Soul of the Demon (1991 Video) User Reviews

Soul of the Demon

[BandSAboutMovies · 5/10 · 24 January 2023]

Joey and Toby are doing what all delinquents did in 1991 and that's racing their BMX bikes instead of learning in school. Soon, they discover a miniature coffin with a statue of the demon Asteroth inside and even when a spirit that looks like a younger Reverend Henry Kane appears and tells them to just stop, then laugh and keep it. Where do you find a coffin in the Nevada desert? Anyways, later that night, Joey's brother Josh has a seance party - seriously, what else is there to do but try and drive into the middle of nowhere to find a generator-powered Kyuss performance? - and like a bunch of kids playing Sabbath in their garage and sounding not that bad, this movie decides to riff on a cover of Night of the Demons.

Joey also is cool enough to have a poster of the remake of The Blob in his bedroom, so I was on his side.

Then this movie delivers what its body and eyeball-strewn credits promised: demonic possession and relentless gore. Seriously, a Fulci-worshipping eyeball decimation, heads literally rolling, a saw through the crotch and bodies literally shredded in half.

Director and writer Charles Lang also made High Desert, in which partying teens run into a biker gang. Also, IMDB lists the wrestler Taz in this and honestly, you'd think I'd remember if Taz was in this. I think whoever did the IMDB saw that a character named Rocky is played by someone named Tazz and went with it.

Stick through all the 90s dude talk and basketball scenes. You are about to see something special.

Bores then gores

[milkhole213 · 7/10 · 11 October 2021]

Soul of the Demon is one of the few films I've already seen from the Tomb of Terrors box set and I remember it being pretty good. It starts out with police cleaning up a gory murder scene over the credits including bloody murder weapons, shreds of flesh with moving disembodied eyeballs and bodies laying under bloody sheets. Two kids dig up a demonic statue and are warned by a guy with really bad skin to put it back. They don't of course and later on some teens have a séance invoking the demon, Astaroth whose soul resides in the statue. 50 minutes in and the movie picks up as the demon precedes to slaughter the houseful of teens. This is were the movie delivers with some great low budget gore. A head explodes (unfortunately it's too dark to see much) splattering brain matter over a woman who is then elevated above a bed and she is brutally ripped in two in an awesome, gruesome gore scene. There's also a stick through the eye and out the back of the skull, a woman sawed through the hoo-hah (not very graphic), a twisted neck, a head cut in half with the top half still having the eyes moving, a nasty stomach ripping open to spill guts Fulci style with the body ending up in two pieces and a hand plunged into a man's back with his spine being torn out. While not a total gorefest these last 25 minutes are blood drenched and worth the doldrums of most of the rest of the movie. The effects are quite good for the budget level.

Soul of the Demon would make a good double feature with Fatal Exam, recently released in a box set by Vinegar Syndrome. Both have similar plots involving demonic activity in a house and are pretty slow for most of the runtime. Both pick up towards the end though Soul of the Demon delivers much better bloodshed while Fatal Exam is much longer but its "boring" parts are more interesting including lots and lots of Pepsi drinking. Both also have some hilariously bad but endearing demon "animation". This being SOV is probably why the snobs at Vinegar Syndrome haven't released it yet.

So bad it's good!

[matthewjdarch · 10/10 · 17 July 2001]

This is the most ridiculously low budget horror flick I've ever seen! It's awesome! And somehow they manage to have quite a few over the top gory special effects scenes through out the movie. It tends to follow the ancient formulas,e.g.: When one of they characters decides to leave the group to pick up some pizza,...of course he gets killed first! The characters are the cheesiest tough guy metal heads you've ever seen! Here is my favorite line from the movie: girl: Hey, your nose is bleeding! Are you okay!?! guy: Uh, yeah, huh huh, must be the rough sex! *blood start pouring from his ears too* guy:UUUUUHHH, IT HURTS...*BOOM, his head blows up only to be followed by an even more impressive death as the "girl" is raised up off the bed and torn into two pieces by some invisible force!* If you love movies that are so bad they are good, you will love this!

Amused to look back on a great bad movie in my life!

[Mrs-Skeleton1031 · 10/10 · 22 October 2010]

Its funny to see the reviews posted on here, even more so to see Harolds somehow connected family member. My father is Chuck Lang, the writer & director of this film. I remember being a little girl on set daily helping my Dad in any way I could which was usually by staying out of the way. lol I haven't seen the movie in yrs but it sits on my shelf, where it will always have a home like the rest of my Dad's low budget films. It's amazing to see where he started to where he's ended up today, in 2010. Successfully owning a movie/production company & considered top 10 in the world for what he does. Winning Sundance Film festival, being mentioned in magazine after magazine but it all started w/ creative horrible movie that captured viewers attentions! "Too bad to turn off, too good to call it bad" I recall being w/ those horrible haired punk-rocker tough guys (who actually were producers, sound guys & editors) eating Ranch flavored chips (which you see in the scene) b/c I forgot to snatch them before my Dad said action so they ate em' during filming instead! lol I was in the car ducking during one scene, in channel 8's news room as the head exploded & in the corner of the hallway when her body mysteriously tore apart. lol Sadly to say, a few members died shortly after this movie & for the yrs to come. I hope you enjoy my Dad's movie & apart of my childhood in this incredibly horrible great movie Soul of the Demon. I love you Dad! oxox

