Poster throwback, I’d say.
Lifeforce (1985) is annoying unless you’re a horror connoisseur, because there are good parts, awful parts, and a painful lack of theme. ESA and NASA have combined to send a probe, the Churchill, to Halley’s Comet, for the usual friendly scientific visit. I’d say that, for purposes of poetic license, the size of Halley’s has been somewhat overblown, but unfortunately suggesting that there’s some poetry in this movie might strain credulity.
As they approach, they realize there’s a ship sheltering in the comet’s coma. A big ship. It’s monstrous, and a mess, so it’s time to go investigate. (Don’t these chaps ever watch science-fiction horror movies? Ever?) Inside, they find the survivors, dead or alive or caught up in suspended animation, who can tell? They’re human, consist of one woman and two men, and are, ah, naked. Of course, they’re conveyed back to the ship.
Next thing we know, Churchill is re-entering orbit around Earth, tumbling randomly. A rescue mission finds the grotesquely damaged bodies of the crew – and the three naked humanoids, who they must, of course, convey immediately down to Earth.
Once down, the rampage begins, as guards die in gruesome manners, only to return to life as zombies, then die yet again. Ugh. Colonel Carlsen of the Churchill appears, surviving in an escape pod, and tells of how their prizes had telepathically sucked the life out of the crew, and he had only barely escaped himself. He teams up with British Colonel Caine, who is in charge of clean up, at which he finds himself failing miserably – not that he’s incompetent, but overmatched. But Carlsen has a telepathic link to the leader of the humanoids, and he uses that to track her down.
As London burns and its inhabitants’ life force is sucked up by the giant vacuum cleaner from the stars, Carlsen and Caine fight to stop the zombies, the humanoids, and the imminent catastrophe. And then the ending drivels off into incomprehensibility. Or perhaps it’s realistic – should we even expect the motives of aliens to be comprehensible? Well, actually, yes, since they’ll be subject to the forces of evolution as well.
The special effects range from excellent, at least for the era, to downright silly. Don’t miss the burning of London and the space scenes with the ships. Ignore the comet, and try not to laugh too hard at the zombies.
The acting ranges from not awful, in the person of Patrick Stewart (yes, Shakespearean-trained Stewart – what the hell is he doing in this bit of tripe?), to, yes, awful. I know some people really liked this movie, but really really the acting was terrible.
When surgery goes oh so very wrong.
And the story is of little help. The characters are given little dimension or likability. Lacking any sort of theme beyond making the expansion to the stars more scary than it already will be (like my tense confusion much, grammar proctors?), it is often unrealistic concerning how procedures might have actually taken place in a real world scenario. This may not seem important, but as a story drifts away from realistic moorings while still attempting to seem realistic, we lose the impact that comes with believing our best efforts are but lace waved in the face of the oncoming Minotaur. Godzilla may eat nuclear weapon blasts for lunch, and that terrifies us even as we giggle, but when the best of our best can’t seem to mount a plausible watch on the captured aliens, well, we might as well hand them a pass to the nearest lunch buffet. “We taste like chicken.” It’s the shock of realizing that, despite our best effort, we’re still vulnerable to the monster in the bush that makes horror into horror.
Or maybe not. I’m not much of a horror fan.
If you’re a Patrick Stewart completist, then you’ll need to see this. He’s not in the best scenes, but that just means more of the movie is at least a little palatable. But if you’re not in that category of audience member, you can probably give this one a skip.
