The other day on Facebook, a friend of mine sent me an interesting link to an " '80s Horror/Sci-Fi Movie Quiz." There were 50 movies in total, and the objective was to tally how many of them I had seen before. I ultimately scored a 49 out of 50 (which speaks more to my reclusive, horror-obsessed childhood than anything else), and "Lifeforce" was the only movie I hadn't seen before.
Released in 1985, "Lifeforce" nearly ruined Tobe Hooper's directorial career. Budgeted at a cool $25 million, the movie only managed to rake in a pathetic $11.6 million. "Lifeforce" was the first of three Cannon Films productions for Hooper, which also included "Invaders from Mars" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2." After the cult obsession of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974) and the commercial success of "Poltergeist" (1982), Hooper was quickly becoming the next big name in horror. In turn, he was provided with a groundbreaking budget at the time and "Lifeforce" was the result.
Before we go any further, I would just like to proclaim myself as a huge fan of Hooper's work. Through little to no fault of his own, Hooper has been panned by critics for nearly his entire career, and yet he has a filmography that would rival the Carpenters and Cravens of the world. Instead, Hooper has been relegated to the King of Cult Cinema rather than a legitimate, big-name horror director, which truly is a shame given his breadth of work.
Having said that, "Lifeforce" is a schlock-hound's wildest dreams come true. You've got space vampires, zombies, Patrick Stewart, giant alien bats and a perma-nude Mathilda May. This is the Deluxe XL Meat Lover's pizza of '80s movies. Seriously though, "Lifeforce," you had me at space vampires. SPACE. VAMPIRES. How this movie is not talked about in the same breath as "The Thing" and "Return of the Living Dead" is beyond me, but let's break it down in order to fully appreciate all that "Lifeforce" has to offer.
Story
Adapted from a 1976 novel entitled "The Space Vampires," "Lifeforce" is best described as a hybrid vampire flick with all the fixins. A US/UK-split space shuttle crew embarks on a journey to intercept Halley's Comet when they encounter an alien spacecraft attached to the comet. Upon further exploration, they manage to recover a large bat-like creature and three humans perfectly preserved in stasis. It turns out the rescued humans are, in fact, space vampires that, instead of draining victims of blood, drain their victims of their lifeforce via face-sucking, reducing them to a zombie-like state. The twist then is that these zombies must then seek out a victim of their own within a couple hours of being turned in order to avoid being reduced to dust.
The three vamps break out of their cryo-stasis chambers and run amok in downtown London. The leader of the pack is simply referred to as the "Space Girl" and is expertly played by super-'80s-babe Mathilda May. By establishing a confusing telekinetic connection with the only surviving crew member from the shuttle mission, "Space Girl" is tracked down through the various bodies she's able to possess. One such human vessel is that of Sir Patrick Stewart, who actually has a small and fairly meaningless role, but just seeing him on screen lends a level of professionalism to the whole affair. As the victims begin to pile up, London soon runs the risk of boiling over into a post-apocalyptic vampire invasion.
Special Effects
Far and away, the highlight of the entire film for me was the downright brilliant special effects and makeup work. The post-lifeforce-sucked zombies stand to be some of the best animatronic creature work of the entire decade — a decade, mind you, that included visionary masterpieces the likes of John Carpenter's "The Thing" and George Romero's "Day of the Dead." "Lifeforce" succeeds in being an equally top-notch genre movie. Don't let the cult status fool you: This is a movie with a big budget and an even bigger vision. The scope of the movie is so grandiose that it can merely be compared to its influences. "Lifeforce" starts out by mimicking the opening of Ridley Scott's "Alien" down to a tee and concludes with a post-apocalypse the likes of a Lovecraftian tale.
Mathilda May (BOI-OI-OI-OINNNNG)
It would be simply too easy and all too trite to relegate May as merely the buxom beauty of the movie. While she does fit the physical stereotypes one would equate with an '80s super babe, my high praise of May is due in great part to her excellent performance as an intergalactic succubus. She is as cunningly evil as she is seductive, which lends a great deal of depth to a role that could have just as easily been downplayed by a less talented/more vapid supermodel of the same era.
Hooper's decision to have the vampires appear nude throughout the movie speaks more to his vision and the movie's quest to one-up the entire vampire sub-genre rather than a cheap ploy to attract horny teenagers. At the same rate, the excessive full-frontal may very well have been the box-office death knell. It's hard to imagine a demographic for "Lifeforce" outside of rogue horror and sci-fi enthusiasts, a majority of whom were underage and waiting for their older sibling to rent it for them when it came out on VHS. To make things worse, the US theatrical release was a censored, butchered shell of the UK version. Leave it to the MPAA to ruin all things schlocky for the vast majority of us.
Legacy
Thanks to the good people at Scream Factory, "Lifeforce" was released on a Blu-ray / DVD combo pack last summer, securing its cult status for generations to come. Although, if you're a purist such as myself, you might wanna track down an original VHS copy (unedited version, of course) and watch "Lifeforce" in the gritty retro format in which it was meant to be seen. It may never be talked about in the same sentence as "Evil Dead" and "Re-Animator," but "Lifeforce" seems to be perfectly content to be a fly-under-the-radar gem of the '80s. If you missed the boat like I did, track it down immediately in any format available. You won't regret it, and Tobe Hooper assuredly deserves the nod.