History Film / Soultaker

* EightiesHair: And plenty of it.
* AndStarring: Robert Z'Dar as the Angel of Death
* AuthorAppeal: Vivian Schilling was in an auto accident that nearly ended her life and has inspired much of her work. Vivian's book ''Quietus'' has received positive reviews and is about a plane crash survivor who is haunted by angels of death.

* BathtubScene: With the bonus of a peeping mom.

* {{Determinator}}: The Estevez reaper.
* TheEighties. Depressingly so. (Production ran in the late '80s.) The film shows how the late '80s bled culturally into the early '90s.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: When Natalie and Zach arrive at her house, the fact that her mother can seem them when their souls are usually invisible to everyone is a sign that it's not really her mother.

* NeutralFemale: Natalie

* RaceAgainstTheClock: The Estevez reaper needs to take all the characters' souls to the afterlife within a certain amount of time, because...uh...hm...W-well, when he fails, it looks like he loses his authority to take them away due to the cosmic balance or...something?

** [[Music/LedZeppelin Zep]] is never wrong, man!
* StarCrossedLovers: Natalie and Zach. One's from an upper class family, the other's from a lower-middle class family. After Zach saves Natalie's life, though, both families find peace with each other.

The film has the dubious distinction of being featured on [[Recap/MysteryScienceTheater3000S10E01Soultaker a tenth season episode]] of ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'', featuring the guest returns of TV's Frank and Joel Robinson. However, it also won a Saturn Award in 1992 for Best Genre Video Release. All told, it's not that bad a movie, despite its low budget and obviously dated fashions. Doesn't mean there isn't plenty for Mike and the 'Bots to poke fun at, though.

--> '''[[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 Mike]]''' ''(as Z'Dar's character)'': Man, that guy's got a small face.

''Soultaker'' is a 1990 fantasy film starring Vivian Schilling (who wrote the screenplay and co-wrote the original story), Joe Estevez and [[LanternJawOfJustice Robert Z'Dar]]. The story involves a group of teenagers - unaware that they were killed in a car crash (due to the carelessness of their coked up driver/good friend) - on the run from an [[TheGrimReaper angel of death]]. As they flee from "[[{{Psychopomp}} The Soultaker]]", he begins picking them off one-by-one and becomes infatuated with one of the teenagers, Natalie, who is the spitting image of his lover in a past life. The two remaining teens, Natalie and her ex-boyfriend Zach, attempt to reunite their souls with their hospitalized bodies before their parents decide to pull the plug.

* {{Corpsing}}: Watch Natalie when she's seeing the orderly [[ObfuscatingStupidity singing to himself]] in the elevator.

* TimedMission:
** The Estevez reaper needs to take all the characters' souls to the afterlife within a certain amount of time, because...uh...hm...W-well, when he fails, it looks like he loses his authority to take them away due to the cosmic balance or...something?
** The main characters discover that Natalie's body is scheduled to be taken off life support at midnight, and have to resurrect themselves before then. [[spoiler:They don't actually make it in time, but it doesn't seem to matter, even though the camera keeps focusing on a clock for minutes afterwards.]]

* AuthorAppeal[=/=]WriteWhatYouKnow: Vivian Schilling was in an auto accident that nearly ended her life and has inspired much of her work. Vivian's book ''Quietus'' has received positive reviews and is about a plane crash survivor who is haunted by angels of death.

* DevilDetectingDog: While souls are InvisibleToNormals, Zach's dog is able to sense his presence, and Natalie's canary freaks out in her presence.

* InvisibleToNormals: The disembodied souls, who are otherwise able to interact normally with physical objects.

* TimedMission: The Estevez reaper needs to take all the characters' souls to the afterlife within a certain amount of time, because...uh...hm...W-well, when he fails, it looks like he loses his authority to take them away due to the cosmic balance or...something?

* ShowerScene: With the bonus of a peeping mom.

* TheGrimReaper: He looks like Robert Z'Dar in a black trenchcoat, and has a large number of subordinate psychopomps beneath him who were all murderers in their human lives.

* PunchClockVillain: The soultakers, as a group, aren't really ''evil''; they're merely collecting the souls of [[YouCantFightFate those fated to die]]. The Estevez character is specifically called out by the Angel of Death for obsessing over Natalie rather than focusing on his mission, and ultimately the Angel [[spoiler: imprisons him in a ring for disobeying him]].

* PunchClockVillain: The soultakers aren't really evil, merely collecting the souls of [[YouCantFightFate those fated to die]]. That said, the Estevez character's obsession with Natalie makes him hard to sympathize with.

** Zep is never wrong, man!

* GunsAreWorthless: An attempt to shoot the Soultaker does nothing...but he is later taken down with a golf club. Mocked in the MST3K riff.

* GunsAreWorthless: An attempt to shoot the Soultaker does nothing...but he is later taken down with a golf club. Mocked in the film.

* PunchClockVillain: The soultakers aren't really evil, merely collecting the souls of [[YouCantFightFate those fated to die]]. The Estevez character does exceed his brief through his obsession with Natalie.

* CreatorBacklash: Vivian Schilling is one of the more famously displeased creators at the MST3K treatment of her work, in 2016 when ShoutFactory's license expired for the film, her distribution company promptly raised the price of the license past what would be cost-effective for Shout to renew it, so the set it was part of went out of print.

* RedHeadedHero: Natalie.

* '80sHair: And plenty of it.