Mill Creek Entertainment has two new additions to its “Retro VHS Collection” Blu-ray promotional line of products that will be heading home on June 21.
First up is director Ron Underwood’s summer of 1993 fantasy/comedy, Hearts and Souls, which was developed after a film school student did a 16mm short film titled “Seven Souls” in 1987.
According to a feature piece in the Los Angeles Times at the time of the film’s theatrical debut, Gregory Hansen (the film school student) and his brother, Erik, took the short film and translated it into a feature-length script.
Ron Underwood, after he scored a major indie hit with Tremors in 1990, somehow got involved with Universal Pictures and the finished Hansen brother’s script. Tremors and Underwood’s follow-up film, City Slickers (1991), changed everything and suddenly instead of an indie production Underwood is on board as the director, the budget is increased and Brent Maddock and S.S. Wilson (of Tremors fame) are brought in to “polish” the script. As they say, the rest is history … Hearts and Souls opened in August of 1993.
The twist in the story is that four strangers riding on a bus — Charles Grodin, Kyra Sedgwick, Alfre Woodard and Tom Sizemore — are killed in an accident at the very moment that Thomas Reilly is born (his mom was on the way to the hospital and the bus swerved to miss hitting the car she was riding in).
The young Thomas grows and takes the four of them for granted — he’s the only one that can see them as they are ghosts. When that becomes a problem, they step aside and exist in limbo for the next thirty-some years.
Robert Downey, Jr. is the grown Thomas, and he’s not a particularly nice person. Each of the ghosts have to set things right in Thomas’ life, make him a better person and in the process make him see the light that Anne (played by Elisabeth Shue) is the one for him. It’s great fun as they try to accomplish their mission … and in the process set themselves free as well.
The other new “Retro VHS Collection” Blu-ray release from Mill Creek Entertainment on June 21 is writer/director David S. Ward’s 1991 comedy, King Ralph, starring John Goodman as the unlikely King of England (a photo-shoot gone awry wipes-out the royal family).
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