Lifeforce is a Cannon Group film. It was originally titled Space Vampires, and its female lead saunters around naked for ~75% of her screen time.
Thanks to Cannon’s infamous reputation for cash grabs and exploitation, that description should tell you everything you need to know here.
But it doesn’t. Ignore the boob-flashing surface. Cannon was playing for real here.
The Studio backed the movie with $25 million (a whole lotta 1985 dollars) and gave creative control to venerable horror director Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre).
And the special effects were produced by Academy Award winner John Dykstra (Star Wars), bringing together horror and sci-fi heavyweights.
Yet despite the talent behind the camera and in the production, the movie crashed, making back about half its money at the box office.
And critics were mixed. Janet Maslin called it “”hysterical vampire porn.” And even some who praised it, like Leonard Maltin, acknowledged it as “”completely crazy.”
Yet rather than sink into the obscurity bin, it’s that something different about Lifeforce that has earned it a fanbase that survives to this day.
So a middling mess or an unhinged masterpiece, is Lifeforce a good movie?
The Plot of Lifeforce:
United States and British astronauts aboard the spacecraft Churchill, led by Colonel Tom Carlsen (Steve Railsback), observe Haley’s Comet.
Soon, in the comet’s tail, they discover an alien spacecraft. It has dried-out bat-like creatures and three alien/humanoid bodies in suspended animation, including a nude Space Girl (Mathilda May).
Carlsen and crew bring aboard the specimens and set a course for Earth. Unbeknownst to them, their sleeping cargo is ready to feed on humankind’s lifeforce.
Can Colonel Colin Caine (Peter Firth), with help from Dr. Hans Fallada (Frank Finlay), unravel the mystery of the alien beings and stop them?
The Rest of the Main Cast Includes:
- Patrick Stewart as Dr. Armstrong
- Michael Gothard as Dr. Leonard Bukovsky
- Nicholas Ball as Roger Derebridge
- Aubrey Morris as Sir Percy Heseltine
- John Hallam as Lamson
- Nancy Paul as Ellen
- Sidney Livingstone as Ned Price
- Chris Jagger as 1st vampire
- Bill Malin as 2nd vampire
- Jamie Roberts as Rawlings
- Ken Parry as Sykes
- Chris Sullivan as Kelly
You can watch a trailer for the film on IMDB.
The Good Things:
Originality and Risks, +6 Points
With a naked woman springing from an invisible coffin, you fear this film will be a pathetic expression of someone’s perverted male fantasy. When Carlsen’s space crew finds the woman and two men nude, their penises are obscured but not her boobs and vajayjay. Typical.
But that’s the only hint of a cheap gimmick here, and the rest of the film aims higher.
Standing out in the lore of vampires and what is also arguably a zombie movie is a tough ask.
And space vampires sound like a cheap reinvention of tired conventions.
But there’s a whole shebang of purposeful ideas floating in this film – psychic powers, mutating corpses, men’s weakness for desires, and body-hopping magic.
And while the seduction is full-frontal and center, the film swerves dark towers, flying hordes of bats, or crosses and garlic. We’re not even following a sucked-blood trail here.
It’s rare to allow this many ideas into one cage or to feel original in not one but two genres.
And the structure is refreshing. We don’t set up a monster in Act I, then spend Act II hiding from it, getting to know our characters, and then confront the beast in Act III. That’s a fine but overfished formula.
Instead, we are whisked to unexpected locations, shown new wrinkles in the plot, and greeted with sinister reveals. The film always ups the stakes and dishes out surprises.
You have to applaud the studio for giving Hooper and crew the freedom to create.
Sans the Cheap Gore and Stupid Scares, + 2 Points
There are a few jump scares and certainly on-screen deaths. Still, Lifeforce doesn’t play it cheap and nasty. No attention-grabbing gross-outs or doors swept shut inexplicably at ear-deafening volume just for atmosphere here.
Instead, the whole terror we’ve been building toward comes crashing down by the film’s end, and it’s a satisfying payoff.
Performances, +3 Points
Steve Railsback’s Tom Carlsen is grappling with mental trauma and the not-so-joyful experience of being half-possessed. Often shouting, sweating, and shaking uncontrollably, his histrionic-littered performance fits.
Peter Firth’s Colin Caine is subtlety some kind of sicko or a jaded, unsympathetic investigator who’s seen quite some horrors. He can assure Carlsen he’s enough of a voyeur to watch a woman get slapped around, if necessary, and see deaths like numbers.
Yet there’s a heroic grit to Caine, one we can buy into when he has to plunge into danger and confront the unholy.
Frank Finlay’s Dr. Hans Fallada is as curious about the vampires’ ways as he is in stopping them.
And Mathilda May looks alluring or downright devilish, a woman men cannot resist.
