Review of Lifeforce

Major Cast
Steve Railsback	as Col. Tom Carlsen
Peter Firth	as Col. Colin Caine
Frank Finlay	as Dr. Hans Fallada
Mathilda May	as Space Girl
Patrick Stewart	as Dr. Armstrong
Michael Gothard	as Dr. Bukovsky
Nicholas Ball	as Roger Derebridge
Aubrey Morris	as Sir Percy Heseltine
Nancy Paul	as Ellen Donaldson
John Hallam	as Lamson
Chris Jagger	as First Vampire
Bill Malin	as Second Vampire

PLOT SUMMARY

The Space Shuttle Churchill, under ESA control and powered by a bolted-on NERVA engine, is en route to Halley's Comet. When Churchill gets fairly close, her crew observe something previously unknown inside the comet's tail. From the radar signature, it appears to be a metal object, roughly cylindrical, and about 150 miles long. Unable to communicate with Earth, the commander orders the mission to continue. Soon he and 3 (?) other crew members have donned space suits and entered the object, which proves to be an alien spaceship, weatherbeaten and apparently inert. Inside they find corpses of beings resembling giant bats, all dessicated and crumbly from long exposure to vacuum. They bag one for later transport to the shuttle. Just as this is finished, Churchill reports a giant structure deploying on the alien craft. It unfolds, then sits there. Simultaneously, a brilliant light comes on further inside the ship. "That's where we're going," says Commander Carlson.

Passing through a cloud of vapor, they reach a large chamber lined with transparent capsules, mostly darkened. But in the center of the chamber are three humanoids, two males and a female, enclosed in well-illuminated transparent cases. All are naked and in prime condition. (We see full views of the body of the female, but the men are strategically positioned so their "naughty bits" are obscured.) Gazing at the female, Carlson feels momentary disorientation. "Something's happening to me. What's wrong? What's wrong?" He then decides to take all three cases back. Without much discussion, the crew set about working on these boxes and manage to break them free. They ferry the boxes and the batlike corpse to Churchill and secure them in the cargo bay. They set course for home. That is the last we see of an operational Churchill. Thirty days later it is in Earth orbit. No response comes from it. Not even automatic equipment is responding. A rescue mission is mounted, using Columbia. Its crew finds the ship completely gutted by fire — except for the three crystal cases, which are undamaged.

Later, at ESA Headquarters in London, top officials are discussing the crystal cases. They resist all attempts to open them; even analysis reveals nothing. But the one containing the female just "popped open" on its own. A dissection is planned. One man is left on guard outside the isolation room where she lies on a table. Curious, he steps inside and reaches out a gloved hand to touch her. At that moment she opens her eyes. Startled, he cowers in a corner of the room as she sits up, then gets off the table and approaches him.

Upstairs, Col. Caine, who had turned off his TV monitor and dozed in his office chair, now awakens and sees on the monitor the female kissing the unfortunate guard. Does he sound the alarm? Does he call down to alert others near the isolation room? No; he runs down three flights of stairs, passes through eight or so doors, to find a drained hulk that was the guard on the floor. He looks around as the female steps out of the shadows. Does he run? No; he stands there as she walks up calmly. "Use my body," she says. In another office upstairs, Professor Fallada sees what's happening on his monitor. He too runs down to the isolation room, arriving in time to find Col. Caine, only partially drained, sitting groggily on the floor. "Where's the girl?" Fallada shouts. "Gone," mumbles Caine. "Don't worry," Fallada assures the others with him, "a naked girl won't get out of the building."

She does, though. She reaches the main lobby just as the guards there are warned to be on the lookout for her. She walks calmly down the stairs. One of the three gets on the H/T and reports her location. She overpowers them and walks to the glass doors, which blow outward in cascades of shards. She walks calmly over the shards and off into the night, just as Fallada runs into the lobby and stands watching her. Curses, late again!

In short order London is under quarantine as hordes of zombies rampage through the streets. The three main characters struggle to locate the female, who has hidden her body and is using other bodies by mental control. In due course they succeed and stop the plague — but not before facing hundreds of zombies, dozens of 'splosions, and all sorts of spectacular colored lights as the female and the remaining male harvest London's life force and send it up to the alien ship, now in Earth orbit. The end.

There's a lot more to the plot, which is fairly well constructed overall. I put these minor details about the Space Girl's escape in my summary to show some ways it isn't well constructed.

This is an expensively mounted production, and the producers (Golan-Globus) assembled a veteran cast and crew for Tobe Hooper's opus. Except for the flaws mentioned in the sidebar, the plot holds up fairly well. The effects really are spectacular, and the acting is energetic and generally competent — except in all the places where both are over-the-top. The sets are terrific, and hundreds of extras must have been employed for the London scenes. As I say, Lifeforce is a big-budget production, and in large part the budget was used well. However, it earned less than half that budget back. It can justifiably be called an extravaganza.1

However, space shuttles and other technical trappings aside, it is much like any other big-budget horror film. What sets it apart is the presence of newly fledged actress Mathilda May, who plays the female vampire. She was hired fresh out of ballet school, and had to learn her part phonetically as she only spoke French at the time. But she was totally comfortable with nudity and brought remarkable youthful enthusiasm to the role. That role was not exactly Shakespeare, but she made it memorable.

Trivia:

Over 1,000 actresses were considered or interviewed for the role of the Space Girl, which ultimately went to Mathilda May. She received an "introducing" credit, although she had starred in two previous feature films in France. She has only 7 minutes of screen time, in contrast to Patrick Stewart's 18 in a less important role.

Because Mathilda May, who had never acted in English before, was using their voices to guide her in pronouncing her lines in English, Frank Finlay and Michael Gothard were not allowed to do a German accent on the set.

Before Don Jacoby and Dan O'Bannon were hired to write the script there already had been at least 8 drafts written. Although Dan O'Bannon and Don Jakoby are credited with the screenplay it has been alleged that their script was ditched before production and the filmed script was written by Olaf Pooley and Michael Armstrong. After its release, Colin Wilson recalled that author John Fowles regarded the film adaptation of Fowles' own novel "The Magus" as the worst film adaptation of a novel ever. Wilson told Fowles there was now a worse one, the film adaptation of "Lifeforce".2

MPAA Rating:	R
Distributor:	Golan-Globus
Release Date (US):	6/21/1985
Lifetime Box Office:	$11,603,545
Production Budget:	$25,000,000 (Est.)

LIFEFORCE

Reviewed 8/30/2015

PLOT SUMMARY

Security?

Trivia: