Life, Writing, Weirdness

Take a bunch of consummately professional British actors, give them the most ridiculous script possible, have them treat it with the utmost respect and seriousness as if it were the greatest dramatic presentation ever written, and you might get Lifeforce.

A special scientific mission to Halley’s Comet discovers an alien ship that’s been stuck in the coma for hundreds or thousands of years carrying three nude humans in suspended animation and hundreds of dead bat-creatures floating about in the microgravity.

If you’re worried about spoilers for a forty-year-old movie, you probably shouldn’t be here, but I’ll give a few terse tidbits along the way without detailing the entire plot.

The humans are actually energy vampires who can not just suck the life force out of people (hence the movie title) but can do it a little at a time if they really want to and borrow bodies along the way. And they’re telepathic, influencing the non-vampire minds around them. Which is why the mission commander thinks it’s a good idea to bring them back to Earth, with predictably disastrous results. Well, I say predictably, but I really didn’t expect the last half hour of the movie to degenerate into a zombie flick. The hints were there for a plague of short-lived vampires, but when the plague happened, the FX budget must have gotten too high, so the crowds of newly converted ran around trying to eat the remaining humans before dying, often explosively.

Released in 1985, Lifeforce has effects (and budget) that are more than real enough to raise it far above B movie status, but a script bad enough to take it right back down.

There was an entertaining, but short appearance by pre-TNG Patrick Stewart and I did recognize some of the other actors in this British film that I vaguely remember having a North American release, although in the summer of 1985 I was fourteen years old and unlikely to receive permission to go see this in the theatre and by the time my friends and I were taking ourselves, we were more interested in having a good theatrical experience.

Classed as horror, I’ll more or less grant that, but wouldn’t really call it that horrific. Creepy, perhaps, and smartly relying on effects and lighting rather than jump scares, but horrific? Mostly no, although some of the animatronics in the first have of the film were spectacularly well done.

There was also more nudity than I would normally have expected from a large budget film of the time. Maybe that shouldn’t have been the case watching a British film as the UK and most other European countries have always been less puritanical when it comes to the human form. (And if you think that’s not the case, I’ll point out the Monty Python sketch The Dull Life of a City Stockbroker broadcast in 1969. Which is getting away from the point, while the majority of that nudity was confined to the character who was very rapidly revealed as the alien vampire queen, by the time we got to the climax of the movie, I was starting to wonder if she was allowed to wear clothing. The sheer nightgown she has on for a couple of scenes doesn’t really count. In fairness, she’s not on screen most of the time. The movie is more about trying to find her and stop the death and chaos she’s causing rather than about the vampire queen herself. Which is almost too bad, but not because she’s naked most of the time. She’s the only significant female character in the film and one of only a three or four with speaking roles, not that she speaks much.

Overall, it was an amusing film. Good for someone who’s looking to catch up on all of the B-grade genre cinema they missed as a teenager in the 80s (like me) or fans of the genre and type, but if it were released today, with suitably updated special effects, of course, it would rightly be a colossal box office flop. Enough that it might ruin careers.

Still, and as always, your mileage may vary. There are a few things to like about the film, but they’re mostly in the care and detail of the effects to my viewing.

Be well, everyone.