Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Bleeding Skull!

About the Author: Parker Simpson is a writer and podcaster focusing on cult films and their social impacts. They currently cohost Where Is My Mind, a podcast focusing on underappreciated films from a variety of genres and countries. They have also held panels, chartered local organizations, and written articles to their blog. When not writing or studying, they like to spend time with their pets and go outside. Check out the podcast Linktree and blog.

Homemade horror films are a huge hit or miss of mine. Oftentimes, I’ll get frustrated with the boring visuals (both film and video), Z-grade acting, and disjointed pacing. Then I remember I couldn’t make anything half as charming, so I shut up and take some sleeping pills to further disjoint the experience. This is no different with The Soultangler, a late 80’s riff on the reemerging mad scientist genre. In it, Dr. Lupesky invents a drug that allows the souls of the users to transplant into corpses. Naturally, this comes with some very severe side effects, from mild hallucinations to downright madness. 

If you’re like me, you could see this as slightly… derivative of a well-known cult classic. The Soultangler initially seems like a rip-off of Stuart Gordon’s classic Re-Animator, taking a doctor’s fascination with life and death to the extremes while characters around him are extremely concerned about what he’s doing. In the latter, you see a clean-cut, no-nonsense Jeffrey Combs slyly manipulating everyone around him as he weasels his way out of every situation. Here, we see a grease-ridden, basement-dwelling hubris-ridden maniac who seems to be significantly more attracted to women yet hates them more than his counterpart. You might be able to see who I like more based on the wording. That being said, I would argue that watching Dr. Lupesky ramble about his work is a strong point of this film, and that he is dissimilar enough to disqualify his character as a mere clone of the indomitable Herbert West.

The film’s main flaw is the pacing. Most SOV/16mm horror films of this era slip into a time distortion, where 15 minutes feels like an hour or more. The Soultangler is no different; this thing drags its feet from the 5-minute mark until the final 15. It is a challenging watch on a small screen, with no one around you to comment on the small yet quirky aspects of everyday life that inevitably pervades all folks in its ilk. Additionally, the majority of the camera work and acting are all stiff as a rod. The saving grace that undercuts those criticisms is the weirdness that suddenly pops up at any given moment. Completely unsynced audio that made me restart a scene? Killer original music? Believable investigative reporting? C’mon, you can’t help but love it. The cherry on top is the goopy gore that is scattered throughout the film; the finale in particular is a lot of fun.

I didn’t hate this. I really wanted to love it, even. If anything, it proved to me that these sorts of films are an acquired taste, which is maybe something I don’t have at this moment. That’s ok; it doesn’t take away the fact that Pat Bishow made a relatively entertaining film with an extremely low budget, and that on its own is remarkable. 

Thanks to the folks at Bleeding Skull for dropping myself and many others a line to this (and many other unknown gems)!