Lifeforce 1985 is a British horror film that consumes you from start to finish, says WILLIAM BOVE
TITLE: Lifeforce
RELEASED: 21 June 1985
DIRECTOR: Tobe Hooper
CAST: Steve Railsback, Peter Firth, Frank Finlay, Mathilda May
Review of Lifeforce 1985
I love this movie. Lifeforce is a 1985 British horror film directed by Tobe Hooper, the director of an American favourite, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’s based on the 1976 book, Space Vampires, by British author Colin Wilson. Lifeforce consumes you the whole way through. Ripping your attention away from anything common. Leaving you breathless craving more and more. With each big reveal the plot has to offer. It’s the kind of horror movie that if you go to the bathroom while watching it. You’re going to miss something.
One of the many fun things about this movie is that it’s not just a horror film. It’s a science fiction horror film. You would think mixing genres might double the difficulty for a successful and entertaining movie. But this is horror and science fiction. While it’s not pulling the rug out from under you. Lifeforce is turning off the gravity on you. And it does this from the very beginning.
The movie is about a group of astronauts who discover space vampires. Hidden in what looks like one of the loneliest and most remote parts of space. The ship itself is 150 miles long and looks like a sinister spear that something evil in space made. Inside the astronauts find a massive graveyard. With giant bloodless corpses of bats. Bats 10 times the size of normal bats and looking as charred as volcanic rock. Brittle and looking like weightless gargoyles. The corpses of space past float listless around them.
As they wade through the graveyard they find three seemingly living subjects in sleep chambers. Trapped in some kind of suspended animation. The movie wastes no time with the classic horror movie warnings. The first being you really shouldn’t do that. Or go in there. Or release something by moving it and bringing it back. But if they were smart. We wouldn’t have a horror movie. Let alone a sci-fi one.
When you awaken and bring back something evil. Especially space evil. It pretty much destroys everything in it’s wake. Setting off to dominate/destroy life on whatever planet it ends up on. Or has visited many times before. A fact not quite revealed in the beginning of the movie but hinted at. First before destroying everything and transforming it into what the evil is in the first place. It first has to choose a buddy or a helper to “carry out it’s evil plans”.
Sometimes the chosen one or few are unaware but not entirely unwilling. As is the case in Lifeforce. The female vampire (the main bad guy). Is in some kind of constant and building contact with the main good guy. A connection later revealed in the movie as the plot becomes bloodier and bloodier. But instead of buckets of blood in this movie. It has buckets of energy and spiritual force. In the form of soul sucking by the space vampires.
Now don’t get me wrong. Lifeforce has it’s fair share of blood. But the real cinematic horror candy comes in the form of the blue light show that is the soul sucking. The vampires who are first three. Two males and a female. Quickly dwindle down to two. A male and a female vampire played by (Mathilda May). The rest of the story truly unfolds with the rest of the plot being between the main vampire and the good guy. Leaving the rest of poor London to deal with a massive rampage of quickly multiplying feral space vampires. Leading to a final epic confrontation and destruction of the main evil by the good guy whose sacrifice sends the female space vamps soul and his back to the ship.
Lifeforce is filled with beautiful scenes of horror. And soul sucking space vampire goodness. The blood and gore make for beautiful moments of horror candy. The desiccated bodies of the space vampires and their victims are reminiscent of Tom Savini, but the creature affects were done by Apogee Inc. Lifeforce is one of my favourite sci-fi horror movies. And my favourite space vampire sci-fi horror movie. There is nothing out there quite like it. Lifeforce truly stands alone.
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