''Hellmaster'' (also known as ''Soulstealer'') is a 1992 American

horror film Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes. Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, apoca ...

written and directed by Douglas Shulze, and starring

John Saxon John Saxon (born Carmine Orrico; August 5, 1936 – July 25, 2020) was an American actor who worked on more than 200 film and television projects during a span of 60 years. He was known for his work in Western (genre), Westerns and horror film ...

. The plot follows a psychotic college professor who uses unsuspecting students as laboratory rats, injecting them with a drug that mutates them into brutal killers.

Plot

Part of a secret government

eugenics Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...

project, crazed

biochemistry Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...

professor Jones (

) committed terrible crimes on his college campus in the late 1960s before one of his colleagues burned the college to put a deadly end to his spree. Jones is presumed dead, but a series of murders twenty years later raises questions of whether he has somehow managed to return. In actuality, Jones's drug experiments have turned him into a superhuman. Having teleported himself to safety during the fire, he has been living underground continuing his experiments. With an injection, he is able to turn people into mutants who will follow his will. With the help of his

zombie A zombie (Haitian French: , ht, zonbi) is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. Zombies are most commonly found in horror and fantasy genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in whic ...

-like army, Jones plans to access his stores of his "Nietzsche Drug" in the catacombs beneath the campus. Standing against him are three people: a

psychic A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception (ESP) to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance, or who performs acts that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws, ...

, a

reporter A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

and a woman who has already survived one supernatural attack. The psychic determines that she herself must take the Nietzsche Drug so she can face the mad professor and his mutant slaves.

Cast

as Professor Jones *

David Emge David Emge (born September 9, 1946) is an American actor. He played Stephen in George A. Romero's horror film '' Dawn of the Dead''. Career One of Emge's classmates and acting partners while in college was Ron Glass, who later became famous as ...

as Reporter *

Jeff Rector Jeff Rector (born September 12, 1958) is an American actor. He has appeared in over 60 feature films and television programs. On 28 April 2012 he hosted the launch party of the Burbank International Film Festival. He has an identical twin brot ...

as Jesse * Amy Raasch as Shelley * Edward Stevens as Drake * Sean Sweeney as Joel * Melissa Zafarana as Tracy * Jim Riethmiller as Harrold * Sarah Barkoff as Little Girl

Home media

The film's initial home video release VHS was distributed through AIP in 1992. The film was released on

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

on September 19, 2006 and includes

audio commentary An audio commentary is an additional audio track, usually digital, consisting of a lecture or comments by one or more speakers, that plays in real time with a video. Commentaries can be serious or entertaining in nature, and can add informatio ...

from director Shulze and one of the producers, along with a conceptual art gallery, and a behind-the-scenes

gallery Gallery or The Gallery may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Art gallery ** Contemporary art gallery Music * Gallery (band), an American soft rock band of the 1970s Albums * ''Gallery'' (Elaiza album), 2014 album * ''Gallery'' (Gr ...

.allmovie ((( Hellmaster [Unrated Director's Cut] > Overview )))

References

External links

* *
New York Times overview
* 1992 films 1992 horror films 1990s psychological thriller films American supernatural horror films 1990s English-language films 1990s American films {{1990s-horror-film-stub