Director: Tobe Hooper
Written by: Dan O’Bannon & Don Jakoby
Based on the novel: “The Space Vampires” by Colin Wilson
Starring: Steve Railsback, Peter Firth, Frank Finlay, Mathilda May, Patrick Stewart, Michael Gothard, Nicholas Ball, Aubrey Morris
Music by: Henry Mancini (Michael Kamen in the US theatrical cut)
Taglines: “In outer space they unleashed a force more evil than the world had ever imagined!”
“With an insatiable hunger, they are coming… Mankind is their prey”
“The Cinematic Sci-Fi event of the Eighties”
“The force… More evil than the world imagined!”
“In the blink of an eye, the terror begins.”
STORY
The Churchill, a British manned spacecraft, is on its way to rendez-vous with Halley’s Comet on its most recent visit to Earth. The crew notice a massive object hidden in the comet’s tale. It appears to be a spacecraft, over 150 miles long. They go to investigate and find the craft contains thousands of long-dead bat-like creatures along with what appear to be 3 perfectly preserved humanoids in crystalline forcefields. They decide to bring these back with them, but one of the crew seems to fall almost instantly ill while another has a strange attraction to the female humanoid.
30 days later, the Churchill appears back in Earth’s orbit but on the wrong course. No response is forthcoming from the craft, so the Americans are convinced to send out a space shuttle to dock and find out what’s going on. They find no survivors apart from the 3 humanoids, still in their forcefields, and the logs have been destroyed in a massive fire on-board. The bodies are taken back to the London Space Authority for examination, but the female wakes up and overpowers a guard, killing him by sucking out his lifeforce before escaping.
Two hours later, the guard wakes up and does the same to the doctor examining him. It appears that victims of the alien humanoids themselves become lifeforce vampires, and need more every 2 hours. Given the exponential nature of this, a desperate race begins to track down the female and her victims. Meanwhile, one of the crew of the Churchill has appeared, apparently fine but with a strange new connection to the aliens…
OPINION
Lifeforce is barmy. It’s one of those movies that’s so bizarre that it could never be made by a studio today, yet was a $25 million attempt at hitting the mainstream at the time. Cannon, home of the legendary trash producers Globus & Golan, decided following the success of Poltergeist to sign a 3 picture deal with that movie’s director Tobe Hooper (though there’s an ongoing controversy as to whether he or Spielberg actually called the shots). None of the movies were particularly successful on their initial theatrical runs (the other movies being The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and Invaders From Mars), but all have developed something of a cult following today.
Lifeforce stands out for a number of reasons. First of all, it’s rather schizophrenic in everything from its setting (mostly London, evoking a kind of Quatermass and The Pit feel to its tone). The opening 10 minutes could almost be from any Alien or 2001-style sci-fi movie. When back on Earth, there’s a notable contrast between the dryly to-the-point and often humorous actions of the cast, even while surrounded by gore and animated corpses. that’s not to say the film never takes itself seriously. Far from it, in fact, as all of the cast is deadly serious all the way through.
The other thing that makes this movie highly memorable is Mathilda May. For roughly 90% of the film, she’s wandering around totally naked. It’s interesting as it’s all done very matter-of-factly with no attempt at eroticism (other than the lifeforce being drain out of victims via a kiss), yet manages to still be the source of many teenage fantasies around the world (not just me… try finding a review online that doesn’t mention May’s nudity!).
The film is also helped along by the supporting cast of great British talent, including a pre-Star Trek Patrick Stewart. The effects are mostly decent, at least on par with most releases of the time, with the space sequences having been worked on by John Dykstra among others. The other effects are variable: while the animatronics for the first reanimated people are excellent, the makeup for later scenes featuring hundreds of the things are pretty bad. There’s also a pretty shoddy head cast of Patrick Stewart that mars an otherwise impressive sequence later on.
Over, I love this film but it’s far from perfect. It really does sag between the alien’s escape and the destruction of London during the climax. It’s utterly nuts, and I can’t tell how anyone thought this would be a mass-market release but I’m glad they did!
TRAILER
CENSORSHIP
Unsurprisingly, Hooper’s final cut was a little too full of nudity and violence for the studio to feel they could sufficiently commercialise it. The American cut runs about 10 minutes shorter than the European one, most cuts having been made to the space and murder scenes. Given that, it’s not entirely surprising that it flopped, especially as it was out at the same time as Ron Howard’s family-friendly classic Cocoon. The film did develop something of a cult following over time, and I believe the DVD releases all contain the European cut , though it’s worth double-checking region 1 releases.
Rating: 
[...] Cannon, home of the legendary trash producers Globus & Golan, decided following the success of Poltergeist to sign a 3 picture deal with that movie ’s director Tobe Hooper (though there’s an ongoing controversy as to whether he or …Page 2 [...]