The Destroying Angel (1976)

Directed by Peter de Rome

Starring: Tim Kent, Thom Aaron, Philip Darden, Paul Eden and Evan DeBraye.


When the men on the chessboard
get up and tell you where to go
and you've just had some kind of mushroom
and your mind is moving low.
Go ask Alice,I think she'll know
– White Rabbit –lyrics by Grace Slick.

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The Destroying Angel is a beguiling little porn film by director, Peter de Rome.  Allegedly based on something by Edgar Allan Poe (and I’ll be damned if I can figure out what the source is), Angel tells the tale  of one, Caswell Campbell, a seminarian who has taken a sabbatical to further explore his reasons for wanting to be a man of the cloth.  Campbell appears a rather tortured soul prone to seeing visions and hearing voices (much like that other venerated Catholic, Joan of Arc).

The film opens with a biker zooming through the night time streets of New York City while a rather nondescript soundtrack plays.  Soon, the music changes to a group of voices chanting, “requiem, requiem” over and over again – looks like the film maker might be showing his hand rather early, as ultimately, Angel turns out to be a  rather bleak exercise in morbid obsession.

After the biker meets up with Campbell at a bar and agrees to go home with him, we get to see what kind of odd-duck, Campbell actually is.  His flat is decorated with all kinds of religious artifacts, as well as a portrait of Edgar Allan Poe which hangs over the fireplace (what, no framed portrait of the Pope?).  A rather lackluster sex scene follows with the biker and our hero who is now having strange visions of crucifixes and a strange smiling man holding out a mushroom to him.  When Campbell comes back to reality, the sex has gone on full boil with the biker guy now tanning his hide with a belt before he mounts him and begins savagely fucking him.  And now, just as  things seem pretty interesting, the scene comes to an abrupt halt.  The biker dresses and says to Campbell, “I was expecting more from you”, leaving his body, as well as his ego, slightly bruised.

After the trick leaves, Campbell finds the mushroom he envisioned  earlier and with out question as to how it got there, or who put it there,  eats part of it, and faster than you can say, “Go Ask Alice”, he starts seeing apparitions of men in tight jeans surrounding him as he lay on the floor.  As Campbell stares up at the men, he sees them all unzip their pants and, is then treated to a shower of the golden variety by his ghostly visitors.  Once the phantoms have emptied their bladders on him, they begin to jerk off until Campbell is drenched in the seed of the specters.  

Once this has ended, Campbell wakes up in his bed alone.  But for a second he sees the vision of the smiling man again in a mirror – it is now that he realizes that he is seeing his own doppelganger ; a much more outrageous version of himself, but himself nonetheless.

All cleaned up and in a nifty polyester blend leisure suit; Campbell is now at a small cocktail party where almost instantly he starts acting strange, saying that he is hearing voices.  His friends manage to put him at ease by giving him a drink (ah, those simple folk cures of the 70s’), and he soon calms down only to be instantly hit upon by one of the party guests; an insanely cute guy with dark curly hair, and impossibly tight Levis.

The cute guy asks Campbell if he’s ever done acid, and Campbell says, “Lately, that’s the last thing I need”.  Indeed!

The two guys hook up and go back to Campbell’s place where another mushroom is waiting, and this time they both partake, and here is where The Destroying Angel, goes into trippy overdrive.

As soon as the guys are in bed together (and it bears mentioning that the cute curly haired guy looks even better with his clothes off!), Campbell begins a major dissociative process in that he sees himself as a third party in the bed.

Through the use of trick photography, this sex scene manages to not only deliver the prurient goods, it also messes with the viewers head in that at any given moment you are never quite sure if you are seeing Campbell or his ghostly double having sex.  Probably the most intense moment comes when the curly haired guy has Campbell flat on his back fucking him, while meanwhile, over the guy’s shoulder, is Campbell’s other self, looking down on the action.  

By the end of this scene, our hero seems to finally have mellowed out – no doubt due to the tremendous orgasm he seems to have had thanks to Curly.  His double is gone, and only the two men remain in bed together to whisper sweet nothings to each other.

The next morning, as he is shaving, Campbell’s ghost double shows up in the bathroom mirror and begins to taunt him.  When Campbell asks him what he wants and who he is, the doppelganger replies, “I am the angel, I will give you what you really want, I will destroy you!”  Of course, where most of us might have said, “Well, thanks, but no thanks”, Campbell asks where he can find another one of those magic mushrooms, and the ghost double tells him where to find more … and now our plucky hero goes to the woods to find more of the red capped fungi.  

Once he discovers another one of the mushrooms, it does not take long for Campbell to hook up again.  This time with a guy he meets at the beach (although how he ended up at the seaside is something that is never explained).  

Vegetarians and baseball fans will love this final sex scene as the trick (a hairy, handsome brute), shoves carrots and cucumbers into Campbell’s mouth in a fashion that might make Tyler Florence  blush.  But the home run comes when he flips him over and, god as my witness, starts to fuck his ass with a plastic baseball bat.  Frankly I was dumbfounded as I watched this, but our hero seemed to be enjoying it – and with no time for second innings or stolen bases, both guys achieve spectacular cum shots at the scene’s apex, -- I think I even heard the late Phil Rizzuto shout, “That kid really makes things happen out there!”

Remember how I mentioned at the film’s start we hear voices chanting, “requiem”?  A requiem is a prayer for the dead, usually sung at Catholic services, and it bears mention because of what happens next in The Destroying Angel:

Once Campbell gets home he discovers a book on fungi and finds that the mushroom he has been eating lately (Amanita, also known as The Destroying Angel) not only causes hallucinations, it is also fatal causing death within 48 hours of ingestion.

Realizing that he is doomed, Caswell Campbell takes a dagger from his bedside table and stabs himself falling to a bloody heap on the floor.

Finally we find ourselves in a cemetery, and, surprise: here comes Campbell again.  This time dressed in a long black robe.  He falls onto a freshly covered grave, weeping, and…humping the earth beneath him.  And then, and this is one of those star-turn moments – he turns over on his back and jerks off.  Yes, on the top of a grave, in the middle of the day, in the middle of a bone yard.  Yikes!

Once he has (what one suspects) is his final orgasm, Caswell Campbell closes his eyes and the camera pulls back showing a tombstone with his name on it.  And then another pull back reveals the immensity of this grave yard with the New York City skyline behind it.

Frankly, The Destroying Angel is a tough film to deal with.  As a sex flick, it is just so/so.  There is no denying that the men are handsome and eager to get it on, but the convoluted plot keeps getting in the way.  However, if one were to view this as an underground art film, it might be a bit more successful, though I am not sure what kind of message director, Peter de Rome wanted to convey – could it possibly be that the freewheeling sexual lifestyle of the 70’s could only lead to destruction?  Or maybe that religion and sexuality could never be reconciled?  Was it that lofty a premise, or were the filmmakers tripping out when they put this project together?  Yes the mindset of the mid 70’s drug culture is very prevalent through out this piece.

Horror movie fans, might notice that The Destroying Angel, is somewhat reminiscent of the B-Movie classic, Carnival of Souls (which tells the tale of a woman who does not realize that she is dead as she tries to get back to her life after a car accident).  Seeing it basically as a psychological thriller, Angel is a very disturbing piece of work, well worth the time to ponder its morbid thesis.  

Finally, mention must be made of actor, Tim Kent who plays Caswell Campbell.  Not exactly you’re prototypical gay porn lead; Kent is a very believable actor, and most of this film hangs on his shoulders – the guy did a great job, I wonder what became of him?