Oh, the Delicious Humanity, +3 Points
**Serious Spoiler Alerts Here**
Break out your Smiths playlist because, for our final act, it’s absolute panic on those streets of London.
In a set-piece bonanza, we watch both Carlsen and Caine tear through a vampire-zombie-infested London, full of extras being horrifically hauled down and turned.
Though we’ve seen the full-blown zombie apocalypse in many films, there’s a standout quality to the sheer on-screen destruction here.
Disturbing, sad, and painful, it raises the stakes for the audience and slightly sickens as all the heroes can do is run past mob after mob of helpless victims, fire, and overturned vehicles.
Patrick Stewart, +0 Points
Okay, I can’t destroy whatever integrity my arbitrary review score scrapes to begin with by bumping this film up just because Captain Picard himself shows up.
But he does, and when he does, it turns into one helluva scene I won’t give away.
Special Special Effects, +2 Points
The movie’s special effects had to have impressed in their time. Today, they are naturally dated but hold up quite well.
The models and sets in space still work. The vampire creatures seem to lay strange eggs and like it spooky all right. Inspired by an artichoke, the vampire ship is a sinister, organic design fitting for creatures.
And there are nifty ethereal, force lightning-like effects for the lifeforce-stealing moments.
The Not-As-Good Things:
Slow Starter, -2 Points
In some marketing materials, the film’s tagline is “In the Blink of an Eye, the Terror Begins!”
But it’s false advertising. In true British fashion, the movie stops for tea before it gets going.
To be fair to the film, there’s a lot of exposition to waddle through. But you wonder if cuts could have gotten us into the mad mix faster.
Creature Effects, -1 Point
While some have enjoyed the creature effects, I must be honest: the turned victims look like overly thin dolls.
It’s a shame because you presume much difficult puppetry is at work here. But there’s no fear factor with proportions that don’t look human.
Take this withered fellow. He looks like he pals around with Eddie from the Iron Maiden album covers.
I wonder why simple makeup wasn’t used for the turned early in the movie. Later in the film, the vampire’s victims wear makeup and look absolutely zombie-like. So not only does the effect not impress, unless I’m missing something, it breaks continuity.
Go Watch Lifeforce
Total Arbitrary Points Score: 11 Points
Whether you end up liking it or not, Lifeforce is too different to be ignored.
I can see why many call this classic a horror sci-fi that carves enough unique ground to stand out.
The film is slow to get moving, and its creature effects are disappointing.
But not to worry – you’ll be moving from what-the-shit? to what-the-shit? moment in no time.
Like the sign of a film taking many risks, Lifeforce divides opinion but certainly carries mine.
So if you’re after something that’s within its vampire/zombie genre but doesn’t play by the conventions, sign up.
Lifeforce’s Legacy:
So what is the legacy of Lifeforce?
Well, its somewhat cult status brought releases through Scream Factory and Arrow Video, including a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray in 2022.
Released in 1985, a fair number of comments about this movie on Reddit threads or YouTube comments are men still gawking about the beauty of Mathilda May or revealing that she was really the first naked woman they got a good look at in their teens.
Her nakedness is definitely a talking point, but I don’t think the nudity is entirely exploitative in principle, though. Her ability to seduce men is a lynchpin of the plot, and, well, they’re showing that.
And it was 1985. Plenty of raunchy sex comedies had been around. But I can’t think of too many other films released before it that were committed to putting that much sexuality at the heart of a serious movie. Maybe a reader can correct me here.
But if it was made now, you would think they would imply that Space Girl is nude instead, changing the lighting or blocking her privates. That would still get the point across.
Ms. May, a French actor, was about 20 years old at the time. She’s gone on to be a director and actor in many films, most of them in France. I can’t speak to them because I’m not familiar with them at all, but she’s been active from what I can tell all the way up to 2023 at this time of publishing.
Despite Lifeforce’s commercial failure, it was the first of a three-picture deal Tobe Hooper had with Cannon.
So he followed it up with two more in 1986: Invaders from Mars and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.
Invaders lost a little money, and Massacre 2 made a bit, but it still has a continued fanbase today.
Cannon would continue making many genre films they were used to, like Sly Stallone’s Cobra, Charles Bronson’s Death Wish 3, and Chuck Norris’s Invasion U.S.A.
But Lifeforce was a big-budget commercial failure that, unfortunately, they would repeat with Masters of the Universe and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. The studio’s inability to profit from these massive outlays was one of the reasons for its late 1980s bankruptcy.
Well, that’s all for now. Thanks for reading.
Enjoyed this Post?
Thank you so much. If you’d like to get a ping when I have a new article, you can join my newsletter below.
Disclaimer:
This review’s factual information was gathered through online sources, like Wikipedia, IMDB, or interviews. Misrepresentations and errors are possible but unintentional.
Making art is hard. This is a fan’s blog. Any criticisms are meant to be constructive.
