From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a film review for you.
Today I'll be reviewing the movie Lifeforce released in 1985.
Starring:
Steve Railsback, Mathilda May, Peter Firth
Directed by:
Tobe Hooper
Genre:
Action, Horror, Mystery
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Rating:
R
Budget:
$25,000,000 (estimated)
Current IMDb Rating When Reviewed:
6.2
The Synopsis is:
Three space vampires suck the life force from Londoners, turning them into zombies. The only person who can save the planet is an American astronaut with a psychic connection to a female vampire.
Story:
The story is based on Colin Wilson's 1976 science fiction horror novel about the remnants of a race of intergalactic erotic energy vampires who are brought back from outer space and are inadvertently let loose on Earth.
The eventual movie and the book had distinct influences from A.E. van Vogt's space vampire short story, "Asylum," published in 1942 and Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1897.
Old ideas become new again.
The book had a great reception, with a few negative critiques highlighting the book's lackluster events, but it could not be denied of having an intriguing concept connecting the mythical vampires of novels and movies to the idea of energy vampires.
The Chicago Sun Times said it was, "Thoroughly intriguing" and the Chicago Tribune said it was a "new slant on horror” and a “unique rendering of the age-old enigma of the kiss of death" when the book was released in 1976.
About 8 to 9 years later, the book became the focus of becoming a film spearheaded by the Cannon Group, owned by Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus who bought the rights to the book. American director, screenwriter, and producer Tobe Hooper responsible for directing infamous horror films, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Salem's Lot (1979), and Poltergeist (1982) was signed for three movies to help the studio elevate their repertoire. Tobe’s first job at task was to make a film out of the book Space Vampires.
Hooper’s other two Cannon films were the Invaders from Mars remake in 1986 and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 in 1987.
About eight drafts of an adapted script was written before the final script came about, credited to Don Jacoby and Dan O'Bannon who also both collaborated on Blue Thunder together in 1983. Olaf Pooley and Michael Armstrong polished the script but received no credit.
The name Dan O’Bannon may be familiar to you because he wrote both the story and screenplay for Alien 1979. There is a strong imprint of that film on this one, being that we were indeed dealing with aliens. As well that bled into some of the visual style of the alien ship.
The basic idea of energy stealing space vampires being brought to Earth and causing a ruckus made it into the film, but many concepts were ditched or changed. Captain Olof Carlsen, the hero in the book, became Colonel Tom Carlsen, who is maybe not quite the hero, but definitely acts as a psychic gateway to the female vampire.
In the book, the alien ship was found at an asteroid belt, however, Tobe Hooper came up with the idea to have the gigantic alien ship found at the tail end of Haley’s Comet to coincide with the fact that the comet was going to come close to Earth in the real world a year after the release of the film.
It was an addition that didn’t bode too well with Dan O’Bannon, but it delivered an interesting concept that the vampires hide in the comet and return to Earth every 76 years. I actually liked this addition, giving the audience a bit of foreshadowing as a TV news report explains that “comets were once harbingers of evil” and “one of the earliest words for comet was disaster which in latin means ‘evil star.’”
I thought that the story was pretty solid although it has many exciting twists and turns that are flat out wacky and jaw dropping throughout this lengthy tale.
It has a coherent beginning, middle and an ending. In fact, I would say each of the three parts could be their own movie, set with its own individual tone. The beginning is a spooky space discovery thriller. The middle is an erotic detective thriller, and the ending is a full out zombie apocalyptic action horror event that will melt your mind!
When I first saw this film, I was blown away by what I was seeing on the screen and I enjoyed the spectacle of every moment of it.
Pacing:
At 1h 41min depending on the version that you see, it’s a bit too long, but it’s a little strange to think of where the film could be trimmed because, every part of the film means something special to the story.
Challenge:
The challenge in the film is the alluring alien space vampires. From my understanding of the aliens is that they have been visiting Earth throughout history and have been living among us. In fact, it is suggested that the mythical vampires that we hear stories of on Earth are not only real but of the same species as these aliens.
In the book, the aliens are squid like creatures, paying homage to Lovecraft’s Cthulhu. However, in the film, the aliens are large bat-like creatures to spell out further that the aliens are indeed the same as earth vampires.
