Movie Review: Lifeforce

Originally written May 31st, 2014.

Lifeforce is freakin’ weird, man. No other way to put it. It’s just flat-out strange. Whether or not you enjoy this movie will likely be based on how high your suspension of disbelief is. Many will be turned off by a movie with space-vampires. The remaining few who stay are in for a treat.

For starters, the movie is based on a science-fiction novel called The Space Vampires. That’s the most amazingly stupid title for a book since the days of pulp fiction. Then there’s Alien scribe Dan O’Bannon writing the adaptation. The guy has a history of taking far-fetched and weird ideas and turning them into enjoyab, and Lifeforce is no exception. The movie is tightly paced and full of suspense and intrigue the whole way through. While the film’s content is more akin to a horror movie, the script runs like a great thriller, and it’s never a bore.

So what’s the movie even about? It’s quite a doozy. A NASA mission to scan Halley’s Comet discovers a strange spacecraft in the rock’s orbit. The astronauts go to investigate and find a trio of humanoids encased in pieces of the Fortress of Solitude. The astronaut find themselves compelled to bring the specimens aboard the ship, and that’s the last we see of them. When the ship returns to Earth’s orbit full of dead astronauts, their fellow scientists decide to get the bottom of things.

They bring the alien specimens in for examination, but one of the aliens escapes. The scientists realize that the creatures feed off of human souls, literally draining them of life. As the scientists tail the escaped alien, they realize that she has the ability to drain small portions of vitality, so that the alien can hop between the consciousnesses of people. Then for reasons barely explained, the partly-drained victims become zombie-like creatures, and the plague spreads like wildfire throughout London. This somehow sends soul-energy to the alien spaceship, which is now orbiting Earth. The scientists ultimately catch up to the alien, and the lone survivor of the NASA mission (who escaped in a handy-dandy escape pod) sacrifices himself to kill her. This apparently stops the flow of soul-energy and sucks the scientist and the alien up into the unknown. And that’s it. Freakin’ weird, man.

If that summary didn’t seem too weird for you, I highly recommend getting a hold of this movie. The scenes in space are stunning, especially considering the movie came out in 1985. The designs for the alien spaceship are gorgeous, and the movie has an overall fantastic look to it. Tobe Hooper, director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist helms this flick, and he has always had an eye for cinematography.

Even if the movie is a bit loopy, there are still plenty of tense moments. The survivor of the NASA mission formed a psychic link with the female alien and finds himself inescapably drawn to her. His struggle to resist the mind control is constantly tense and played with great subtlety. There’s also a fantastically creepy scene where we see what happens when the vampire drains her victim completely, and what happens when the victim tries to restore itself. The practical effects in that scene are horrifyingly grotesque, and really convey the sheer deadliness of the vampires.

Overall, this is a great sci-fi flick. There’s a smorgasbord of horror elements thrown in even if they don’t make sense, and that’s part of the fun. It’s a crazy and inventive take on the vampire mythos, and it never has a dull moment. If you have a high tolerance for weird stuff, this is certainly worth a watch.