If you’re strolling through the seedy VHS aisles of memory, sandwiched somewhere between Savage Streets and Vice Squad, you’ll find Avenging Angel—a sleazy, neon-drenched revenge flick with a cracked heart and a gun in its purse.
The year was 1985. Shoulder pads were growing like tumors and synths were everywhere, buzzing like broken fluorescent lights. Enter Betsy Russell, stepping into a role that tried to channel Charles Bronson through fishnets and stilettos. As Molly Stewart, a.k.a. Angel, she trades her books and law lectures for wigs, leather, and blood vengeance after her mentor Lt. Andrews is gunned down by a low-rent crime syndicate.
Angel isn’t new to the streets. This is her second time going to war with Hollywood’s back alleys—only this time, she’s not discovering herself. She’s digging up graves.
Plot: From Lecture Halls to Bloodbaths
The setup is pure grindhouse simplicity: Former teen prostitute turned law student learns the man who helped save her is dead. Time to toss the books, slap on the lipstick, and become Angel again. Molly doesn’t go it alone—she’s got a crew of Hollywood gutter saints behind her. Old-school cowboy Kit Carson (Rory Calhoun) is back, all grit and nostalgia. There’s Solly (Susan Tyrrell), a grotesque theater owner with more bite than class. And let’s not forget Johnny Glitter, a walking bottle of Aqua Net and broken dreams.
The film leans on this band of misfits, trying to stitch a sense of family from the rags of LA’s backstreets. It mostly works. Everyone’s over-the-top, and that’s the point.
What happens next is a vigilante descent into sleaze, with Angel baiting the same kinds of predators she once escaped, all to draw out the lowlifes who murdered her friend. It’s all slow-motion gunplay, glam-revenge, and morally bankrupt justice—a cocktail only the ’80s could serve straight.
Betsy Russell: Silk and Switchblades
Let’s get this out of the way: Betsy Russell sells it. She’s not just eye candy. Sure, she’s got the looks, but there’s an ache behind her glare—somewhere between heartache and fury. Russell gives Molly a strange balance of vengeance and vulnerability, even when the script gives her little more than tough-girl clichés and melodramatic threats.
She walks in heels like she’s breaking necks with every step, and somehow keeps a straight face through lines like, “I’m not the same girl I used to be.” The performance isn’t Oscar-bound, but it doesn’t have to be. This is exploitation cinema—it needs attitude, heat, and a little mascara smeared from tears and blood. Russell delivers all three.
Russell’s Molly Stewart, better known to the underworld as Angel, isn’t your average streetwalker-turned-heroine. She’s a bruised angel, forged in the sleaze and shadows of Los Angeles. In Avenging Angel, she walks the razor’s edge between two lives: the respectable, law-abiding student and the unapologetic survivor with heels sharp enough to kill.
What makes Molly tick isn’t revenge alone. It’s loyalty. She’s not killing for kicks or justice in the cosmic sense. She’s doing it because someone she loved was taken from her — Lt. Andrews, the cop who saw her worth beyond the surface. Molly is all heart, but it’s wrapped in leather and hardened by too many nights watching dreams rot in alleys behind strip joints. Andrews was the rare human being who treated her with dignity, and in her world, that kind of kindness gets burned into your bones.
Russell plays her not just as a symbol, but a woman of contradiction. She’s incredibly beautiful, yes — that early-‘80s California heat with a dangerous shimmer — but she wears her pain as foundation. Her beauty doesn’t shield her; it’s something she’s had to weaponize. When she struts down Hollywood Boulevard, she isn’t performing for male fantasy — she owns every stare and returns it with daggers.
What’s compelling is how Molly navigates both vulnerability and control. She’s no longer a scared girl trapped on the streets — she’s made it out. She’s in law school, determined to change the system from the inside. But when the system proves it can’t even protect the man who gave her a second chance, she doesn’t call for reforms. She calls in favors, grabs her gun, and paints the town red.
In a lesser film, Molly could’ve been reduced to a stock revenge angel. But there’s a weariness in Russell’s performance that hints at more — a woman who knows too much, feels too much, and fights not just to win, but to stay human.She’s motherly toward younger women, tough with her friends, and never condescending to the misfits in her orbit. You get the sense that being “normal” isn’t the end goal for Molly — it’s peace. Just a moment where she doesn’t have to look over her shoulder.
That’s the tragedy and the fire of the character: she’ll never truly escape the streets, because the streets are part of her.But she refuses to be defined by them. That conflict — between what she wants and what she’s forced to be — gives the film its edge and gives Molly her tragic grace.
Betsy Russell, for her part, walks this emotional minefield like a pro. Her charisma is undeniable, her physical presence striking, but it’s the way she balances steel and softness that makes Molly Stewart linger long after the VHS stops spinning.
The Grit, the Glam, and the Gory Cheese
Director Robert Vincent O’Neil, who also made the original Angel (1984), sticks to his grindhouse playbook: crank up the sleaze, keep the plot moving, and shoot LA like it’s both heaven and hell. There’s something oddly endearing about the way Avenging Angel treats its freakshow ensemble with dignity, giving them backstories, heart, and tragic humor.
That said, the film’s not without its warts. The pacing drags in spots, the villains are dime-store thugs with little menace, and the violence feels tacked on—more stylized than savage. You’re not watching Death Wish here, you’re watching a kind of campy, LA punk fairy tale with a sawed-off shotgun.
But God bless it, that’s part of the charm.
The musical score is pure synth sleaze—moody, kitschy, and absolutely necessary. You don’t watch a movie like this and expect subtlety. You want neon and grime, and Avenging Angel gives you both in spades.
The Takeaway: More Heart Than You’d Expect
Here’s the real surprise: under the wigs, bullets, and bathhouse fight scenes, there’s a weird kind of sincerity pulsing beneath this flick. Avenging Angel believes in its characters, even if it forgets to flesh them out. It believes in redemption, in the dirty poetry of second chances, even if it dresses them in hooker boots and questionable dialogue.
You could laugh it off. Critics did. But audiences looking for some pulp catharsis and a midnight movie to swig beer to found something oddly loyal and unpolished here.
Final Verdict
Avenging Angel is sleazy, yes. Ridiculous, often. But it’s also strangely heartfelt—like a love letter from a part of Hollywood that’s long been bulldozed to make room for smoothie bars and high-rise condos.
Betsy Russell struts through the grime with enough attitude to keep it all glued together, and the film earns its place in the VHS hall of fame—not because it’s great, but because it never pretends to be anything it’s not.
3 out of 5 stars.
Put it on. Pour a drink. Light a cigarette if that’s your thing. Let the streetlight glow of 1985 wash over you.
And remember when vigilantes wore heels and looked like heartbreak in leather.
🔗 Further Viewing: Betsy Russell Essentials
📼 Private School (1983)
Cheeky, wild, and unforgettable — Betsy Russell’s breakout role as the bold and rebellious Jordan Leigh-Jensen defined the 1980s teen comedy.
👉 Read our retrospective on Private School
🌴 Out of Control (1984)
Stranded on a tropical island with danger, romance, and synth beats — Russell’s performance as Chrissie Baret shines in this overlooked cult survival flick.
👉 Visit our full write-up on Out of Control
🪚 Saw III (2006)
From beach babe to horror royalty, Russell returns as Jill Tuck, the cool and composed wife of Jigsaw in the brutal third installment of the Saw saga.
👉 Read our Saw III takedown here
💖 Betsy Russell
The Ultimate Betsy Russell Tribute
👉 From 1980s Dream Girl to Horror Icon
