Actuakers
One of my all time favorites.
Kidskycom
It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.
ThrillMessage
There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.
Kimball
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
Mike 8-{
34 years ago I went to the cinema to see one of the big box office films of the day. Back then they still had a short film before the main feature. I saw something that day which has stuck with me through the years. It made a huge impression on me but I couldn't remember what it was called or which film I had seen it with. There were just images in my mind, a knight slowly falling through black water, and the feeling that I had seem something special that day. It turns out the big box office film I saw after the short was The Empire Strikes Back. The short film itself was Black Angel but I didn't know it until the evening of 27th Feb 2014. Then I was lucky enough to be in the audience, including other folks like me who had seen it and had it lodged in their minds for 34 years, for the screening at the Glasgow Film Festival. I finally got to see it again and on the big screen to boot. To most it is probably of no interest but it is a cracking little mystical tale of a knight on a quest to save a maiden in distress. I would like to thank Andy Bryan, for tracking down the film, and Roger Christian, the writer and director, for giving me the chance to see it again. I don't know what you will think of it but it is a lost treasure found for me.
ServalanQueen
Like others, I saw this film as a child just before watching Empire Strikes Back,and to be honest until I read the recent news about it being rediscovered by Universal, I had forgotten it was a real film - it was so dream-like and ethereal. I have also seen 'Gawain and the Green Knight' and 'Excalibur' a few times and I guess all of them have become a bit mixed in my mind. The Black Angel was definitely a haunting piece of cinema, and I can't wait to see it again, and show it to my son - I am sure it would appeal to children today, even if it may seem a bit old-fashioned. I miss the custom of having a short film with the main feature - it was a nice tradition, although sometimes the short might seem a bit 'random'. Not this one though - it was excellent.
sabre_pg
*THIS POST CONTAINS POSSIBLE SPOILERS* I remember watching this short in the cinema supporting The Empire Strikes Back. Although a little fuzzy now after a quarter of a century, I seem to remember the main character, some kind of knight, had a horse called Richard, and was wearing a large heavy helmet which didn't do him much good when he fell into a stretch of water and couldn't get it off. Before he drowns he manages to free the helmet from his head and scrambles back onto dry land and thus go's off on some quest involving a girl. Ultimately he ends up fighting his evil nemesis and during the battle is returned to the water to drown wearing the same helmet. I think the film is trying to suggest the knight did drown but was hallucinating during the event, hence the quest.I may be wrong so lets hope it appears on DVD sometime soon!
logtoad
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 18/10/13Well, 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 :)
