Hellmaster (1992)

User Rating:

2.9/10   

Director:

Douglas Schulze

Writer:

Douglas Schulze (written by)

Release Date:

16 December 1992 (USA)

Genre:

Horror

Tagline:

He'll show you the way to hell and meet you there!

Plot:

A psychotic college professor uses unwitting students as laboratory rats, injecting them with a drug that mutates them into gory killers. |

Plot Keywords:

Drugs | Monster | Mutant | One Word Title | Cult Favorite

Cast

John Saxon	...	Professor Jones
David Emge	...	Robert
Amy Raasch	...	Shelly O'Deane
Edward Stevens	...	Drake Destry
Robert Dole	...	Professor Damon
Jeff Rector	...	Jesse Jameson
Sarah Barkoff	...	Little Girl
Todd Tesen	...	Adam O'Deane
Eric Kingston	...	Bobby Jones
Neil Savedes	...	Joey Jones
Suzanne Labatt	...	Moon Jones
Ron Asheton	...	Mama Jones
Melissa Zafarana	...	Tracy
Jim Riethmiller	...	Harold (as Jim Reithmiller)
Janet Linck	...	Andrea

Also Known As:

Hellmaster: Director's Cut (USA) (DVD title)
Soul Stealer (USA) (trailer title)
Them (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

92 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Netherlands:16

Filming Locations:

Pontiac, Michigan, USA

Company:

Dolphin Entertainment Group

Quotes:

Joel Johnson: When do you have time for the CRIPPLE?

Soundtrack:

Eat or Be Eaten

The things we do for John...

When you're an avid fan of a certain B-movie star, you inevitably also have to struggle yourself through tons of irredeemably bad low-budget movies simply because your idol made the unwise career choice of starring in them. For instance, being a fan of Jeffrey Combs caused me to suffer movies like "Cellar Dweller" and "Lurking Fear", and I felt the need to endure "Dracula 3000" and something called "Revenant" only because I like Udo Kier. Now, I'm an even bigger admirer of John Saxon than I am of Jeffrey Combs and Udo Kier combined, and thus even pure crap like "Hellmaster" becomes fundamental viewing! Big, big, BIG mistake, as this is a hopelessly retarded horror movie and even Saxon's sinister performance can't save it. The script of this thing is completely senseless and dumb, yet somehow it has the pretension of being an ambitious and even intellectual tale of terror. Saxon occasionally appears as a demented professor who tested a newly invented mental drug on a bunch of homeless people back in 1969. Things went a little wrong and the guinea pigs turned into deformed monsters. Now, more than 20 years later, he's back in the catacombs of a university for gifted people (yet, all the students are rather stupid) and he hopes to pick up his experiments. Our nutty professor is hindered by an obtrusive journalist (David Emge) who lost his wife to the drug as well as by some redundant students. The structure implemented by director Douglas Schulze is terribly annoying. Pointless flashbacks are followed by present days events and then stupidly blend with hallucination scenes and sub plots. It feels like Schulze wants his viewers to connect the pieces of the puzzle themselves, but you just don't care about it enough to do that. Quite a few gory murders are committed by the freak-monster shown on the DVD-cover (some kind of crossover between Hellraiser's Pinhead and Pumpkinhead), but I never really figured out whether he was one of the homeless guys or one of the fresh student species. John Saxon acts on automatic pilot, as if he very well realizes it's an inferior production, and the rest of the cast is downright abominable. This piece of junk somehow managed to gather a small fan base, but my advise it so skip it, even if you consider John Saxon to be a demigod.