Double Bill Mini Musings: Space Vampires and Con-Artist Chemistry...

Lifeforce:
What's it about?
The crew of a space shuttle following the trail of Halley's Comet encounter a strange, alien craft hiding within the comet's tail. Inside things only get curiouser as they discover countless dried-up vampire bat-like creatures floating within the cavernous confines of the ship - and then they stumble across three nude figures in suspended animation. The strangest thing of all is that they appear to be human. However, when the space shuttle returns to earth, the ground team discover there's been a terrible fire that's wiped out the crew - but left the three humanoids intact. Back on Earth - London to be exact - events take a turn for the worse when the lifeforms awake and start to literally suck the life out of people!
Who would I recognise in it?
Steve Railsback, Patrick Stewart, Peter Firth, Frank Finlay, Mathilda May, Aubrey Morris, Michael Gothard.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Directed by Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), co-written by Dan O'Bannon (Alien, Return of the Living Dead), and presented by Cannon Films during their 1980s heyday, Lifeforce has the genre credentials from the get-go. Based on Colin Wilson's novel "The Space Vampires" (surely a much better title than the non-specific "Lifeforce"), Hooper's film turns out to be a surprisingly fun outing. Jam-packed with special effects - from gruesome prosthetics and puppets to please horror fans, to a vast array of colourful optical effects to please sci-fi fans - Lifeforce unfurls in its final act into a stunningly epic extravaganza by way of a mystery. At just shy of two hours it's a touch overlong (and some plotting is either drawn out or repetitious), but the sheer volume of chaos and spectacle paper over the cracks (at $25m it was Cannon's largest film budget at that time) ... and that's without even mentioning Mathilda May's jaw-dropping beauty as the lead 'space vampire' who spends much of the movie seducing every male she encounters with all of her kit off (so that checks off fans of boobs, too!). If you're looking for something cheesy, something fun, something genre-tastic, ever-so-80s, and visually stunning, then it's worth checking out this somewhat-forgotten-about slice of sci-fi horror wham-bam mania. Good.

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