Their plan was to psychically call one of their own hidden on Earth to fetch them when the comet was closest to the planet. Colonel Tom Carlsen is one of their kind, hiding among humans unknowingly. For all he knows, he’s human. He takes the international space vessel, the Churchill and this sets off the events of the story.
Once on earth, the aliens attack by luring in their victims and draining them of their life force. They can drain the life force of a person completely, leaving them a pruney dried out husk. Two hours later the body animates for a few minutes, just enough to grab a human to in turn take their life force. And the cycle continues on and on creating one heck of a contagion within London.
What appears to be the leader of the three aliens is in the form of a drop dead gorgeous woman created from Carlsen’s vision of perfection. Carlsen! You have one heck of an imagination! What a woman!
She is referred to as simply the Space Girl in the film. She knows that Carlsen will be able to track her whereabouts because of their psychic connection so she transfers her consciousness from human to human to distract him and the other humans who are hot on her trail. All the while, her body is in a safe place for the alien spaceship to link up with her and absorb all of the life force she is stealing.
The two other aliens are devastatingly handsome males that are doing the groundwork of spreading the epidemic throughout the city and transferring lifeforce to the Space Girl. This is a very fascinating operation because these aliens are well organized.
It seems as if the life force is a ball of blue light that exists in the human body. Their victims need infusions every two hours or they die permanently. For some of them, the blue light leaves their bodies and are collected by the male vampires.
At one point, the male vampire turns into a blue ribbon of light and destroys the bodies of the walking shribble (as Tobe Hooper calls them) so this can speed up the process of collecting the life force.
They know that they don’t have a lot of time and I also believe that the space ship only needs enough life force as the amount that they collect.
As soon as the ship collects the life force from Earth, the ship ignites the other hibernating aliens to life in their containment units and leave.
The threat was incredible and I enjoyed how specific this attack was. Even though their away team of aliens all died, the mission was successful and they did indeed win. And I have to say that I really loved that. But I did hope that there was a way to reverse some of the damage. I was conflicted and that is how I want my villains to make me feel.
In particular, I wanted to talk about the Space Girl. The earthlings are so focused on her, they don’t pay any attention to the other two aliens. She specifically targets men, letting us know that she must know something of how humanity was male dominant before the events of the film even starts. She knew that she would have to entice them and choose her form precisely. Now let's be clear, she is the appearance of a beautiful young girl, but technically, there is no actual proof that in her original form she is female. The aliens may not even have a gender. Doesn’t that just blow your mind! I love the aliens in this and they were brilliantly to always be one step ahead of the humans.
As a side note, in the book, The tale is interesting but eventually ends with the aliens hating what they’d become and destroying themselves. It’s not as theatrical.
Empathy:
Colonel Tom Carlsen is technically one of the heroes in the film, but he doesn’t quite have the same empathy that you would have for a typical hero. You see him in the very beginning of the film and then he doesn’t reappear until 40 minutes later.
Carlsen is compelled to be in the Churchill as it’s captain at the time Haley’s comet is passing Earth. When they find the alien vessel, he says that they have to take a look at it now or they will not get another chance at it for another 76 years.
While inside the ship Carlsen says that he feels as if he has been there before. All of this can easily be ignored as rubbish until the second viewing, when you understand what he’s telling the audience. He is one of them.
I don’t know how that works. It seems he’s some kind of hybrid, human and alien mixed. Perhaps there was a long lineage of hybrid creatures over the centuries and there may be more out there in the world.
Part of him is most definitely human, and you see his struggle of being both. Although, this whole thing is truly his fault, he tries to save humanity several times, but fails. As well, his connection to the Space Girl is too strong for him to break. This reminds me of the struggle that Mina experiences after Dracula bites her. They now have an unbreakable bond, no matter how much Carlsen knows it’s wrong. Just looking at Carlsen's face you can see how much he’s tortured by what she is doing to his mind. He has to make a choice; help Earth or be with her.
The main hero in the film in my opinion is Colonel Colin Caine who is a specialized top level security officer that is brought to The European Space Research Center in London after the Space Girl makes her first kill. He’s a very matter of fact, direct, and logical reactor to everything that is happening in the film around him. The one thing I really like about this character is that he is smart and he does things that are pretty reasonable. He goes through so much, and you root for him to get out of this thing alive. In fact, he is the only human left alive in London from what we can tell. He gets the most screen time of all of the characters.
