Soul Collector

The man in black ( Joe Estevez ) comes to people before death and takes their souls into a luminous green ring. Five people have a serious car accident. The Soul Collector tries to remove souls from the bodies of the victims of the accident, but finds the soul in only one of the bodies, the souls are not found in the other bodies - and now the Collector needs to catch them. Two souls are soon caught by the Collector - their bodies die right there - but the other two, the souls of Natalie Macmillan ( Vivian Schilling ) and Zaha Taylor (Gregg Thomsen), manage to escape. They return home, where they learn on TV that their comrades have already died and that their own bodies are in a coma , and that at midnight their bodies are going to be disconnected from life support systems. Here they are overtaken by the Soul Collector. Pursued by the Collector, souls flee to the hospital to reunite with their bodies. They manage to do this with the help of rings through which collectors took out souls from people. The angel of death takes the soul of the Collector, because he did not complete the task.

As a result of the conflicts, the first director of Soul Collector was fired, and in the spring of 1989, a 25-year-old director Michael Rissi was invited to a project called Kiss of Death ^[3] , for which the “Collector shower ”became the first professional film. Previously, Rissy directed the 20-minute short film Snake Eyes (1987) as a thesis, which received several awards and was spotted by Action International Pictures , which included this film in one of its anthologies. After the first director of Soul Collector was fired, in the spring of 1989, Eric Parkinson , President of Action International Pictures Studios, invited Rissi to take the place of director of Soul Collector ^[1] .

Rissy later said that he initially did not want to direct this film, fearing that he would be taken as the "captain of a sinking ship", but agreed, after reading the script Vivian Schilling . According to Rissy, the script “had a lot of problems, but he had potential,” and Rissy was intrigued by the theme of the afterlife , as well as the idea of ​​“creating a film about a parallel universe.” Rissi was given the right to make changes to the script, and the script Schilling was significantly revised by him ^[1] . According to Schilling, she came up with a story based on an episode that happened to her in 1980 - she nearly died in a car accident in Wichita . Then she experienced a strange sensation, as if she had fallen into the "realm of death" ( English realm of death ). After this incident, Schilling became interested in death, burial ceremonies, near-death experiences , and conceived a film in which “we all had to die, but somehow escaped fate” ^{[~ 1] [4] [5]} .

Filming ended in July 1989 ^[2] , lasted about four weeks in the city of Mobile , Alabama ^{[1] [6]} . It was originally planned to shoot in Kansas , but hotels in Mobile cost $ 9.5 a night and Kansas $ 28, which was too expensive for 40 people and a 40-day shooting period. Eric Parkinson said in 1990 that, considering all expenses, the savings from filming in Alabama, and not in Kansas, amounted to half a million dollars ^[7] . The budget was about 250 thousand dollars , and it was difficult for Rissi to make films with such limited resources and completely in kind ^[1] .

Initially, the film was supposed to be immediately released on videotapes, but the functionaries of the studio were impressed by the resulting film, and on October 26, 1990, Soul Collector went on limited release in American cinemas. A total of 8 copies were printed, and, according to IMDb , the film was shown on 6 screens ^{[1] [2]} . On January 24, 1991, the film was released on video ^[8] .

The film was mostly negatively criticized. A critic at Time Out magazine noted that although cheap special effects and Rissy's uneven directing can not be compared with the twisted plot of Vivian Schilling, the film as a whole is worth watching ^[9] . According to the critic of the Los Angeles Times , with an extremely low budget that did not allow Rissi to create an expressive visual style, take famous actors, use good special effects, shoot in interesting places, the film could save a drop of humor, but the film is not funny, everything, including the actors, it is very serious ^[10] .

The film raised 233 thousand dollars in cinemas ^{[~ 2] [2] [8]} . According to representatives of the studio, the film went better than expected. Despite the low praise of critics, Rissi was pleased with the result of his work, according to him, the resulting film was “not a work of a genius, but it’s nice to watch” ^{[~ 3] [1]} .

Later, “Soul Collector” became the theme of episode 1001 of the American television show “ Mystery Science Theater 3000 ”, which ridiculed bad films, according to the authors. On January 16, 2010, the film ranked 43rd in the list of 100 worst IMDb films with a rating of 1.8, and all five reviews considered by Rotten Tomatoes criticism aggregator were negative ^[11] .

• Joe Estevez - Soul Collector
• Vivian Schilling - Natalie Macmillan
• Gregg Thomsen - Zach Taylor
• Robert Z'Dar - Angel of Death
• David "Shark" Fralik - Brad Deville
• Jean Reiner - Anna Macmillan, Mother Natalie Macmillan
• Chuck Williams - Tommy Marchetto
• David Fawcett - Mayor Grant Macmillan, father of Natalie Macmillan
• Gary Cohler - Sergeant Haggerty
• Dave Scott - Officer Mel

• Saturn Award in the nomination Best Genre Video Release, 1992 ^{[~ 4]} .

Comments

• Soul Collector on the Internet Movie Database  
• Soul Collector on allmovie  
• Soul Collector on the MST3K Info website.
• The Soul Collector on the MST3K Wiki.
• Director Michael Rissy about the film in the comments on IMDb