For this exceedingly low-budget if ambitious splatterfest, director Pat Bishow’s main inspiration was to create something “different”, right down to the film’s, um, colourful title. For all its faults though, THE SOULTANGLER (1987) remains one of the more engaging D.I.Y. ’80s horror films, which was recently released on Blu-ray thanks to Bleeding Skull Video.
Dr. Anton Lupesky (Pierre Deveaux) has developed a new drug called Anphorium, which somehow allows people to transfer their souls into “any human corpse, provided it has eyes”; since the eyes are the window to the soul, as it’s said, this kinda makes sense in a way. However, his drug also affects the person’s nerve centers, causing vivid and highly horrific hallucinations. Thus Dr. Lupesky, has his assistants Carl (Bob Cederberg) and Jessica (Louise Millman) abduct females (“Women are everywhere on the streets these days!”), so he can continue his unorthodox experiments down in the dingy, gore-strewn basement which doubles as his laboratory. Meanwhile, in hopes of uncovering the truth about her father’s death, a feisty, chain-smoking reporter named Kim (Jamie Kinser) begins looking into Lupesky’s work…
Made by Bishow’s family and friends over a week-long period in Long Island, New York in 1985, THE SOULTANGLER is certainly one of the more offbeat – and at one point elusively hard-to-see – “homemade” movies to emerge out of the ’80s. However, for all its innate liveliness and grandiose ideas, it’s also padded with countless scenes of characters walking and driving from one location to another or simply sitting in offices, which achieves a rather strange, almost hypnotic quality in-between its horrific highlights. Drawn-out and disorienting, the film’s primary intention still remains depicting lots of bloody splatter, and like Stuart Gordon’s RE-ANIMATOR (1985), the film it most closely resembles thematically speaking, much of it is reserved for the gore-soaked finale, which features plenty of enthusiastic – and effective – blood-spattering F/X work, including decapitations, resurrected zombies, pulsating headless brains (with their eyes still attached, no less!), and one poor schmoe getting strangulated by a zombie’s dangling intestines.
Shot in 16mm and later edited on video, Bleeding Skull’s fully-loaded Blu-ray is a solid upgrade from AGFA’s earlier 2018 DVD, which was transferred and restored from the original 1-inch master tapes, and the results are about what you’d expect from such a hand-to-mouth endeavour. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono audio is also free of both distortion or an overabundance of hiss, with HypnoLoveWheel (i.e., Jim Cook, Griffin Dickerman and Chris Xefos)’s decent electronic score sounding just fine. Unlike Mondo’s / AGFA’s earlier retro big-box VHS edition from 2014 or the once even-harder-to-find Canadian VHS from Astral Video (circa, 1992), which housed the standard (89m42s) edition of the film, Bleeding Skull have once again included the “previously unseen 62-minute director’s cut”, which, despite its shorter running time, plays far more effectively. In director Pat Bishow’s feature-length audio commentary, he goes on to discuss how the distributor forced him to “pad it out to 90-minutes” because it was simply too short. So, much to his dismay, using previously discarded takes and extra footage, Bishow went on to explain Anphorium and also add all those unnecessary filler scenes of people walking and driving, which he equates to “torture”. He also goes on to talk about the trials of shooting a low-budget film such as this, as well as discussing many of the Long Island locations (including that filthy basement!), and how much of it was “done on the fly,” plus he also mentions the uncooperative nature of Kinser, who “wasn’t very nice.” While Bishow begins his commentary by exclaiming “I can’t believe anybody is actually listening to this!” he goes on to fill the 90 minutes with ease. Other extras include The Making of The Soultangler (12m13s), with plentiful behind-the-scenes footage shot in May of 1985, the film’s original video trailer (“From every corner emerges total terror!”), still another video trailer from Bishow’s earlier film, THE DEAD OF NIGHT TOWN (1983), and a music video shot by Bishow for HypnoLoveWheel’s “Wow!” (2m56s). In addition to including new – and wholly appropriate – cover art by Matt “Putrid” Carr, the disc also comes with reversible art featuring the film’s very rare Canadian VHS release.
As an added, much welcome bonus, Bleeding Skull’s new Blu-ray also includes Bishow’s seldom-seen IT’S A HAUNTED HAPPENIN’! (2002), an SOV monster-mash musical comedy obviously inspired by the animated Hanna-Barbera series JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS (1970-1971). An all-female rock group (led by Jaime Andrews), who are called The Soultanglers (’natch), end up at a haunted house where Dr. Valerius is conducting experiments with his sidekick Gomar (Andrew Roussin) is his colourfully festooned laboratory. While not exactly the most hilarious film, it’s whimsical enough to enjoy as a homage to monster movies, which also includes a rampaging mummy, a gorilla, and plenty of musical interludes that provide a momentary oasis during some of the film’s slow parts, at least. Once again Bishow returns for another easy-going audio commentary, this time with co-writer Jon Sanborne, which is once again jam-packed about the ins-and-outs of low-budget filmmaking, their many influences and a particular fondness for “those old dubbed Mexican horror movies,” some of the initial music rights issues they faced, details on all of the music and bands used in the film, the public access show Ghoul-A-Go-Go, the Scooby Doo inspired ending, and all of their friends and family that also appeared in the film.
Shot for peanuts, THE SOULTANGLER still emerges as a diverting no-mind horror cheapie, and still way easier to take than most other ’80s D.I.Y. or SOV films.
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