Bad/Awesome Flixxx Review: Lifeforce (1985)
"She's resisting. I'm going to have to force her to tell me. Despite appearances, this women is a masochist. An extreme masochist. She wants me to force the name out of her. She wants me to hurt her. I can see the images in her mind. You want to stay? Otherwise wait outside!" - Carlsen
"I mean, in a sense we're all vampires. We drain energy from other life forms. The difference is one of degree. That girl was no girl. She's totally alien to this planet and our life form... and totally dangerous." - Dr. Hans Fallada
"The web of destiny carries your blood and soul back to the genesis of my lifeform." - Space Girl
THIS is how you make a sci fi movie! Tobe Hooper had it all figured out. From the director who brought you POLTERGEIST and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, comes the movie version of the novel THE SPACE VAMPIRES (which would have been a more acurate and awesome name for this movie AND may have made more people want to see it). Kind of like a cross between RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, ALIEN, THE BLACK HOLE, and PREDATOR 2 with just a dash of some English Dracula movie, this one has it all: Space mission gone wrong, Haley's Comet, space coffins, space vampires, a space vampire chick with space boobs. exploding vampire corpses, helicopters, panic in the streets, quarantine, psychic energy transfer, and martial fucking law!!! A bunch of classic UK and US actors including Patrick Stewart star in LIFEFORCE!!!
So, a team of Russian, English and American space explorers are studying Haley's Comet. Hidden in the shadow of the comet they find a 150 mile long alien spacecraft and decide that it would be a great idea to board it. Quickly surrounded by what seem to be thousands of huge dead space bats, the ship seems to come to life. Instead of splitting like a space bat out of hell, they decide to go deeper as if something was calling to them. In the middle of the ship they find 3 naked humans suspended in clear caskets. One is a super hot chick and the main dude is like, we're taking them back to Earth.
Flash forward and a rescue space shuttle is sent to see why the "Churchill" is returning off course. Turns out everything inside has been burned to bits except for the coffins with the alien humans. They are immediately taken to some research facility in London and put in the care of some scientists to study. Late that night one of the guards gets his "lifeforce" sucked out by the chick who wakes up when she is touched. The one scientist dude determines that they may be the ancestors of the other vampires that were on the earth in primitive times, only they suck energy from their victims instead of blood.
So the chick one escapes naked into the London night and then they find out that the main dude from the Churchill jettisoned his escape pod at a certain point and its just landed in Texas. There's this one dude from the UK version of the FBI investigating this whole deal and him and they rush the Colonel over fast to do some 'splainin'. They find out that this dude has a psychic connection to the chick vampire and that she is also a shape shifter and gets inside the head of this s&m chick. They find out that if the vampires and those they infect don't get their fair share of energy after two hours, then they explode. Meanwhile the Fed guy and the Colonel track the female vampire through the country to a psych ward ran by Patrick Stewart. Then they trap the chick in the mind of one of her victims. Then as they take "the victim" they realize she's gone out of the body and mind, and was tricking them all along and has been spreading the vampires basically all over the UK. The city is now in total and udder chaos and martial law has been enacted. The turmoil is raging and even the Prime Minister has been infected. So the chick one is hiding and the other 2 are sucking up energy and giving it to her and she is transferring that energy back to their ship which is now parked over London.
Since the Colonel and the female vampire have some kind of connection, the Fed sends him to find her and they begin to transfer the energy upwards while having wild space sex. The Fed guy hunts them down during complete living dead style anarchy. Its brilliant and if you haven't figured it out by now, yes you should totally see this.
Monday, October 1, 2012