“Angel Heart” is a gothic noir, combining the tropes of film noir with those of horror fiction. It's based on the novel “Falling Angel” by William Hjortsberg, but the novel is different from the movie in several ways.

The main character in the movie, Harry Angel, is a hard-boiled private detective of the classic noir type, working the mean streets of 1950s Brooklyn. He gets hired by a wealthy client named Louis Cyphre to find a missing popular singer who was involved in black magic, voodoo and Satanism. It seems that the singer, “Johnny Favorite,” has a certain contractual obligation to Mr. Cyphre, if you get my drift.

Never-mind the fact that the Haitian religion of voodoo actually has nothing to do with Satanism, Hollywood has made this unfortunate mistake before and it will do so again. Setting that aside, the movie is actually pretty cool, working its noir-meets-horror angle far more effectively than slick recent efforts like the abysmal movie version of John Constantine. Plus, there's a freaky, blood-drenched sex scene that earned the movie an X rating.

When the plot twist finally comes, it also stays true to its noir roots, involving themes of amnesia and “wrong man accused”- except that he just wishes he was the wrong man. The final scene, of an elevator descending slowly all the way to Hell as the credits roll, is especially cool. My only quarrel with the movie is the same as my quarrel with almost all neo-noirs, which is that they layer on the noir imagery a little too self-consciously. Still, it's a movie that stands the test of time.