You get a little bit of a buddy cop section of the film with Carlsen and Caine working together. Caine comes through for Carlsen in so many ways and especially when it counted in the end to kill the Space Girl.
We have a lot of other characters that appear in the film and help move the story along. Dr. Hans Fallada acts as our Van Helsing. He is fascinated by death. He is the one to connect the happenings of alien killings to vampire lore of Earth.
We have the troubled Dr. Bukovsky who is the first official to deal with the aliens on Earth and becomes the Space Girl’s second victim to display to the audience how she is able to render her victims harmless and does not always kill them. There is a wonderful shot of his eyes as he is becoming mesmerized by her. In the beginning he is an integral part of the story, linking the characters together and supporting them before fading out to the picture literally and killed off screen.
We have the Space Girl’s first victim on Earth, the twenty year old guard who is enticed to… let’s say, interact with the Space Girl.
We have a pseudo erotic interaction with Nurse Ellen Donaldson, who leads Carlsen and Caine to Dr. Armstrong, who gets possessed by the Space Girl.
We also have Sir Percy Heseltine who shows up rather late in the film as a witness and also has certain authority to get our protagonists the things they need.
Technical:
Cannon Films spent nearly twenty-five million dollars on this film, hoping that it would be their first blockbuster. Lots of money was added to the original budget because the shoot went five weeks over schedule.
At one point Cannon ran out of money and shut down the production because of the troubles they had shooting the space vampire ship scenes in particular. It was very difficult to light, only a few seconds of footage would take days to film and sadly there was an issue with paying all of the crew.
For all of the troubles, that was one of the best looking scenes in the film. Although many viewers have said that the ship looks phallic, and they were correct. It was meant to be that way. As well, it was modeled after an artichoke, and you can kind of see that when the umbrella antenna opens up to accept the life force stream from Earth.
To imitate the zero gravity of space, the astronaut cast members were suspended on wires forty feet up in the air for days. At times there were a few incidents of vomiting as a result of this grueling portion of the shoot.
Actor Nicholas Ball, who played the second in command on the Churchill, said that he was told that his harness had been worn by Christopher Reeve for the first three Superman movies. Isn’t that cool?
In that scene, full-size body double models were made of the three nude aliens for the wide shots of them in their hibernation encasements so as not to make the actors have to stay perfectly still for days on end.
One of the most incredible effects in the film is of the walking scribble. These were complete animatronic puppets. Wow did they make a big impact on the visuals of this film creating a special style to the shock of seeing a person drained of their lifeforce. No demonstration is more intense than what we see happen to the first victim on Earth.
That scene is then brilliantly followed up by showing us what happens when the walking scribble gets the chance to pass on the contagion. It took a week to film that life force transference scene and it was worth it. It looked very freaky and gave us a vivid visual of exactly what’s happening. It was wonderful.
To achieve the Armageddon look of London being ravaged by the alien contagion, the film utilized miniatures. I love miniatures so much and these looked so realistic! The remains of Tucktonia, a theme park near Christchurch, England, was used for their model village featuring a fantastic miniature of London. Buildings for glorious destruction was placed in front of the village and helped to create the visual doom of the city. It was very realistic and well executed.
The sound was another feature of the film that really helped to sell the fear of the strange occurrences. The sound that the walking scribble makes it so horrible and scary. It was brilliant.
The version I watched had a wonderful Henry Mancini score that gave the film a larger than life feel to it.
Performances:
One edge to this movie that I absolutely enjoyed is that all of the actors are playing their parts so very seriously, which impressed Tobe Hooper.
Over a thousand actresses were considered to play the Space Girl because it was incredibly hard to find an actress willing to play the role mostly completely naked. 18 year old French ballet dancer, turned actress Mathilda May, took the job at the insistence of her agent. It was still not totally clear to her that she would be undressed throughout the production until her first day on set.
Can you imagine? But she committed to the role and was incredibly commanding in Space Girl’s literal manhandling of her victims in the film. She was chosen for her physicality as a dancer to move in scary ways and she did with a precise terminator-like determination to complete her mission. Knowing what the Space Girl can do, it’s a little uneasy seeing her confront the group of guards before she escapes the space center.
