Tweet
Released by: Culture Shock Releasing
Released on: November 25th, 2022.
Director: Rick Sloane
Cast: Ginger Lynn Allen, Wings Hauser, Jay Richardson
Year: 1992
Purchase From Amazon
Mind, Body & Soul – Movie Review:
Written and directed by Rick Sloane, the same man who gave us Hobgoblins and the Vice Academy movies, 1992’s Mind, Body & Soul introduces us to a lovely young woman named Brenda (Ginger Lynn Allen) who is just about the celebrate her anniversary with her boyfriend Carl (Jesse Kaye). He’s got an odd way of celebrating, however, as he brings her to the basement of a Los Angeles bungalow where a group of cultists dressed in black join together to witness their masked leader attempt to sacrifice a blonde woman strapped to a giant pentagram on the wall. The cops bust in, someone turns the smoke-machine up to max and chaos erupts. The intended victim makes it out alive, as does Brenda but when the Detective McKenzie (John Henry Richardson as Jay Richardson) starts interrogating the victim, she says that she can’t say if Brenda was a cultist or not. She’s tossed in jail briefly where she befriends Rachael (Tamara Clatterbuck aka Tami Bakke) and is raped by a sleazy prison guard.
Then Brenda meets John Stockton (Wings Hauser), her public defender. She lost all of her stuff when Carl’s apartment blew up and so she has nothing. He kindly invites her to stay at his place as long as she needs, encouraging her to use his rad PC and dot matrix printer to write down her thoughts in hopes that he’ll learn something that’ll help in her case. As time goes on, Rachael winds up living at John’s place as well and Brenda is invited on a talk show hosted by Joan Lake (Jo Steele as Jo Brewer) where she meets a black magic practitioner named Priestess Tura (Toni Alessandrini) and a kindly production assistant named Sean (Ken Abraham as Ken Hill) who offers to drive her home. When Carl and the other cultists start poking around, Rachael and Sean decide to visit Tura in hopes that she can help them. When they arrive, she does a weird sexy dance in a slinky outfit and summons a demon (Mark Richardson) who gives them a nail that he says will come in handy but which never factors into the story again.
Will Brenda and company be able to figure out who is really behind the cult and stop them before they’re killed off?
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the twist in this one, it’s pretty obvious right from the start, but Mind, Body & Soul winds up a really fun B-movie even if it is lacking in suspense of scares. We get quite a bit of gratuitous nudity, stock footage explosions, a topless headless corpse, goofy Satanic rituals, a buxom black magic priestess who just wants to dance, a weirdly made-up demon who adds nothing to the plot and an unintentional cameo from a random drum kit during the finale that is supposed to be taking place in the cultist’s bungalow basement but which was clearly filmed in a music venue of some sort.
Sloane keeps things moving at a pretty good clip and the film is paced well enough. The effects are hokey and done on the cheap but amusing to watch and the movie’s early nineties time capsule qualities will endear the picture to some. The score is okay and the cinematography is decent, if not especially remarkable.
The film benefits from a fun cast, most of whom also appeared in Vice Academy 3. Ginger Lynn Allen, in one of her earliest non-adult film roles, is surprisingly good here and harrowingly believable in the rape scene where she proves to be unsettlingly convincing. Wings Hauser is Wings Hauser, he chews the scenery whenever he can and the movie is all the better for it, his unhinged, twitchy presence is always a welcome one. Toni Alessandrini doesn’t have much to do but she makes an impression when she does it, while Ken Abraham is just sort of there. Tamara Clatterbuck is decent in her supporting role and John Henry Richardson, who some will instantly recognize from his work in Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers and countless other B-movies, is well-cast as the surly cop.
Mind, Body & Soul – Blu-ray Review:
Culture Shock Releasing brings Mind, Body & Soul to Region Free Blu-ray famed at 1.85.1 widescreen and presented in AVC encoded 1080p high definition. Presented on a 25GB disc, the picture quality here is pretty solid. Detail is decent and colors look good. There’s pretty solid depth evident throughout and skin tones look nice and natural. There are good black levels and a fair amount of depth and texture to the image as well. There’s very little in the way of print damage, the transfer is damn near spotless, while a natural amount of expected film grain is retained.
The only audio option for Mind, Body & Soul is a 16-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Mono tracks in English. Optional English subtitles are provided. Audio quality is pretty good. Dialogue is generally clean and clear and properly balanced. The score sounds pretty solid here as well. There are no problems to note with any hiss or distortion.
Extras start off with a commentary by director Rick Sloane where he talks about how the movie was banned in fourteen countries, shooting most of the movie on a soundstage, how a lot of the extras in the opening sacrifice scene didn't know what they were getting into, how weird inexplicable things happened in the room with the giant pentagram in it (props kept falling off of the wall and hitting people and the cameras would turn itself on and start rolling), how a lot of the cast members brought their own wardrobe (which is why Ginger wears a peach sun dress in one scene), shooting the movie simultaneously with Vice Academy 3 and who he re-used a lot of the same cast and crew members, how in the rape scene the pained look on Ginger's face contrasts with the fact that no one is naked from the waist down, what Ginger was like to work with and how her experience with hot wax came in handy, how Wings spends half the movie yelling at Ginger and what he was like to work with, his own personal feelings on black magic and the occult, how Hauser and Lynn didn't really get along so well on the set, how Lynn could also be difficult at times to work with when things didn't go exactly on schedule the way she wanted them to, how shooting the car chase/shoot out scene without the road closed down and without permission was the most dangerous scene he's ever shot, getting some of the props prepared for a few scenes, why the movie was censored in certain territories (most of which were heavily Catholic), how you can't have enough nudity in exploitation movies and lots more.
Up next is a new interview with Art Director Mark A. Richardson that runs a little under seven minutes. He talks here about how he came to work with Rick Sloane as an actor on all six Vice Academy movies, playing the demon in this film, doing the art direction and production assistant work on the movie, what Sloane is like to work with and some of the weird stuff that happened when they were shooting the devil worship scenes where they had to work with an odd character named Robert May.
The disc also includes a few archival interviews, the first with Rick Sloane running fourteen minutes. He talks about how he came to write and direct the movie, how it was a departure from the sex comedies he was known for, running into censorship problems with the movie and where it was banned, Hollywood urban legends about how bad things will happen when shooting a film about the devil and how from his experience on this picture that is true, weird things that happened during the black mass scenes, the sets and locations used for the movie and sharing them with Vice Academy 3, what Hauser was like to work with and Ginger Lynn Allen, why it was a tough movie for Ginger and why it was an unpleasant shoot, how this picture has more stock shots than any other movie he's made, shooting the car chase scene without permits and more.
An archival interview with Actress Ginger Lynn Allen runs just under thirteen minutes and sees the actress talking about taking roles in her post-porn career, shooting the movie back to back with the Vice Academy films, what it was like working with a ‘creepy’ Wings Hauser, how cheap Rick Sloane was and her thoughts on her own performance in the film.
Finishing up the extras on the disc are a remastered original trailer for the feature, trailers for a few other Culture Shock Releasing titles, menus and chapter selection options.
Mind, Body & Soul - The Final Word:
Mind, Body & Soul is a pretty entertaining B-grade horror picture with plenty of gratuitous nudity and some really fun performances. The Blu-ray edition from Culture Shock Releasing presents the film in very nice shape and with some choice extras as well. Recommended for fans of pure, unabashed schlock!