Director Tobe Hooper is best known for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I admit to never really having been a big fan of TCM, instead I was more partial to Hooper’s TV miniseries of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, which aired in 1979. And while there was a bit of a controversy over whether he or Steven Spielberg actually directed 1982’s Poltergeist, the success of that film, which brought supernatural horror to the suburbs, enabled Hooper to swing for the fences with Lifeforce, a science fiction horror extravaganza that was released in 1985, forty years ago this year.
Based on the book Space Vampires by Colin Wilson, the screenplay for Lifeforce was written by Dan O’Bannon and Don Jakoby--with O'Bannon being a writer on the first Alien film. Taking place in 1986, when the real life Halley’s Comet was due to return to Earth, Lifeforce has Steve Railsback (The Stunt Man) in command of a tricked out space shuttle with an American/British crew of astronauts called the Churchill. It’s the Churchill’s mission to do a flyby of Halley’s Comet and explore it as much as possible.
But the Churchill crew also discover a one hundred and fifty foot alien ship that’s come along for the journey, nestled within the “head” of the comet. When Railsback and several crew members board the vessel via an EVA, they discover a multitude of large, dead, bat-like creatures, and a trio of naked human beings--two men and a woman (Mathilda May)--all sleeping in what looks like stasis tubes. The humans and one bat creature are brought aboard the Churchill, and we then jump ahead in time (and also switch POV) to the European Space Agency’s headquarters in England.
The ESA have lost contact with the Churchill, which is drifting back into Earth orbit. When another shuttle crew goes up to investigate, they find the interior of the Churchill having been blasted and scorched by fire. They also find the three naked people, still safely encased within their stasis tubes, and bring them down to the surface. And that's when the fun really begins.
Tobe Hooper mentioned in an interview that was published back during the film’s original release that Lifeforce was his ‘Ben Hur’ of the SF/horror genres. And he certainly took his best shot, armed with a big budget that was provided by the Cannon Group, the infamous independent film studio that roared its way through the 1980s with a seemingly unending roster of movies that were produced with unlimited funds (although the Cannon Group made many of its films as cheaply as possible). Cannon continued into the early 1990s, until they eventually went broke, shooting out like a flaming star in the night.
Unfortunately, Lifeforce also flamed out just like a shooting star. It bombed during its theatrical run, and critics hated it. One could understand why, considering Lifeforce is a very uneven film, with too many flashbacks that keep choking up the main story, which becomes an otherwise intriguing hunt for the female space vampire who is now loose in the English countryside. The film is a hard-R horror, with plenty of gore on hand, and Hooper handles this very well, but Lifeforce also suffers from some cringe-worthy, mishandled "drama" moments that turn it into an unintentional comedy.
Patrick Steward, a year after his turn as Gurney Hallack in David Lynch’s Dune, and just about a year away from portraying Captain Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, appears in Lifeforce as the head of an insane asylum. When his character is revealed to be a soul-sucking space vampire, the proceedings become hysterically funny, with Railsback “interrogating” Steward in a scene that makes you think they should really just get themselves a room. And having Steward abruptly start screaming his bald head off at random moments only adds to the goofy comedy.
Another problem is that the effects don’t hold up. It’s clear that the emaciated, reanimated victims of the vampires are puppets, and the sight of one of them suddenly exploding on an examination table still gives me the giggles today, as it appears more like a demented magic act gone horribly wrong. There are still some good moments here and there. The cast is stacked with some great British actors (Peter Firth is very good as the “take charge” Colonel Caine). And I would be remiss in not mentioning the striking scenes of Mathilda May’s mysterious Space Girl (her character is never given a name) stalking the corridors of the space agency while completely naked.
Once it switches to taking place on the ground in England, Lifeforce takes on a nice Hammer Film vibe, with its basic ‘hunting vampires’ plot easily recalling many of that legendary studio’s horror and science fiction films. With his work on Lifeforce, Tobe Hooper--who passed on in 2017, and who will always be known as one of the guiding forces of cinematic horror--should still be credited for giving us a big, epic SF/horror film that leads up to the vampires turning London into a wild, whacked-out rave of human souls screeching through the streets while zombies hunt the still-living. Granted, Lifeforce may be a very flawed movie, but it’s never boring. Give it a whirl. --SF
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