Today's awesome post of awesomeness is the original pressbook and soundtrack for the 1973 film Soul Hustler, starring Fabian Forte and Casey Kasem!
GAH! What a badass poster.
As you may or may not know, I am a gigantic dork for films about religion — but mostly weird religion films about Christian cults... and Soul Hustler is one of the weirdest ones there is.
The story is about a druggie/hippie named Matthew, who, after accidentally killing his wife and kid in a car accident, goes on a crazy bender. He picks up a hitchhiker named Brian, and on the way to nowhere in particular, he stops at a church tent. He gives this crazy testimony, and claims to be the son of Jesus Christ! He's so charismatic that the crowd believes him, and the creepy pastor sees a moneymaking opportunity. After Matthew gets thrown in jail for fraud, the pastor comes and bails him out on one condition — he's got to join the pastor in his evil quest for money from gullible religious jerks! Along the way, Matthew becomes a huge deal, being the rock and roll star son of Jesus and all, and the pastor ends up hiring a press agent, played by Casey Kasem! Insanity ensues!
It's one crazy ass fun movie, and one that deserves to be seen more! Fabian is awesome as the singing son of Jesus Christ and Casey Kasem is perfect as the sleazy agent.
The movie's directed by Burt Topper, who also directed The Devil's 8 and The Hard Ride, amongst others. He also produced some awesome movies like Wild in the Streets, Devil's Angels, Thunder Alley, and Fireball 500!
The music's not half bad either. It's all fun fake Christian music, and perhaps that's why I love it. I sure do love me some fake Christian music. The songs and score are written by Harley Hatcher, who also wrote music for The Wild Angels, Kelly's Heroes, and another weird Casey Kasem movie that I've written about here before, Wild Wheels!
All the music is performed by the cast, too, so you're in for a lot more groovy Fabian-ness!
Like the Girl in Gold Boots pressbook, the Soul Hustler book contains a few pre-written articles that theaters were supposed to send to newspapers! Obviously my favorite of these is the one about the blasphemous nature of the film —
Well, there you go. The Soul Hustler is a really interesting early 70s cult film that definitely deserves to be rediscovered! While it's essentially a low budget B-Movie, it's well made and has a great message. Fabian is actually really awesome in the movie, and the music is fun!
As always, you can CLICK on the photo(s) to enable the ENLARGE-O-MATIC™ PHOTO EMIGGENER®!!
You can download the Soul Hustler pressbook and soundtrack HERE!!
Aaaaaaand if you wanna give the actual film a shot, which I highly suggest, you can purchase the VHS over at Amazon... or you can just watch it on this semi-legal interwebsite.
Enjoy!
