Lifeforce Movie Review

The most common complaint about this Tobe Hooper effort used to be that it moved too fast. The recent release of the European cut solves that problem (if it was one) by delivering 20 more minutes of story. Everything you'd ever want in a sci-fi/horror film is here. Haley's comet, the space shuttle, a gigantic spaceship, exploding bodies, apocalyptic zombie mob scenes, oversized batlike creatures, weird sex featuring Mathilda May showing herself off in her first film, and Steve “Manson” Railsback ranting and raving as only he can. May and two pals are brought to Earth from a ship found following a comet. Things take a nasty turn when the three are found to be soul-draining vampires, channeling their goodies back up to the vessel which has now parked itself in orbit around Earth and has unfolded a gigantic umbrella as a collector. Railsback, having gotten very close to May on the shuttle trip, finds himself psychically linked to her and is hot on her trail as she moves from body to body, spreading her plague of soulless zombies across Great Britain. The Next Generation’s Patrick Stewart appears as an asylum's head shrink in one of the niftiest effects scenes involving an incredibly tense “conversation.” Score by Henry Mancini ends with quirky march during the credits and is exhilarating on its own. Script by Dan O'Bannon was originally titled They Bite.

1985 (R) 100m/C GB Steve Railsback, Peter Firth, Frank Finlay, Patrick Stewart, Michael Gothard, Nicholas Ball, Aubrey Morris, Nancy Paul, Mathilda May, John Hallam; D: Tobe Hooper; W: Dan O'Bannon, Don Jakoby; C: Alan Hume; M: Henry Mancini, Michael Kamen. VHS, Beta, LV FHE, LIV, VES