Docteur Immortalizer

In my opinion, great B movie from 80's! Very good idea of movie.

The Immortalizer (1989) is a movie I recently watched on Tubi and tells the tale of some scientists who have created a machine that helps keep you young forever. However, everything has its catches and this machine is no different. The scientist needs to kidnap the people whose bodies his older clients want, he then transfers the old people into the young bodies and vice versa. Can the latest victims find a way to escape and expose scientist?

This movie is directed by Joel Bender (Gas Pump Girls) and stars Melody Patterson (Blood and Lace), Raye Hollitt (Skin Deep), Elmarie Wendel (Lorax) and Karen Moore (Quantum Leap).

The big guys makeup in this was just okay but they were fun characters. The monster fights were entertaining, especially the female fighter, and was probably the best part of the film. The dialogue in this was awkward and painful at times. The acting was also just okay and fairly clumsy. Unfortunately the attack and kill scenes were nothing special.

Overall this is a below average addition to the horror genre. There were some elements that had potential but the film unfortunately doesn't hit the mark. I would score this film a 4/10 and only recommend it if nothing else is on.

My review was written in August 1990 after watching the movie on RCA/Columbia video cassette.

Gore is the goal of this 1988 sci-fi/horror production bowing domestically in video stores.

Success of Stuart Gordon's "Re-Animator" was bound to inspire imitations, of which "The Immortalizer" is an idiotic example. Ron Ray is a mad doctor running a clinic where people routinely trade in their bodies for beautiful, young ones -latter obtained in the usual Burke and Hare fashion.

Four teens are doped and shanghaied in an alley by two monsters sporting poor makeup effects (courtesy of John Naulin) and taken to the clinic. One of them escapes, leaving Bekki Armstrong conscious (but pretending to be doped) to suffer innumerable indignities not uncommon to starlets appearing in exploitation films.

Although director Joel Bender gets some overacting here, nothing reaches the campy, enjoyable levels of "Re-Animator". Experimental failures are kept locked up as cannibalistic geeks, a poor taste subplot which wastes (beneath monster makeup) Raye Hollitt, the bodybuilder who had a memorable tryst with John Ritter in Blake Edwards' "Skin Deep".

Armstrong is an alluring heroine who deserves better assignments, but the rest of the cast is unimpressive. Script overworks its "boy who cried wolf" premise, as no matter what happens the sheriff (Bo Byers) doesn't believe it and refuses to intercede. Yucky gore during the brain transplant operations is a turnoff.

I went into this movie thinking it was a Charles Band Full Moon Production, but I was surprised when I didn't see his name in the credits. I remember the VHS cover art looking exactly like the memorable Full Moon boxes during their Paramount distribution deal heyday, with vibrant colors and depicting something either violent or titillating on the cover. THE IMMORTALIZER wants to be a RE-ANIMATOR knockoff based on the box, following the story of a mad scientist who kidnaps beautiful young folks off the street (using his zombie musclemen, of course) so he can sell eternal youth to old folks who want their minds transfer these young nubile bodies. It's not a bad setup for a cheesy direct-to-video horror movie, but this one is total amateur hour. Most of the film is one of the young people running around, hiding, and trying to escape the evil scientist's house/clinic. Boring, not funny, not scary, and not even all that gory. There wasn't even any nudity, which is a shock given that one of the cast members was a Playboy Playmate. Stick with Charles Band cheapie horror flicks like SORORITY BABES IN THE SLIMEBALL BOWL-O-RAMA or ASSAULT OF THE KILLER BIMBOS, and don't bother with this one.

This was a thriller with a lot of action. Pretty good for a B - movie.