Day 10 in my 31 Days of Vampire Movies is the embodiment of “Shoot for the Moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” This quote from Norman Vincent Peale describes the utter madness that is Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce.
Lifeforce was based off a book by Colin Wilson, titled The Space Vampires. I mean, with a title like that, you know exactly what you’re getting. Add in the fact that this was produced by Cannon Films (if you are familiar with the 80s, you know who Cannon is. If not, oh boy. You have such an amazing adventure ahead of you) and you have all the ingredients for a movie that should have blown the ass off the entire decade. Instead, this is the movie that tanked Tobe Hooper’s career and dealt Cannon a financial blow they never really recovered from. To torture the metaphor, the Stars, in this case, happened to be the cold, harsh vacuum of space.
Lifeforce was Cannon’s bid to jump from action B movies into the mainstream. It was ambitious sci-fi, and you can tell from the very first shot of the astronauts in space that they weren’t messing around. Every dime of the budget is on screen. Everyone takes this amazingly silly concept – aliens who happen to also be vampires, discovered by astronauts, who are brought to earth where shenanigans ensue – completely seriously, and the actors all do a better job than you would expect from such a wild concept.
The biggest flaw of the movie is that the first act is so much more put together than the back end. It reeks of studio interference, as plot lines that were meticulously set up were either forgotten or wrapped up almost as an after thought, and important characters are pushed off to the side and never given closure. The ending is rushed and even a bit nonsensical even for a movie made from a book called The Space Vampires.
Also, we have to talk about the elephant in the room. Or, rather, the naked vampire in the room. French actress Mathilda May is The Space Girl, and she spends 98% of the movie completely nude. There are a few scenes where she body-hops into another woman who stays clothed, and into another character I’ll leave you discover for yourself. (Also this movie has the first on-screen kiss for Patrick Stewart, Jean-Luc Picard for those of you who are nasty.) But she spends the majority of the movie stark naked, and it could be uncomfortable for viewers considering May was only 20 at the time the movie was filmed.
That being said, this is an amazing movie and I do recommend it. You get to see what real ambition looks like, even if it ended up stifled by studio and censor demands. For all of today’s slick and polished made-by-committee movies, Lifeforce shows the potential movies have to be truly unique pieces of art, even if the execution fumbles.