Mathilda could not speak English when she began filming and had to learn her lines phonetically. During the six months she spent in England for the film, she learned English and even had a British accent.
With only seven minutes of screen time she makes an incredible impression, but it is not only the obvious nudity, that gets the most attention, but her eyes and her facial expressions are totally in line with her character’s motives. Her face is so mesmerizing, I thought it was a special effect when I first saw this film. She was incredible.
Steve Railsback plays Colonel Tom Carlsen and I just loved what he did with the character, keeping him visually tormented. Tobe Hooper once said that the film was about "men dealing with the feminine mystique or the feminine terror," as well as men dealing with "the feminine inside themselves."
Steve embodied this in his performance revealing a vulnerability beneath a stoic veneer. He really sells Carlsen’s dilemma emoting so much unspoken with his eyes.
Peter Firth wonderfully plays Colonel Colin Caine with a confident presence and practical expertise. We needed a hero so desperately in this topsy-turvy story and he really came through. Even though he plays a very reactive character, what he does with the character makes him realistic almost as an avatar for the audience.
Frank Finlay as Dr. Hans Fallada was incredible, giving the wild occurrences in the film some gravity. Truthfully, I wished he was in the film more, but what we did get of him was packed with so much excellence.
Sir Patrick Stewart also appeared in the film as Dr. Armstrong, a small but pivotal role. He had to do some unconventional things since his character becomes possessed by the Space Girl, however his commitment to the role is what really works for me. BTW, his first on-screen kiss was with Steve Railsback in this movie.
Other actors of note was Chris Jagger, Mick Jagger’s brother was one of the alien vampires.
Wish List:
I wish that the life force was explained better. We all get an idea of what it is, but I would have loved a little more intellectual conversation about it.
I heard that the novel talked more about theories of energy transference and we needed a hot dose of that.
In this film the life force is like an electrical charge that powers the human body. But why is it removing moisture?
Reasonably, it seems as if the body should still be intact. Theatrically, it’s not as dynamic, but I wished that there was an explanation in the movie, even if it was complete fiction.
According to the events of the end of the movie the walking shribble are containers to store life force.
The first three victims exploded or just dried out. On the Churchill, the victims die in one piece. There is no consistency on how victims die and I wish there was because where did their life force go?
At the end of the film, the mixture of shribble and the living has become something like a zombie hybrid. Do these guys all have life force or not because they move and look like they still have some?
Also, I would have loved to see some vampires already on Earth and how they secretly suck the energy from their victims just to put some more real world spin on it.
Enjoyment:
The film’s title was changed from Space Vampires to Life Force in order to upscale the film, however, Space Vampires is the better title in my opinion. It’s easy to understand and it let’s you know exactly what you’re getting into.
When it was time to release the film in the U.S., severe edits and changes were made to make it shorter. This was a tremendous detriment to the story and the flavor of the film.
This was not totally responsible for the failure of the film. Even the director’s cut, which is a much better version, still had problems. Tobe Hooper summed it up best when he said of the film, “Lifeforce had a great look but lacked a screenplay.”
The author thought the movie was, in so many words, the worst movie ever made. He may have been biased since it was vastly different from his written work.
There was also an issue with the amount of nudity in the film, that was blamed for not being able to sell the film as a blockbuster as The Cannon Group intended.
I must have seen a heavily edited version on late night TV when I was a teenager and I could not veer away from the screen because the story just hooked me in for the ride. There was no nudity in that version, so that wasn’t the draw for me. It was the wonderful mystery between Carlson and the Space Girl as well as the shocking special effects that drew me in.
There is so much of this film that is so well done and so odd at the same time. Schlock over powered it. And although there would have been the word “unfortunately” put in that last sentence were this another movie, I applaud the film for giving me something I never knew I wanted. I have loved this movie so much for so many years, without so much as a friend to tell.
Over time, there has been such a growing cult following that nearly every movie reviewer has been urged to review this film for their audience.
No such urging is needed for me. I hold this film close to my heart because this is my guilty pleasure!
My Rating:
9.0
That sums up my review. I hope you liked it.
This is Retro Nerd Girl signing off!
Take care movie lovers! I'm off to the next review!
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