Lifeforce

“In the blink of an eye, the terror begins.”

Space vampires. This movie is about space vampires, on Earth.

Directed by Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist), Lifeforce begins in a space shuttle, the Churchill, as it discovers an alien spacecraft. This craft is filled with dead bat-like creatures and three living, nude humanoids (two males and a female) who are in suspended animation. They decide to take the humanoids with them. The ship and the humanoids make it to Earth, but unfortunately, the crew aboard the Churchill does not. The rest of the film follows the lone survivor of the Churchill, who was able to escape in a pod. He and a police inspector hunt down the now animated, deadly, and escaped female vampire as she wreaks havoc in London by feeding on humans and turning them into zombie/vampires.

My first sentence of this review is a bit of a warning about Lifeforce. This film is ridiculous, provocative, low-grade, and a little bit fun. The vampires of the film do not speak with a heavy accent nor drink their victim’s blood. No, these vampires are alien beings who absorb the life force of their victims through sexual, physical contact. The victims’ are then turned into zombie-like vampires themselves who must feed to retain their human appearances.

Colonel Carlson (Steve Railsback; Armed and Dangerous, The Stunt Man), is the lone survivor of the Churchill space shuttle, and we follow him as he helps to hunt down the escaped female vampire. His motivation for helping is not from a sense of responsibility or honor, but is a result of the female vampire’s telepathic connection to him. He is driven to know why she has spared him when she killed everyone else on the shuttle. We see his visions of her as she tries to seduce him, learn of  his new abilities to see into the minds of people she has mentally taken control of, and experience his building guilt as more about the shuttle trip is revealed, which is given to us through exposition from Carlson himself as the movie progresses.

That is how a lot of the blanks in Lifeforce are filled in, by the way, exposition. There is quite a bit of it. Who characters are, what the aliens are, our history with them, knowledge about death and life, and more are mostly done through exposition. Be ready for a lot of dialogue. However, the dialogue, while long-winded, is engrossing and enjoyable.

The film doesn’t have sexual undertones or overtones. It is just sexual. The vampires emit an extremely strong presence that both overtakes and frightens their victims who are compelled to act on their feelings. Once they engage with the vampires, their life force is drained quickly. You can’t deliver any clearer a message than this film. Sex kills. The allegory in Lifeforce to the dangers of sex lines up well with the time it was released. The spread of AIDS was growing and causing fear around the US and the world. Making Lifeforce a perfect representation of the concerns of society. Of course with this abundance of sexuality, there is plenty of nudity. The vampires spend a large portion of the film completely nude.

Performances by the actors are decent. Standouts include Peter Firth (The Hunt for Red October, Equus) as police inspector Colonel Colin Caine. He portrays the character as intelligent but slightly disconnected from the dangers and destruction around him at first. He also delivers one of the best lines of the film. While Carlson is confronting a controlled victim, he reveals that he needs to hurt her to gain the information they need. He has seen, through his new ability, that she is an extreme masochist and will not give them the information otherwise. He asks if Caine wants to leave, to which Caine responds, “Not at all. I’m a natural voyeur.” Another performance that was entertaining was Frank Finlay (The Pianist, Othello) as Dr. Hans Fallada the Thanatologist (a person who researches dying) who studies the vampires and relays his knowledge to Colin Caine, playing with the concept of a Van Helsing to the alien vampires.

The plot of Lifeforce leads into an unsatisfying ending. A bit of information is revealed at the end (which I can’t tell you about because it could ruin a part of the film) and then the credits roll. The reveal actually left me with more questions than answers, and when the credits started on the screen, I was sitting there anticipating just a bit more to occur. This ending along with the earlier mentioned exposition made it feel like the writers had more ideas for scenes to shoot, but then said, “Just let them say it in a sentence, and we will move on.” On top of this, there are a bit too many coincidences occurring in the film causing it to fall out of believability for most audience members. One example of this is the character of Dr. Fallada who happens to be an expert on not only death and life but also vampires and their history on Earth.

The special effects of the movie are pretty well done, though a few have not aged well including a scene with blood flying out of a couple of corpses on a helicopter. These corpses visually look like wax figures and are almost laughable. However, some of the other corpses from the vampire’s victims were used in later years for the 1999 The Mummy film. There are scenes involving balls of life energy flying around that still look pretty good today and the bat creatures appear life-like and grotesque.

Set pieces from the inside of the alien spaceship are fantastic. They appear massive and seem to be a combination of organic and technological origins, making the ship appear very alien. Along with the interior, the shots of the exterior of the ship and the burning city of London are impressive. The effects of the movie definitely make it a visual pleasure.

Music for the film was composed by Henry Mancini who also did the scores for The Pink Panther and many other films. It accompanies the film well reaching climatic sounds during intense moments and mellowing out when scenes are involving a more carnal nature. The London Symphony Orchestra performed the score. It is a solid listen on its own.

I was able to get my hands on the steelbook Blu-ray release of this film from Scream Factory for this review. It contained both the theatrical release and the Director’s cut of the movie. I watched the Director’s Cut for the review and visually the movie lends itself to the Blu-ray format. The picture is crisp and clean with very little noise in the dark sections. The sound is well balanced in the stereo section, but it also includes a 5.1 surround track (I didn’t have this on my sound system, so I only heard the stereo). I did put in the theatrical cut because I was curious if the ending was different and notice a bit of a quality drop on that version. If you grab a copy of the Blu-ray, you will get the best quality out of the Director’s Cut. This movie was also released as a DVD/Blu-ray combo disc that is a few dollars cheaper.

Lifeforce is going to be a taste film for a lot of you readers. It does give an interesting spin on the vampire genre of film, but at times comes across as inane and filled with too many plot devices trying to move the plot along. The ending may leave you, as is it did me, feeling let down and unfulfilled. However, it contains some great visuals, music, and some solid performances. For a sci-fi fan, this will be a quality addition for your collection. If you are watching this for the horror aspect, you will probably be let down even if it contains vampires. Though it had some disappointment for me, I am happy I grabbed a copy of this and will probably give it more than one viewing in the future. So ignore the naked vampires at the door, pop this in your player, relax on your couch, and save me some popcorn!

Rating:

Jack Savage:

Lifeforce is a fun sci-fi film to pop in and admire the visuals, music, and effects. Beyond that, the story makes it feel like a low-budget film with big-budget production quality. However, it does entertain and achieves bringing an established horror sub-genre (vampires) into the science fiction world.

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