Soultaker

This movie is so early '90s it'll make your nostalgia hurt. Spiral perms abound, hair bands play on every radio station, and a main character looks just like Uncle Jesse from "Full House." It's quite a ride.

The movie begins in a hospital. There is a man in black flashing in and out of sight as he walks down the hall. Will Smith? Tommy Lee Jones? Johnny Cash? Nope, it's Joe Estevez, famous for being the brother of actual actor Martin Sheen. Joe is apparently invisible to us mortals because when he opens the door to enter a room, you can't see him. An old man lies on a bed in the room, sleeping while the respirator hums. Joe leans over the old man and pulls a black ring out of his coat pocket. The man wakes up and sees him. Like anyone who sees Joe Estevez leaning over him, he panics. Joe holds the black ring over the man's body while green stuff comes out, filling the ring. The green stuff is apparently the old man's soul because he dies as the ring fills. At this point, I'd like to point out that the old man had three IV bags hooked up to him at the same time. Overkill, much?

The title of the movie flies by after this scene. It's called "Soultaker." From this we use our powers of deduction to figure out that Joe is the Soultaker. What is a Soultaker, you ask? Obviously it's someone who takes souls. Not to be confused with a "Soletaker" who is the shoe repairman's best friend

Next we see tires and a guy who looks like the blond-haired fella from WKRP in Cincinnati and Head of the Class. Remember him? Always wore smoked sunglasses? Yeah, that guy. He's not in this movie, but the drug dealer, Brad, looks a lot like him. As he steers his Pimpmobile down the road, he honks at a frizzy-haired girl who is putting pink lipstick on in the rearview. She expresses displeasure that her lipstick smeared.

The scene changes to a room in an antebellum manor house where we meet our star and screenwriter, Natalie. Nat is picking out clothes for some occasion. As she primps, she looks at a picture of herself and a John Stamos-looking guy. The scene changes again to the Stamosy guy looking at the same picture in a decidedly less-expensive home. He primps looking into broken-off side view mirror from a car. May I offer you some class conflict? Back at Nat's, her father knocks on the door and she hides the picture. How about some forbidden romance? WKRP picks up Stamosy, or "Zack" as he is called, and they reveal some exposition.

During this whole sequence the same song is playing on the radio. Some big-hair chick band that no one has ever heard of. Ah, nostalgia.

Everyone is going to Summerfest. Let's see: southern accents, check; big deal out of a summer festival, check; nothing else to do, check. Ah, this movie is set in my neck of the woods. So why is it being held in the middle of the woods instead of on Main Street? And why are they serving beer? I've seen some strange things at summer hometown festivals (like pickle flavored ice cream, chips, and icees at Mt.Olive's Pickle Festivals), but I have never in my life seen them serving beer at one of these, even in the "wet" counties. Might corrupt the chi'drens. Although everyone at this thing looks to be in their late teens. But they raised the drinking age to 21 in the 80's. Ah heck, I don't. know what they're doing there. It's just something to get the plot going. Let's move on, shall we?

A TOTAL GEEK! appears and swipes Nat away from her friend. She doesn't want to dance with his oily self, but is too nice to say no. Wimp. WKRP, Zack, and some curly-haired guy (Tommy) show up and disperse. WKRP takes advantage of a private moment to snort some drugs. Joe Estevez and his big-faced boss show up and point out the main characters, indicating that they will have their souls taken at 8:00. When Joe looks at Nat, he has a flashback to his former life when he was apparently in love with someone who looked just like her. Nat's friend embraces a sailor. Happy face balloons abound. There are two reasons for this disjointed paragraph: a) the entire movie is disjointed, and b) the live band sucked.

Nat's friend leaves with her sailor, which displeases Nat as she now has no ride home. Like most hometown festivals, everyone heads out around 3 p.m., so she doesn't have long to wait. Zack sees her standing forlornly by Friend's car and he goes over to chat her up. They catch up with each other, flirt a bit, then WKRP (who doesn't like Natalie because she's a "rich *blanked out*") drives over and tells Zack they have to leave. Zack takes it upon himself to invite Nat to go home with them, which disgusts everyone in the car but him.

In the middle of a road somewhere, Joe Estevez waits patiently.

