The Soultangler

 



Director - Pat Bishow (It's a Haunted Happenin', We Might Be Superheroes)
Starring - Bill Bernhard, Jennifer Brown, Tom Ciorciari
Release Date - 1987
Genre - Horror
Tagline - "If you think you've seen it all, you haven't seen..."
Format - DVD (Personal Collection) (Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

      Life has been interesting the last week or so.  My home has suffered significant damage from a fire and I've been staying with my wife's mother who just happens to be extremely religious.  Everything going on has resulted in my movie viewing time being cut drastically.  After everything was settled the night after the fire I wanted to watch something fun and different.  As I looked through the box or two of movies I had packed to bring with me only one title really jumped out at me.  Sometime ago AGFA and MVD released the 1987 film The Soultangler on DVD.  I had heard great things about it and decided that it was the perfect movie to get my head straight.  Thank you MVD for sending this on my way.

     The film follows a scientist that has created a serum that can place his soul in another body.  He has to do this with corpses because his soul can't inhabit another body with a soul.  He relies on his assistant and a drug addicted man with a hammer to help him with his experiments but he is under investigation by a former colleague and a news reporter.  He must work quickly before his discovery is made public and he is arrested for his heinous crimes.

     I wasn't expecting a well made film with a lot of polish and amazing effects but I did expect a fun and crazy run through a low budget horror film from the late 80s.  The Soultangler was exactly what I was looking for and the DVD from AGFA and MVD looked great.  The acting in this one is very, very amateurish.  The cast has fun with their roles but you can easily tell that no one has on screen experience before this.  The do a decent job but some performances were better than others.  The story for this one is very similar to Re-Animator but with a lot more absurdity.  The movie has several fun scenes full of gore and weird what the fuck moments but it is just way too long.  The original cut was 60 minutes but another 30 was tacked on for distribution which created a very heavy and clunky film with too many unnecessary scenes.  The DVD release of the film comes with both cuts of the film.  Finally, this one has some surprisingly great effects.  When you wade through the boring scenes and pointless dialogue you come across some great practical effects and some solid gore.  Overall, The Soultangler is a surprisingly fun no budget film that has some great moments.  This is one of those films you have to take the good with the bad but it was well worth the time I put into it.  Check it out!