Angel City

West Virginian mountain folks Jared (Ralph Waite) and Cloma Teeter (Jennifer Warren) lost their ancestral family farm. They are forced to move out with their children Kristy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Bennie (Robert MacNaughton) to Florida for any work. Work is hard to find and they fall prey to unscrupulous employer Silas Creedy (Mitchell Ryan) and his work camp Angel City. The camp is more like a prison where Creedy's rigged system cheat them of their money. Their next door neighbor Cy (Paul Winfield) warns them to leave. Sud and Jabbo are Creedy henchmen who run the sadistic camp.

I watched this solely for Jennifer Jason Leigh. It's way too sincere. Jared is a naive simple mountain folk. Creedy is an evil villain. It's fine to do that but they are simply too obvious and too extreme for compelling drama. They don't let anything go pass. They even kill the dog. The movie piles on so much that it loses perspective. It's kind of silly to have Sud and Jabbo give the evil laugh after killing the dog. With kidnappings and beatings, Cy could have been a bit more specific about his warning. The movie lacks realism by pushing too hard.

Ralph Waite is best known for his role as the father on The Waltons tv series. He plays a similar character here, a good decent man with simple values of love and family (watch the scene where his family and him pray over their dogs grave). He is a good decent salt of the earth type who unwittingly stumbles into hell! Mitchell Ryan plays the plantation owner who is a real wolf in sheep clothing. He offers him a job and then he and his family are held prisoner in a virtual concentration camp. Paul Winfield gives a fine performance as a fellow inmate and this was one of Jennifer Jason Leigh's first roles as well. I remember the scene where they were picking cotton in the fields and started singing a spiritual, it reminded me a lot of Gone With The Wind. Waite and his family are such wonderful people that you feel so angry and sad at their terrible prediciment. The ending of the film is what I enjoyed the most where they revolted against Ryan. I loved the scene where Waite beat the *$#@ out of him with that pistol and was going to shoot him! It was as if this good man was pushed to the brink and finally backed down. I hated Ryan's character so much that I wanted him to shoot the son of a bitch, after all he had raped his daughter and kidnapped his baby! He sort of reminded me of Jim Jones. Maybe this is a parable about the importance of family love and staying together against all odds, and about the importance of freedom and what would happen if it were suddenly taken from us. Angel City is a first class tv film and it has got a great and satisfying ending that leaves you feeling wonderful. When it comes down to it, what more could you ask of a film!

Does about as good of a job explaining the problem of migrant worker exploitation as a 1980 TV movie could do. My issue with this movie is with the casting. Mexicans were heavily exploited in camps like this but of course a white family is picked to tell the story. I could live with this if they had done a better job casting the parts. I mean I can buy Ralph Waite as the weary, down on his luck homesteader who leaves behind his home in the hills to look for work. His weather beaten face and persona as Mr Walton fits the role well but his family looks more like they belong on a 70's sitcom. Jennifer Warren is a capable actress who isn't given much to do here other than support her family and be really, really pregnant but she looks like a suburban soccer mom, not a woman who's been scratching out a hard scrabble existence in the hills of West Virginia in addition to the fact that she looks way too young to be Ralph Waite's wife. And the kids? Are you kidding. They look like 2 suburban teenagers who've never done a hard days work in their lives. This aside this movie is saved by the chemistry between Ralph Waite and Paul Winfield as you really sympathize with their plight. Reliable character actor Mitchell Ryan plays the sleazy camp owner Silas Creedy (That just sounds like the name of an evil plantation owner) who we can sense is a lowlife from the time he's introduced but we don't realize just how sleazy and depraved he really is until the movie's final act. Character actor and sometime stuntman Bob Minor and Elvis bodyguard Red West play his 2 camp thugs Jabo and Sud.

ANGEL CITY is a long-forgotten TV movie of 1980 which tackles the subject of modern slavery in a compelling fashion. Ralph Waite, a well known actor for his role as the patriarch in THE WALTONS, plays a guy who ends up living as a prisoner on a farm ruled by the tyrannical Mitchell Ryans, always an impressive actor since the days of DARK SHADOWS. This slow-burning production takes its time to build up the characters and their lives while punctuating the atmosphere with a subtle but shocking handling of violence. Paul Winfield, best known for his role as the cop in THE TERMINATOR, is excellent in support.

The plot can get questionable on this one, true, but it's worth seeking out just to see the early work of Jennifer Jason Leigh! Done before "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" (my favorite) this tv flick has young Jennifer as the daughter of Jennifer Warren, another face you may recognize. Their family goes off in search of work, and Ralph Waite from the Waltons is in it too. Fun to see, everybody is sooooo young!