WKRP must have gotten some powerful delayed-reaction drugs because he is now suddenly high. He flashes back to the exposition as his passengers yell at him. Joe steps out in front of the car. WKRP swerves. We are then treated to a shot of a tree for a long ten seconds. Oh, here's the car. Yep, it crashes. Green stuff comes out. Hey, why did it take them five hours to get there? WKRP must have taken one mother of a wrong turn.

Zack, Nat, Tommy, and WRKP find themselves lying face-down in a clearing. Meanwhile, Joe takes the green stuff from some random woman in the car. Nobody else has any green stuff. Big Face appears and berates Joe for having only one green ring. He sends Joe on a mission to fill the remaining four rings while "abiding by the laws of time and space." Ooooh, spooky sounding and meaningless!

When the cops show up (who called them?), they find a huge baggie chock-full of white powder. WKRP's doing all right for himself as a pusher. The cops taste the drugs (that can't be SOP), and then the ambulance and the cops leave the crash site, leaving a tow bar on the empty car. That just don't seem right. Why isn't the tow truck already there?

WKRP and the gang show up at the car and survey the damage. As Nat gasps about the damage to the car, WKRP roots around in the front seat looking for his drugs. Tommy looks at a popped balloon and suddenly notices Joe sitting in the front seat looking menacing. He is identified by WKRP as the guy who stepped in front of the car, causing the crash. Joe responds by choking WKRP and throwing him to the ground. The remaining three souls ('cause that's what they are. They're souls.) run off into the distance. Rather than pursue them, Joe takes a moment to suck WKRP into the ring. Back in the ambulance where WKRP's body dies. Gee, I wonder if the two events are related?

Tommy & Co. run to a nearby convenience store. They go in and try to talk to the clerk who is on the phone with some lady who has an interest in him. I will not dignify the attempted humor in this sequence by recalling it. They go out to the pay phone and try to call 911 which only proves that no one can hear them. Tommy looks hard at the forest while Nat chases the tow truck which finally showed up to get the car. Joe shows up. Nat and Zack run down the street and Tommy runs into the store. He breaks a bottle, sending the clerk into the back room. Joe comes into the store and sucks Tommy into the ring. The clerk returns and looks very tired.

Nat and Zack run to Nat's house. They must be in terrific shape to run around the whole county like that. Nat's mom meets them at the door. Panicky dialogue ensues. Needless to say, Nat's mom doesn't believe a word of it and tells Nat she needs to take a bath to calm her nerves. After Mom goes upstairs, Nat and Zack have a Touching Moment. While everyone else is upstairs, Zack turns on the TV to watch the end of some movie.

Nat's parakeet freaks out when she comes in her room. She lies down for awhile to have flashbacks of the wreck. Mom comes in and criticizes Zack. She actually sounds kind of jealous. Nat responds by saying, "I still have feelings for him." Has anyone outside of a movie or TV show ever said those words? I've never heard it, and I've heard a lot.

Zack hears growling and goes to visit the family cocker spaniel. We learn by flashing to the cocker's point of view that the living can't see souls. He goes back into the living room and watches the News @ 11. The main story is the wreck. This is because Nat is the mayor's daughter. The mayor and his wife are at the hospital trying to decide whether to cut off life support at midnight. Zack's dad is there too, trying to make the same decision. Mom is seen at the hospital fending off reporters. Mom is upstairs. Zack's thick head processes this and comes up with A Suspicion.

Back upstairs, Nat is undressing for her bath. Tender music plays as the door opens a crack and Mom peers in. Um. Ick. Excuse me while I boil my head to remove that image. Nat's undressing is in slow motion (of course), and she takes off her underwear six times. Finally, she looks in the mirror and sees the door open. Spinning around reveals Mom looking in. Must...resume...boiling...head....

Mom is actually Joe in disguise. He tries persuading Nat to go with him and leave Zack. Zack knocks him cold with a two-by-four. Souls can't be seen or heard, but they can be knocked out. Uh-huh. Nat runs upstairs to get a rifle out of the attic, quickly redressing along the way. When she gets back downstairs, Joe is about to "kill" Zack. She tries to shoot the Soultaker. Joe suggests that she try pulling the trigger for the other barrel. What a helpful Soultaker he is! She pulls the trigger, the gun goes off, Joe flashes back to shooting Nat in his previous life, he turns around, and the bullets have gone right through him into the wall. Tarantino stole that bit for Pulp Fiction and made it good.

In response to this attempt on his lack of life, Joe defenestrates Zack. Nat runs outside to check on her guy. They resume running around like mice on amphetamines while Joe makes threatening remarks to no one from the bathroom window. He defenestrates himself and walks slowly after them.

