Horror

Science Fiction

Action

Mystery

Lifeforce

Golan-Globus Productions

Easedram

London-Cannon Films

The Cannon Group

United Kingdom

English

Steve Railsback

Peter Firth

Frank Finlay

Mathilda May

Patrick Stewart

Michael Gothard

Nicholas Ball

Aubrey Morris

Nancy Paul

John Hallam

John Keegan

Bill Malin

Derek Benfield

Jerome Willis

John Woodnutt

John Forbes-Robertson

Peter Porteous

Katherine Schofield

Owen Holder

Jamie Roberts

Russell Sommers

Patrick Connor

Sidney Kean

Paul Cooper

Chris Sullivan

Burnell Tucker

Chris Jagger

John Larroquette

James Payne

Tobe Hooper

Colin Wilson

Dan O'Bannon

Don Jakoby

Michael Armstrong

Olaf Pooley

Yoram Globus

Menahem Golan

Henry Mancini

Alan Hume

John Grover

Maude Spector

Ann Stanborough

Carin Hooper

Michael J. Kagan

Michael Kamen

Sadie Eden

Roy Alon

Tracey Eddon

Dickey Beer

Gareth Milne

Graeme Crowther

Ray Ford

Terry Forrestal

Dorothy Ford

David Brandon

Andy Bradford

Stuart Fell

Reg Harding

Frank Henson

Fred Haggerty

Alf Joint

Dinny Powell

Denise Ryan

Michael Scott-Law

Doug Robinson

Tip Tipping

Stuart St. Paul

Malcolm Weaver

Chris Webb

John Dykstra

Terry Knight

Renee Heimer

Patricia Kirkman

Tim Wooster

Great sci-fi flick. The story is very good, and the production and the actors did a great job. I don't think this movie is outdated, just more campy and enjoyable. A must see sci-fi classic.

Gimly

The promise of 1980s, practical effects, and energy vampires with no clothes on is apparently all it takes to get me to watch a movie.

_Final rating:★★½ - Had a lot that appealed to me, didn’t quite work as a whole._

LIFEFORCE (1985) - By the mid '80s, Cannon Films was looking to move away from low-budget, disposable fare like HOSPITAL MASSACRE (1981) and BREAKIN' 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO (1984). Owners Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus had loftier ambitions: They wanted a blockbuster; a big-budget smash that they could call their own. To this end, they signed director Tobe Hooper to a three-picture deal and turned him loose with $25,000,000 and free reign to create the movie he wanted. Working with a stellar, mostly British cast (save token American star Steve Railsback, who apparently misplaced his charisma at Heathrow; and startlingly uninhibited French goddess Mathilda May); legendary composer Henry Mancini; and a screenplay co-written by the man who wrote ALIEN (1979), Hooper unleashed a wonderfully unwieldy miasma of genres. What starts out as a science fiction mystery gradually morphs into full blown, zombie apocalypse horror - played with square-jawed seriousness by all involved. Unfortunately, this film got lost among that years' heavy-hitters like BACK TO THE FUTURE and the second RAMBO film, and earned back less than half its budget. Cannon Films ceased operations in 1994, but their ambitious attempt to stand amongst the major studios keeps giving back to its growing cult audience via home video. Sometimes success takes a few decades.

Lifeforce is the best Dracula from Space movie I’ve ever seen. I haven’t seen that many, mind you, and Vampirella and Dracula 3000 sure as shit didn’t set that particular bar especially high; on the other hand, Lifeforce is better-looking than many sci-fi/fantasy films released as recently as this the year of Our Lord 2022, vis-a-vis practical, mechanical special effects versus CGI and motion capture visual effects (it doesn’t hurt Lifeforce either that there’s generous full-frontal female nudity courtesy of French uber-babe Mathilda May). 

The script is not without its share of silliness (consider this piece of dialogue: "Sir, we've found a naked girl in Hyde park. The body is in an indescribable condition" — but you just kind of described it, didn’t you? I mean, "a naked girl" is a reasonably specific description), but the movie’s weak spot lies in a deliberate choice: comparing the plot’s events to the "vampires of legend," which the film’s quasi-Van Helsing eventually concludes "came from creatures such as these. Perhaps even from these very creatures." 

Somehow it never occurs to Dr. Fallada (Frank Finlay) to wonder, if "these very creatures" needed an astronaut to bring them to Earth in his space shuttle, how the "vampires of legend" arrived in our planet the first time around. How the good doctor correctly guessed that a "leaded metal shaft, penetrating not through the heart, but through the energy center two inches below the heart [how he knows so much about the creatures’ anatomy is anybody’s guess, considering the things human form is but a disguise]. Not steel, but leaded iron" (he calls this the "old way," but wouldn’t that be a wooden stake through the heart?) would prove fatal to the aliens is another secret I’m afraid he takes to his grave. There is also some mumbo-jumbo about how "The process of conversion
releases a life energy" that "can be collected ... The male vampire's collecting life energy. But he has to send it through her to get it up to the collector" and some other such nonsense.

The filmmakers should have treated the word "vampire" as anathema, and avoid any and all direct references to it. Take for instance the aforementioned space shuttle, which anyone familiar with Bram Stoker will identify as an allusion to the Demeter; this is a clever little touch, but it won’t impede any viewer’s enjoyment of the film if the parallelism escapes them. 

My point is that you don’t have to be the boy who cried vampire when the thought is already in pretty much everybody’s mind. There are shades of other works here (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Night of the Living Dead, Solaris, and even Ghostbusters), but the movie doesn’t feel the need to overtly draw attention to them — so why the hard-on for vampires? Other than that, Lifeforce is a satisfying minor diversion for fans of old-school horror.

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Lifeforce

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Cast

Steve Railsback

Peter Firth

Frank Finlay

Mathilda May

Patrick Stewart

Michael Gothard

Nicholas Ball

Aubrey Morris

Nancy Paul

John Hallam

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