were.
UPDATE 18/10/13
Well, after 33 years I was finally able to revisit 'Black Angel' at the restoration premiere last Sunday at Throckmorton Theatre, Mill Valley Film Festival. An extraordinary film - and an extraordinary experience collapsing the gulf of time between viewings into a few short minutes and finding some core images reasonably intact, with other elements archetypal enough to be strangely familiar, without directly accessible memory. "I'm going to bypass your forebrain and appeal directly to your amygdala."
Things are looking good for this film being made much more widely available in 2014 - I'd advise anyone who sees this once again (or for the first time) to be especially careful with spoilers, as there will be quite a few people from the UK, Scandinavia and Australia eager to experience their own "chronological vertigo"... 33-year-old spoilers are the absolute pits :)