Back at the hospital, Nat's dad and Zack's Bob Vila-looking dad exchange snide remarks. Mom tries to mediate. (Nat's real mom can out-Southern Belle Scarlett O'Hara.) Nat's dad has a sudden change of heart after Bob Vila reveals that his wife is dead.

Two random nuns appear at a bus stop. The movie's dragging, bring on the nuns! Zack and Nat show up. While they wait for the bus, Zack attempts to explain the events of the evening to Nat, failing miserably. I hope my soul isn't as stupid as theirs.

Zack and Nat take the bus to the hospital. So souls can't be seen, heard, or shot, but they can be knocked out with blunt instruments and take the bus. Yeah. They decide to find their bodies in twenty minutes by taking the elevator to every floor and looking in every room. I guess looking in the ICU was out of the question. They take the elevator with a random intern who sings along to Bobby McFerrin. When the elevator stops, he turns into Joe and throws Zack out. With boyfriend out of the way, he resumes putting the moves on Nat. They are going to The Seventh Floor.

Once they reach The Seventh Floor, much ACTING! commences. Viewers of this movie might be interested in the horrible cinematography whenever they switch to Nat. They go back down to the floor Nat's body is on.

As Zack runs around the hospital desperately trying to find the stairs, he is stopped by a body being wheeled out of a room. He glances at the name on the door and has a flashback. 'Tis our old friend Tommy. He was sucked into a ring back at the convenience store and has just now died? Without another thought for his dead friend, Zack finds the elevator on this floor and bangs on the door, yelling. He hears a familiar voice. He opens a nearby door and finds his old friend WKRP. He's a Soultaker now. An angel of death with a big ol' bottle of Jim Beam. Rank hath its privileges. He explains the concept of Soultaking to Zack, complete with demonstration as he sucks a random woman's green stuff into a ring. Together, Zack and WKRP figure out how to rejoin Zack and Nat's souls to their bodies.

There is a Tender Moment at Nat's bedside as her father and mother say goodbye to her. Nat's soul screams at them. Joe convinces her to give up all hope and go with him back to The Seventh Floor. This time she agrees. Once they get up there and she sees lots of Soultakers walking around, she figures it out. Nat's kind of slow. Joe puts his biggest move on Nat just as Zack and WKRP show up to save her. Joe seems upset at his lack of girl-getting.

WKRP takes Nat and Zack to the floor with their bodies (which are not in the ICU where they should be) and gives them two black rings. After he leaves, our stalwart duo delay restarting their lives to doubt. They smooch and Nat puts her green stuff back into her body. The machines flatline. Zack pulls her soul back into a ring. The machines restart. What. The. Hell.

I'd like to point out that the machines were not disconnected at midnight as promised. So why make such a big deal out of it?

Zack resumes running around the hospital like a ferret with Joe in pursuit. After doing this for far too long, Zack remembers that falling from a height doesn't damage souls and jumps off the roof. Joe is about to follow his prey when his big-faced boss appears and informs Joe of the Penalty for Presumption. This involves sucking Joe into a ring. No word yet on what Joe was Presuming. I don't think they knew what the word means.

Zack puts his green stuff back into his body. He is immediately up and running. Rather than putting him back to bed with calming words, tranquilizers, or a quick blow to the back of the head, a passing doctor and nurse help him down the hall to Nat's room.

Once again, reuniting Nat's soul to her body is unsuccessful in reviving her. Zack announces his love for her and cries out to God for help. He pulls out her respirator and, much like Frankenstein's monster, SHE'S ALIVE! The doctors in attendance do nothing to discourage the thick-headed goon with no medical training from messing with the brain-dead patient. I wanna go to this hospital!

An unspecified amount of time later, Nat is being released from the hospital. Their love is no longer forbidden as Nat's dad doesn't chase Zack from the room with a board with a nail in it. Zack takes Nat outside to show her a surprise: he's refinished a 1950's land boat for her! They get in and exchange some stupid and predictable dialogue about a second chance. SHUT UP. They drive off into the afternoon. Overblown music plays. The end.

Rating: 3 cat treats

Stupidest Lines:

Nat: (in response to Mom's summons to get upstairs) "Sounds like I'm wanted.

Zack: "You are."

Best Scene: The Underwear Scene (MST version only)

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