Doctor Death: Seeker of Souls

If you are like me and grew up in the 1970s watching horror movies and Creature Features on TV you will love this movie! This was "lost" for years, never played on TV and barely got released to theaters. Odd because this was released by Cinerama (Bing Crosby owned this company --and they released other movies like "Willard" ) so it should have been more well known than it was. I won't tread through the plot again, but if this movie had big name stars and a big budget it would play like a classic Hollywood horror movie from the 1940s or 1950s. It's clear that the director loves the horror/thriller genre and it shows. I expected this to be like an average A.I.P. "Count Yorga" movie--but "Doctor Death" is a notch above. The photography, music, lighting, sets, acting and pacing are above your average 1970s pot-boiler. Remember Warren Publications ? They did the Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella magazines in the 1960s and 1970s. This movie looks exactly like one of their magazines made flesh by cinema. I actually cheered and applauded at some of the scenes in this movie and would LOVE to see this in a theater full of horror fans. The DVD has a amusing commentary track by "Doctor Death" himself and a moderator that is a true horror buff --so this guy asks all the right questions about the history and background of the film. Just perfect. "Doctor Death" is not as scary as say "Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things" , but is wildly colorful and fun!

The above quote is not from the film but from Emil Sitka, a veteran Three Stooges supporting player who saw this at a drive-in and thought he looked "rather pathetic". In his final film appearance and one of the few he made without his fellow teammates, Moe Howard plays an audience member of the title character's demonstration of transferring an alive woman's soul to a dead woman's body bringing the latter back to life. His quip, "She's dead all right, I couldn't feel-uh, I couldn't hear a thing!" sounded like a blooper the producers decided to keep in. It was a funny enough line. The rest of the movie seems ridiculous especially when the title character keeps failing to bring certain souls to a certain dead body but it's entertainingly campy enough to keep one's attention. So I say give Doctor Death, Seeker of Souls a look. P. S. It's also amusing seeing Leon Askin-the former General Burkhalter of "Hogan's Heroes"-as mute assistant Thor!

Doctor Death: Seeker of Souls is pure '70s horror schlock - an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of hammy performances and cheezy clichés, all washed down with plenty of gaudy fashion, beautiful women-in-peril, and bright red gore.

Putting in a sinister, scene-stealing, somewhat Karloffian performance, John Considine camps it up as the titular villain, who revels in murderous mayhem with the help of his loyal, hulking, one-eyed assistant Thor (Leon Askin). Having mastered the art of soul transferrence during medieval times, Dr. Death has prolonged his life by swapping bodies whenever one wears out, and now makes a living by charging a hefty fee to perform the same procedure for others.

One such person is Fred Saunders (Barry Coe), who wishes to resurrect his late wife Laura (Jo Morrow). After witnessing a demonstration of Dr. Death's skills, Fred engages the man's diabolical services, coughing up $50K for the procedure, but is horrified to learn that in order for Laura's body to be revived, another woman must die to provide a soul. Even worse, Dr. Death isn't the type to accept defeat: when the first soul is rejected by Fred's dead wife, he continues to seek new unwilling donors.

Meanwhile, Fred changes his mind about bringing Laura back when he falls for his sexy secretary Sandy (Cheryl Miller): unfortunately for the new couple, determined Dr. Death decides that Sandy's soul is exactly what he has been looking for.

The film's trashy tongue-in-cheek nature makes this one highly entertaining from start to finish, the fun factor increased by some delightfully lurid violence, the gruesome highlights including a disfigured woman sawn in half, a man's face melting after he is drenched in Dr. Death's corrosive blood, the delivery of a blonde's severed head to Fred's office, and Sandy's wrist being slashed with a scalpel so that she can be slowly bled to death.

This is the only feature directed by a man who otherwise worked primarily in TV (mostly as an assistant director), and despite some gore, it very much feels like an early 1970s television project, with the same kind of flat lighting, compositions, scoring and pacing. (It's exactly the aesthetic parodied by the recent "The Love Witch.") The script is a jumble of illogical nonsense even by horror standards-it's one of those stories that falls apart the second you ask "Why didn't our protagonist just call the police when he realized murders were being committed?"-and doesn't seem even halfway convinced by its own feeble reincarnation hocus-pocus.

John Considine does clearly enjoy camping it up as the villain, and Florence Marly behaves likewise in her briefer role. But the other cast members play it straight in a dull, square fashion, as if they were guesting on some routine network TV series. The movie seems to be halfway making fun of its own grisly silliness, but it's a testament to the pedestrian execution there's not much fun to be shared in watching it.

What a nice & trashy early 70s exploitation discovery this turned out to be! "Doctor of Death: Seeker of Souls" is a film that immediately brings a lot of opposite statements to mind… The whole basic concept is pretty derivative and overdone, but at the same time creatively served and continuously feeling fresh. The film is low-budgeted, cheesy and dumb, but simultaneously also inventive, macabre and even occasionally intelligent when you least suspect it! And last not least, whereas sadly most of the drive-in horror/exploitation flicks from that era were incredibly dull and pitiably amateurish, "Doctor Death" is non-stop entertaining and outrageously over-the-top just like the fans want to see them. The concept is as simple as it is genius; Dr. Death is an alchemist/roadshow magician who's been alive for more than a thousand years thanks to his own secret formula. Unlike all other and dumb scientists who tried to obtain immortality, Dr. Death doesn't even attempt to keep his body energized and youthful, as he simply just transfers his soul to a new body whenever the time has come. He naturally has to kill the owner of the new body, but that's a small price to pay when you have been around for centuries and existed in the bodies of various men, women and children. In this modern day and age, Doctor Death now even offers his soul-shifting business as a profitable business and built a flamboyant circus show around it. The heartbroken widower Fred Saunders hires him to transfer a random soul into the beautiful but sadly deceased body of his wife, but this turns out to be a difficult assignment for the magnificent Dr. Death. The body inexplicably refuses every soul that our good doctor brings to her tomb – resulting in a couple of hilarious "I command you to enter that body!" sequences. After a while, even Mr. Saunders abandons the idea (probably because he finally realized that his blond secretary is far hotter than his wife ever was) but Dr. Death stubbornly continues to fulfill his assignment, even if it means that innocent girls' bodies pile up. Sure this film has quite a large number of shortcomings and (not-so) minor defaults, but I was far too entertained to let them bother me. John Considine is a fantastically evil protagonist, the script is full of unpredictable out-of-the-blue plot twists, there's plenty of cheap Grand Guignol gore (the head in the box is awesome) and there's an irresistible atmosphere of weirdness from start to finish.