Originally released in 1969 by American International Pictures Angel, Angel, Down We Go but maybe better known under the title Cult Of The Damned (to cash in on the publicity of the Manson murders), director/writer Robert Thom's film may very well be a definite product of its time but that doesn't make it any less interesting or any less worthy of cult film fans' time. The film makes its home video debut from Kino (surprisingly it never got a domestic VHS release, let alone a DVD release).

The story revolves around Tara Nicole Steele (Holly Near), a young woman who returns home from some time spent abroad at a boarding school. When she gets back, her mother and father, Astrid (Jennifer Jones) and Willy (Charles Aidman) throw a party in her honor. Things get odd right from the start when Astrid makes a bit of a show and obviously ploys to get all of the attention for herself. A flashback scene shows us that Tara's parents have always been a bit odd though, at one point Willy paid off waiter to take care of her which led to her winding up at a party with some of his pals. Things didn't go well for the poor girl. She's got a history of abuse and trouble in her family.

At any rate, one of the party guests is a rock star named Bogart Peter Stuyvesant (Jordan Christopher) and sure enough, he and Tara hit it off. They take off together and before you know it she and he are an item, Tara really getting pretty gung-ho about living it up with her new beau. Bogart understandably spends a lot of time with his band, The Rabbit Habit, made up of Joe (Lou Rawls), an older guy named Santoro (Roddy McDowell) and Anna Liva (Davey Davidson), the latter being great with child. Just as it seems that Tara is more or less ‘in with the in crowd' Bogart throws her a complete curveball by proposing and making what would seem to be strange alliances with her oddball parents. And then people start dying.

A borderline musical at times (which makes some sense given the whole band angle that the story works into its narrative), Angel, Angel, Down We Go features some wonderfully acerbic characters embroiled in the bitterest of dramas. The dialogue in the film isn't so much spoken as it is spit back and forth between the various nasty characters that our poor Tara becomes involved with over the duration. Everyone in front of the camera seems completely committed to playing their part in as nasty, vicious and bitchy a way as possible. It isn't always believable or realistic but it is typically pretty amusing and occasionally even fascinating to watch. Cattiness abounds here, there are very few nice people in this world of flower children and free love.

The film uses sixties-era pop music to nice effect here, mixing up some psychedelic sounds with the visuals rather effectively. We do get a few trippy sequences meant to replicate the ‘experiences' depicted on the screen, you can use your imagination there as to what they are but they work about as well as you'd gather. Some pretty fancy wardrobe is on display throughout too, lots of mod styles and some beatnik styles and some hippy styles too. This makes for a movie ripe with interesting eye candy and loads of period detail, the kind that's fun to pay attention to in the backgrounds of the sets.

More interesting than that, however, are the characters and the cast members who play them. AS the story heads into increasingly darker territory and we get to know these characters a little more intimately thing get even stranger. Astrid, played completely straight by aging starlet Jones, admits to having made ‘stag films' aplenty and alludes to having worked as a hooker while Aidman as Willy, who we're lead to believe is a homosexual man unwilling or unable to come out of the closet, is just a big old bag of selfish dysfunction. Are they the real villains in the story? There's reason enough to think that. The band members are well played too, each getting their own individual personality and all the more interesting for it. McDowell is a blast to watch as a hippy. He's probably not the first persona anyone would think of these days to play a role that this, but it's an interesting milestone in the late thespians career and he really goes for it. Of course, then we've got folk singer Holly Near and Jordan Christopher as the leads. She's ready to cut loose after meeting him and he's… up to something. No spoilers here. The whole thing is kind of hard to categorize in terms of genre as it isn't really a horror movie but it isn't quite a drama or a musical either. It's really dependent on the dialogue to move the story further and while it goes at a good pace, the whole thing is just bizarre. Fascinating to watch, but bizarre.