Lifeforce, 1985.
Directed by Tobe Hooper.
Starring Steve Railsback, Mathilda May, Peter Firth, Patrick Stewart, Frank Finlay, Aubrey Morris, and Nicholas Ball.
SYNOPSIS:
Three mysterious humanoid bodies found in space are brought back to Earth, but they turn out to be space vampires that threaten to turn London into dust.
Although he’ll forever be known as the director of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre over anything else he may have done before or since, Tobe Hooper put his name to quite a few highly regarded genre films since that groundbreaking classic but he never quite managed to replicate the artistic and critical success of that film, with much of his output being fairly inconsistent when you compare it to the careers of peers such as John Carpenter or Wes Craven.
Lifeforce originally came out in 1985, three years after Hooper directed the relatively mainstream but very successful Poltergeist (or was at least credited with directing it, as some believe that producer Steven Spielberg was really the guiding force) and a year before he returned to Leatherface and family in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and although it was something of a flop commercially it has gained a cult following in the years since its original release.
Whilst the crew of the spaceship Churchill are investigating Halley’s Comet they come across the perfectly preserved bodies of three humanoid alien beings, two men and one woman. The bodies are taken to the European Space Research Centre in London for examination, but just before any procedures can take place the female (Mathilda May) wakes up and proceeds to drain the life force out of everyone she encounters whilst making her way across London. The trouble is those she attacks turn into zombie-like creatures who also have the ability to drain others of their life force, and subsequently London turns into a war zone.
Based on the novel The Space Vampires by Colin Wilson, Lifeforce is a movie that has all the elements that made so many other sci-fi films of the period successful but somewhere along the way it looks like somebody thought too much about the plot and made it a little too complicated to fully concentrate on, especially when you have an extremely beautiful and very naked Mathilda May parading around amongst the animatronic corpses for most of the running time.
Despite the fact that Cannon Films threw a lot of money at the picture in the hope of having a huge blockbuster hit which, on the surface anyway, it certainly looks like as the visuals are pretty impressive, this is essentially a B-movie featuring all the things that a good B-movie should, like boobs, vampires, zombies, spaceships and the military going ape with scientists in tow. Great for those in the know, but in the post-Return of the Jedi/The Wrath of Khan 1980s a sci-fi film that had more in common with Quatermass and the Pit than it did with E.T. didn’t really have much commercial appeal.
But small box office returns doesn’t mean that Lifeforce is a stinker because there is certainly a lot to enjoy. The special effects are excellent, the visuals when the crew are spacewalking being particularly worthy of note, and they are a step above a lot of movies from the era. The zombie effects are also good and very reminiscent of The Return of the Living Dead, which also came out the same year and was written by Dan O’Bannon, who gets a writing credit here.
The acting isn’t amazing overall, but it fits the vibe of the film, especially Frank Finlay as Dr. Fallada and Patrick Stewart as Dr. Armstrong, who both seem to know exactly what film they are in and pitch it perfectly. However, Steve Railsback, who plays Colonel Tom Carlsen, the soldier who finds the vampires in the comet, doesn’t seem to know what movie he is in and, probably like the execs at Cannon, thinks the film is destined to become a serious sci-fi epic in the vein of Alien or something like that.
The limited-edition two-disc set contains both the US Theatrical Cut of the film and the longer International Cut, and comes with commentaries from Tobe Hooper and visual effects artist Douglas Smith, an excellent feature-length ‘making of’ documentary with contributions from Hooper, actors Aubrey Morris, Nicholas Ball and various crew members, separate interviews with Tobe Hooper and Mathilda May, a Steve Railsback featurette, trailers and collector’s booklet, and despite there being no new extras from Arrow’s previous Blu-ray release the 4K UHD upgrade is certainly worth it if you already own that disc, as the movie looks as vibrant and colourful as if it were made recently, and even the usually-dodgy ’80’s optical effects don’t look cheap and nasty.
Overall, Lifeforce is an odd film if you go into it expecting something highbrow like 2001: A Space Odyssey, but if you go in armed with the knowledge that this was directed by the man who made The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (See? He can’t get away from it), has a basic story lifted from nearly every low-rent vampire/zombie film made from the 1950s onwards and isn’t to be taken very seriously at all, then you’ll probably have a riot with it.
Like many Tobe Hooper films, Lifeforce is a slow burner, but once all the different plot strands come together for the final act the movie goes into overdrive with zombies, guns and explosions galore, and add to that a hugely bombastic score by Henry Mancini and Lifeforce does enough to justify its cult status, albeit in a slightly disjointed and unbalanced way.
SEE ALSO: Lifeforce: A Movie Only Cannon Could Have Made
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
