By Lee Pfeiffer
Scorpion Releasing has made possible the DVD debut of the 1973 cult horror film Doctor Death, Seeker of Souls. The special edition release is top-notch in all respects. The movie was the brainchild of Eddie Saeta, a lifelong member of the movie community who started out as Harry Cohn's messenger boy and later became a well-respected assistant director. (He worked on a number of the Three Stooges shorts at Columbia and several Man From U.N.C.L.E. episodes that were turned into feature films.) Doctor Death was a rare opportunity for Saeta to fulfill his dream of directing a feature film. The low-budget horror opus was shot in 12 days - a remarkable achievement, given the film's ambitious special effects and varying sets and locations. The movie is played primarily for laughs, with John Considine cast as the titular villain, a charismatic practitioner of black magic who has secured the secret to eternal life. When the present body he inhabits is on the verge of death, he is able to transfer his soul into a recently-deceased person. The fly-in-the-ointment is that, if a suitable cadaver is not available, the good doctor secures one through murder. In contemporary times, he turns his art into a for-profit venture by charging distraught people huge sums to bring their loved ones back from the grave by transposing their souls into another body. The script follows one such grieving victim, Fred Saunders (Barry Coe), who cannot accept the fact that his beautiful young wife Laura (Jo Morrow) has died from an illness. He hires Doctor Death to bring her soul back to life - and it doesn't ruin any plot device to inform the reader that certain unexpected complications occur.