Soulmates (1992)

Horror novelist Richard Wayborn (Tristan Rogers, straying from the soaps) is an immortal who kills young women so that the soul of his 600- year-old mate can inhabit them for a day or so before they start to go stiff. Kinky. Anyway, trouble arrives when young college student Sara (Arabella Holzbog) doesn't die when Wayborn tries to poison her and he has to try again so she doesn't blow his cover. Making matters worse is her ex Scott (Tyrone Power Jr.) is a cop handling the case. I'm obviously not picky when it comes to my viewing if I picked this up, so sometimes the slightest hint of a good idea can win me over. I like the idea and, while the film is too low budget to effectively pull it off, it makes for something like a high end Concorde production with nice locations and decent acting. Deliciously named director Thunder Levin also makes sure every body the ghost inhabits get nude beforehand (including Melissa Moore) and offers a "I've never seen that before" bit where a girl clad only in a g-string jumps off a roof. Paul Bartel has two scenes as a "boring professor." Also watch for the guy introducing Wayborn at a book signing. He is in front of a big banner for the novel that reads Blood Love (the film's UK title as well) and he calls it Blood Luck. D'oh! No second takes for you, pal. Of course, I still can't decide if the title is EVIL LIVES (as in lives that are evil) or EVIL LIVES (as in evil that lives).

Soulmate sis set in the American town of Hillsdale where famous horror book author Richard Wayborn (Tristan Rogers) is approached by a student named Laura (Melissa Moore) who asks's him for his autograph having just seen him conduct at lecture at her college. Richard becomes very friendly & ask's Laura if she would like a bite to eat with him, Laura jumps at the chance & in no time at all they arrive at the local fast food restaurant drive-thru. Richard spikes Laura's coke with a deadly poison & before long Laura is deader than a dodo & her body has been possessed by Richard's dead wife's soul, they head off to a seedy motel & have sex. Unfortunately Richard needs freshly deceased bodies on a regular basis as the effect doesn't last long & next on his list of potential victims is sexy student Sara Foster (Arabella Holzbog), Richard turns on the charm & invites Sara to his home where he intends to kill her but things don't go according to plan, Sara escapes & contacts the police & her boyfriend Scott (Tyrone Power Jr.) who just happens to be a detective. Richard & his wife Rachel decide that Sara must be silenced to protect their dark secret...Directed by Thunder Levin Soulmates is, in my opinion, complete crap. The script by Matt Devlen, James Hankins & Adam Winston is painfully slow & dull, it has no proper explanation for anything that's happening & why on Earth did it take three people to write it? For a start we, the viewer that is, have virtually no idea how Rachel can jump from body to body, all we get is some vague dialogue, which amounts to two lines, about a witch doctor. What happens to her soul when she isn't in a body? Why can't she just stay in the same body? Why can't she search morgues for the recently deceased? Surely that would be a bit safer than having to kill dozens of young girls? The whole film is very linear with a few girls being killed & Sara's discovery of what's going on at which point she becomes a target. The character's are unlikable & as dull as dishwater.Soulmates takes itself far too seriously & as a dramatic piece of film-making it falls flat on it's face, there is very little horror in Soulmates & I thought it played more like a thriller. You will probably spot the so-called twist ending coming a mile off.Director Levin does nothing to distinguish Soulmates from any other piece of low budget crap, it has no style or any noteworthy attributes. Forget about any tension or excitement either & you can forget about any gore or violence as there is a brief stabbing, a broken finger, a drowning, some gunshot wounds & that's it. There is some sex & nudity though.Technically Soulmates is bland & forgettable. It reminds of a made-for-TV film which is in no way a compliment. The acting is of a pretty poor standard while porn star Julie Strain makes an appearance as does cult film director/actor Paul Bartel in the films most bizarre scene.Soulmates is pretty poor stuff from beginning to end & thankfully quite hard to get hold of, but if you do have the misfortune to get hold of a copy then all I can say is I feel sympathy for you. Definitely one to avoid.

This review has very minor SPOILERS, so do not read it if you don't want minor details given away.I rented `Evil Lives' recently because it looked like a neat little horror movie. Heck, it even featured Paul Bartel and Dawn Wells. It couldn't be that bad. But then the first person in the movie was Julie Strain, and I knew I had made a big mistake. My thoughts were confirmed fairly quickly. You see, this movie was made in 1992 under the name of `Soulmates.' Thanks to the recent horror movie craze, it was retitled and released as `Evil Lives' in 2000. The movie box tries to compare it to three great movies---`Stir of Echoes,' `The Sixth Sense,' and `The House on Haunted Hill'---three movies that bear zero resemblance to this. The plot is foolish. A man and a woman centuries ago had a strange curse placed on them. The curse is never fully explained, but basically the man murders women so that the spirit of his dead wife can inhibit them for a few hours before the body decomposes and dies completely. After centuries of this, the man currently has the identity of a writer. He lures women into his clutches, kills them, and his wife takes charge for a short while. The writer's next pick is a college girl played by Arabella Holzbog, who you may or may not remember from `Stone Cold.' He botches the murder, and spends the rest of the movie stalking her, killing other people you don't care much about.What is so bad about this is not the acting, but the script. It handles the curse in such stupid ways that you want to scream. Many times, it violates its own rules, especially in the hackneyed end. Holzbog is okay as the star, but those around her simply don't stand out. Except for Wells and Bartel, who only show up in amusing and all-too-short cameos. The director, who does poorly throughout what with sloppy production values and few special effects, made a real mistake in taking these two performances for granted. What he has left is a bad movie that nobody is going to see, no matter how many false comparisons are on the movie box. Zantara's score: 2 out of 10.

Now I am all for cheese and in fact I rented this film full well knowing that I was not going to be seeing anything of high art. However there is a dramatic difference between a film that is so awful it is good and a film that is just plain awful. If perhaps the film itself had not taken itself seriously it may have worked better as black comedy. Instead the events on screen seem to be done with no humor while the music (some of which sounding carnival in nature) is anything but serious. So if they were indeed attempting humor they did manage it but not in the way they may have been intending.Acting wise the film is a wash as well but for nudity buffs this is one of the first films in a while not to shy away that aspect of the genre.So if you have a hankering for self abuse you may in the end enjoy it enough for a few minor kicks.