Revenge of the Revenant Review 10: The one where the zombie apocalypse is unleashed by a lady with no clothes on

 

Title: Lifeforce

What Year?: 1985

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Mashup

Rating: What The Hell??? (2/4)

 

For anyone who’s been following this blog, this feature may seem like a “spinoff” to my Space 1979 review feature. In reality, while I probably wouldn’t have gotten to this without that feature, I came up with an incarnation of this feature way back on my Exotroopers blog. What may be a bit more surprising is that the two features haven’t really overlapped with each other. The zombie movies I covered or considered in Space 1979 were ones I find quite different from those I’ve chosen here. This time, I’m back with the exception to prove the rule. It was on my lists for Space 1979 from the very beginning, but once I thought of getting back to this feature, there was absolutely no question it was going to be here. With that background, I present Lifeforce.

Our story begins with a space shuttle on a flight toward a comet. As they approach, they detect an enormous alien space craft over a hundred mile long. In an eerie sequence, they explore the ship and discover the drifting remains of the bat-like crew and the bodies of what appear to be three perfectly preserved and beautiful human beings. By the time the shuttle returns to Earth, the crew is dead except for an astronaut who bailed out. The scientists back on terra firma prepare to dissect the humans from the spaceship, only to discover they are neither human nor dead. The only female of the group escapes with minimal effort, leaving behind several hapless victims reduced to zombie-like creatures by the draining of their vital energies. Meanwhile, the surviving astronaut is discovered, and warns that the creature is a vampire come to Earth to feed on human souls. However, he is fixated on her, and soon reveals that they are psychically linked. While the space man leads the authorities on a hunt for the vampiress, she moves forward with her end game, unleashing a plague of the undead on London. As the story races toward its finale (just ahead of common sense), the astronaut and the alien woman come together beneath St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the human must choose between his attraction and the survival of the Earth.

Lifeforce was one of the later productions of Canon Films and its senior producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, also responsible for Superman IV and the Lou Ferrigno Hercules movies. The script was written by Dan O’Bannon, the creator of Alien (and Dark Star) based on the novel The Space Vampires by Colin Wilson, who would denounce the film. It was directed by Tobe Hooper, who broke into film with Texas Chainsaw Massacre and achieved a mainstream foothold with Poltergeist, in arguably his last “major” film. The film cast Steve Railsback as the astronaut and Mathilda May as the lead vampire, referred to simply as “Space Girl” in the credits. Filming occurred mainly in England, with a supporting cast included Patrick Stewart and John Hallam of Dragonslayer and Flash Gordon as the staff of a mental institution. The score was composed by Henry Mancini, who had been shifting to television at the tail end of a career that included The Pink Panther theme. The movie was made for $25 million and received a US box office of $11.6 million, one of the first of a series of disappointments and failed projects that led to the decline and bankruptcy of Cannon in the next decade.

 For my personal experiences, I remember hearing of Lifeforce when I was a kid, then simply because it had the same name as a Konami NES game. (Needless to say, I used the game for the image, because the posters for the actual movie were a choice between printable and good.) In hindsight, that horrifies me more than anything about the movie. I got my first inkling of what it was like when I saw a trailer on a VHS copy of the first Re-Animator movie. I first looked it up when I first got Netflix, and I kept looking it up occasionally until I finally bought the Blu Ray, which has both the theatrical version and a longer “international” cut. My strongest feeling about it going into this review is that it feels like it should be an Italian film; indeed, given Cannon’s role in the Hercules movies, I assumed the Italians had to be involved in some way until I determined otherwise. I can think of no better way to sum up what is good and bad about this movie. On the good side, it looks amazing, it defies genre boundaries and it’s bonkers creative. On the downside, it’s sleazy, willfully overdone, and makes almost no sense whatsoever.

The linchpin of this movie is the villainess, who spends virtually all her screen time unclothed. Whether one finds this pleasing or offensive will be the first test of goodwill toward the film. The movie spends a great deal of time attributing various powers to her, but what it all comes down to is that she literally sucks the life out of humans and she enters and exits anywhere and at any time she pleases. Her attacks are accompanied by surges of visible energy and the total dessication of the victim, which I will get to in a little more detail. In the midst of all this is a surprisingly subtle performance from May. She has very limited dialogue (somewhat more in the longer cut) but shows a good command of expression and mannerisms, if one isn’t distracted by other things. The problem is that this is too much and not enough. Her main emotion seems to be a kind of predatory lust, which certainly fits the posited traits of the character. However, there is little about her that feels truly inhuman, and that might have been better conveyed by an actress with even less range. She ought to view humanity the way a blue whale would regard plankton; instead, she just seems vaguely petulant.

Meanwhile, her victims are what make the movie of interest in the zombie genre. The problem here is that there is a distinct discontinuity between the first and final acts. The first victims look like mummies, literally shriveled to the point it looks like they should be no more mobile than beef jerky. When the first of them starts to move, it is completely unnerving. We then see them attack in the manner of the vampiress, temporarily regaining their human form at the new victim’s expense. Unfortunately, these are clearly far to elaborate to produce in the numbers needed for the apocalyptic finale. Here, we see comparatively conventional zombies, with some good makeup and gore including a still-animated severed arm; this stage is definitely better developed in the international cut. It would all be good fun, if not for the high mark set by the rest of the film. Again, the overall impact is disappointment.

Now we get to the “one scene”. Like many of my choices, it’s a minor scene at face value, as the vampiress makes her way down from the lab after zombifying an examiner. We get our first look at her shadow as she walks past a guard at his desk, her attributes already clearly visible in profile. The first guard belatedly sounds the alarm, in time for three more guards to intercept her as she descends a flight of stairs. Two of them block her path, while the other comes up behind her. However, they seem reluctant to shoot her, and they clearly aren’t keen on tackling her. One of them remarks that she seems “not in her right mind”. When she smiles, it’s unclear if it is their words or ineffectual posture that amuse her. Of course, she promptly plows through them, surprisingly without appearing to kill any of them. That brings her to a corridor with one wall almost entirely of glass. Then, in one of the most truly mindboggling sequences of the film, she literally explodes the glass across a courtyard outside, and promptly strolls outside without any further concern for the shards underfoot.

That brings us to the rating.  It’s definitely a factor that I feel like I haven’t gotten up to the standards I usually set for myself, or said that much about the movie, despite already going on for more than my usual length. A big part of that, in turn, is my own mixed feelings. There was a time when I probably would have given this a 3 at least (or 4 on my original Space 1979 scale). On the other hand, when I watched it for this review, there were quite lengthy stretches when I was sorely tempted to give it a 1. It all gets back to that “Italian” vibe. What’s good is almost indescribable, though I’ve certainly been trying. What’s bad, above all the vast amount of absolute nonsense, is unfathomable. With all that in play, the middle of the road is downright generous. Now, I just might play Lifeforce.