We've looked at one film from horror master Tobe Hooper already this year, Invaders From Mars (1986). Last year I watched his horror masterpieces The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part II, and Poltergeist. That leaves only a few of his great films left. I hadn't seen this one since high school. I didn't know what to make of it when I first saw it, it was so strange. Leonard Maltin described it as "so bizarre, it's fascinating." This is the film he made prior to Invaders From Mars, one of great scope and grandeur just like it, a film called LIFEFORCE.
The astronauts of the vessel Churchill are exploring Halley's Comet when they discover a massive ship cloaked in the tail of the comet. Aboard they discover bat-like creatures larger than human, long dead, and three humans trapped in stasis chambers, a woman and two men. The astronauts bring the three stasis chambers on board the Churchill and head for Earth.
Back on Earth they lose contract with the Churchill. The space ship lingers in orbit just over the atmosphere. A rescue party is sent up. They discover the entire crew of the Churchill dead, bodies withered and dried up husks, all save the three humans in stasis, which are carted back to London. Once there the woman in stasis awakens. She grabs the first man she sees. Kisses him. And draws out his soul, consuming it, leaving him a wrinkled dessicated corpse. She walks out into the night and disappears. Two hours later the body of the man, her victim, rises, a rigid zombified creature. The two men in stasis awaken too.
One of the escape pods on the Churchill crashes in the ocean, the loan survivor of the crew Colonel Carlson within. He reveals to them what happened aboard the ship, how the woman in stasis fed off the crew's lifeforce, a vampire of the deadliest kind. She spared him, shared a piece of herself with him, all to use him to do her bidding. He returns to London only to find the city under martial law, a zombie plague besetting her citizens. The ship in the tail of Halley's Comet comes to a geosynchronous orbit in space above London. The vampiric woman and two men pull people's souls from their bodies and funnel them up into the ship. Only Carlson knows how to find her... and how to kill her.
This movie is crazy sci-fi horror at its best! I never appreciated the production value in it when I first saw it. Seeing it now I realize that there must have been a huge budget. The effects are phenomenal (done by academy award winner John Dykstra for his work on Star Wars). The music is composed by Henry Mancini and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. The great Patrick Stewart even makes an appearance in the film. The make-up effects are top notch. And Dan O'Bannon and Don Jakoby provide the script based on the novel The Space Vampires by Colin Wilson.
Overall Ranking: 6 out of 10
Nude-O-Meter: 7 out of 10
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