Pretty awful, but of significance to Las Vegas, NV locals

[RHPSvegas · 10/10 · 12 June 2006]

Wow, I'm shocked someone else has actually seen this! The only reason I know about it because the producer (who also plays the old man in it) is my aunt's brother-in-law! I can remember watching it back when it came out and not really getting it. I just re-watched it again recently, and damn does it parallel Night of the Demons. I'm not going to lie - it's a bad movie, but for some reason it's fun to watch. The teens in it are all painfully early 90s. The special effects are surprisingly good for being so low budget. Having been born in and growing up in Vegas, it's funny to watch this and know exactly where certain scenes were shot. Even the news report at the beginning mentions real streets. It's almost a period piece of early 90s Vegas that locals can watch and go, "I remember when things were like that." The only thing I don't specifically remember is the hair - EVERYONE in this movie has bad hair, especially the brother metal head. The stoner with the mullet dies (thank God), but at least he brought the pizza.

Surprisingly fun cheesy gore-fest!

[Logan-22 · 8/10 · 15 April 2012]

First off, this is a bad movie, but so bad it's good! The characters are so hilariously terrible, the script so relentlessly boneheaded, that the movie actually becomes enjoyable. This movie has more heart and soul than the last ten Hollywood blockbusters put together. You totally get that the people who made this little SOV horror flick really believed in what they were doing (even if they didn't always know what they were doing).

It's also a really fun time capsule movie that takes us back to a time when everyone had big stupid hair and called each other "Dude!" every few seconds. The gore ain't bad, either, considering the budget. Would have liked a little nudity, but I guess you can't have everything.

If you love cheesy 80s horror, this is pretty much a prime example of it. It gets a solid 7.5 stars from me, and I would definitely call this one of the best shot-on-video horror movies of all time ('cause we all know how rotten most SOV flicks are--especially the ones made back in the 80s and 90s).

The basic plot has two junior high morons dig up a possessed satanic statue. One kid's older metal-head brother and his lunkhead friends (complete with mullets) decide to hold a séance with their girlfriends on Halloween night in a haunted house. Naturally, they call upon the soul of the demon from the statue, who then possesses the little brother. He gets all demonic looking (like a bargain basement Freddy Krueger) and uses black magic to kill the head-banging morons and their girls, but fortunately, he does this without spouting off any stupid one-liners. Who will survive and what will be left of them? Can the soul of the demon be put back into its statue prison?

Typical dialog: A stoner dude goes to take a leak in the woods behind the house (talking to himself the whole way like he just stepped out of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure), and says, "Whoa! This tree looks fine. I think you been drinking too much beer, dude! Oh, man! Smells like some righteous doo-doo, man!" And then the demon kills him. Hysterical!

For all you gore fans, here's the scoop: All but the final death scene are of the black magic levitating object/telekinesis variety. In no particular order: a girl is cut open by a wood saw (from between her legs), girl's eyeball punctured by tree branch (comes out the back of her dead), dude gets his head twisted all the way around to break his neck, girl levitated off bed and ripped in two, dude's head explodes after complaining of headache and nosebleed (which he attributes to all the "rough sex" he's been having, LOL), another dude gets levitated and pinned to a wall then ripped in half so all his guts fall out, and yet another dude gets his spine ripped out and thrown away.

Some of these scenes are more suggestive than explicit (like the wood saw between the legs, although we do get a panty shot), while others (like the girl ripped in half) are quite graphic. But the absolute best, most awesome gore scene (worthy of Tom Savini) is the meat cleaver to the face one girl gets. It cuts the top half of her head off at an angle, gore spews out, then we see her upside-down, chopped off head with its big gold hoop earrings still looking around, just like that one zombie shovel scene in George Romero's Day of the Dead (1985). There are some obvious nods to Sam Raimi's Evil Dead (1981) and Lucio Fulci's Zombie (1979) as well: bedsheets pinning a girl down to be sawed in half and sharp wood slicing through a girl's eyeball. This flick is definitely a cult classic and real guilty pleasure. Well worth hunting down if you're into this sort of thing.

What Is It With These Kids And Their Seances?...

[azathothpwiggins · 23 November 2021]

Two kids find an ancient demon statue in a coffin-shaped box. Coincidentally, the older brother of one of the kids decides to hold a seance with his friends, that very night. In an old abandoned house!

What could possibly go wrong?

When the group inadvertently conjures the demon from the statue, many grisly deaths ensue.

While it is extremely cheap looking, SOUL OF THE DEMON isn't a complete disaster. It makes the best of its limited resources by taking its cues from 1980's trash classics like NIGHT OF THE DEMONS. Besides, gorehounds will be giddy over the gushy guts and dismemberments!

Worth a look if you can tolerate the bargain basement production values...