Though it hardly compares to other sci-fi film giants like 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY or CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, LIFEFORCE does work as a totally berserk and bizarre melding of science fiction and horror elements. Somehow, despite dialogue that approaches the ridiculous and acting that does the same, it manages to work because of a few highly different elements.
Loosely based on Colin Wilson's 1976 novel "The Space Vampires", this film from director Tobe Hooper (POLTERGEIST; THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE) focuses on a joint US-British mission aboard the British space shuttle Churchill to study Halley's Comet. Led by an American commander (Steve Railsback), they discover an alien spacecraft in the comet's coma. And when they investigate the interior of the spacecraft, they find alien occupants that look like giant bats. Later on, the Churchill reaches Earth's orbit, but no response is given from radio calls issued from the mission's home base, the Space Research Center in London. Columbia is launched to rendezvous with Churchill, but they find the entire ship gutted by fire--all except for the alien beings encased in glass who, far from being untouched by the fire, look absolutely perfect. The aliens are bought back to Earth...and that's where the incredible happens.
These space vampires escape from the Space Research Center and, instead of draining their victims of blood via bite wounds, suck their victims' lifeforce totally out of them. One of them is the Space Girl, a thoroughly nude vampiress played by Mathilda May. Railsback, the only actual survivor from Churchill, is bought in by the SRC's chief (Frank Finlay) and a British special agent (Peter Firth) to track May, who is in telepathic contact with him. Pretty soon, however, the vampires have turned London into a scene of pure holocaust; people are either being dessicated or turning into zombies, and the threat by NATO to sterilize the city with thermonuclear radiation looms large. Railsback finally catches up with May, and sacrifices himself by impaling her with a large metal sabre.
Undoubtedly disjointed, unquestionably uneven, but nevertheless worth watching, LIFEFORCE, despite the frequent incoherency of its script and its acting, benefits from some drop-dead excellent special effects work by John Dykstra (STAR WARS), some of the best ever seen. The other working element, and a surprise one it is, is the incredible orchestral score by Henry Mancini, almost Wagnerian in the same way John Williams' score for STAR WARS was--and Mancini, like Williams before him, uses the London Symphony Orchestra, to boot!
Largely forgotten these days, and a critical and box office disaster in 1985, LIFEFORCE, if for no other reason, should still be seen for anyone with a taste for the bizarre. There had never been a film quite like it before, and there will certainly not be anything like it again.
Loosely based on Colin Wilson's 1976 novel "The Space Vampires", this film from director Tobe Hooper (POLTERGEIST; THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE) focuses on a joint US-British mission aboard the British space shuttle Churchill to study Halley's Comet. Led by an American commander (Steve Railsback), they discover an alien spacecraft in the comet's coma. And when they investigate the interior of the spacecraft, they find alien occupants that look like giant bats. Later on, the Churchill reaches Earth's orbit, but no response is given from radio calls issued from the mission's home base, the Space Research Center in London. Columbia is launched to rendezvous with Churchill, but they find the entire ship gutted by fire--all except for the alien beings encased in glass who, far from being untouched by the fire, look absolutely perfect. The aliens are bought back to Earth...and that's where the incredible happens.
These space vampires escape from the Space Research Center and, instead of draining their victims of blood via bite wounds, suck their victims' lifeforce totally out of them. One of them is the Space Girl, a thoroughly nude vampiress played by Mathilda May. Railsback, the only actual survivor from Churchill, is bought in by the SRC's chief (Frank Finlay) and a British special agent (Peter Firth) to track May, who is in telepathic contact with him. Pretty soon, however, the vampires have turned London into a scene of pure holocaust; people are either being dessicated or turning into zombies, and the threat by NATO to sterilize the city with thermonuclear radiation looms large. Railsback finally catches up with May, and sacrifices himself by impaling her with a large metal sabre.
Undoubtedly disjointed, unquestionably uneven, but nevertheless worth watching, LIFEFORCE, despite the frequent incoherency of its script and its acting, benefits from some drop-dead excellent special effects work by John Dykstra (STAR WARS), some of the best ever seen. The other working element, and a surprise one it is, is the incredible orchestral score by Henry Mancini, almost Wagnerian in the same way John Williams' score for STAR WARS was--and Mancini, like Williams before him, uses the London Symphony Orchestra, to boot!
Largely forgotten these days, and a critical and box office disaster in 1985, LIFEFORCE, if for no other reason, should still be seen for anyone with a taste for the bizarre. There had never been a film quite like it before, and there will certainly not be anything like it again.