Horrorfest 29: Lifeforce

I'd never heard of LIFEFORCE until the Laurelhurst decided to run it for a week as part of their October series of horror flicks. Turns out it's a pretty cool sci-fi/horror flick directed by Tobe Hooper, who directed POLTERGEIST (Horrorfest 15) and the classic TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

LIFEFORCE is the story of a space shuttle crew sent to intercept and study Halley's comet. They find a strange space craft inside the comet, and discover giant bat-like monsters, long dead, as well as the well-preserved bodies of three seemingly comatose humans, two dudes and one hot chick. The movie doesn't waste any time getting into the action and suspense, cutting quickly from one scene to another, leaving out all the fat. The tone of the opening scenes is effective and the special effects are impressive. The technology all looks fairly realistic, clearly designed after actual space faring technology of the time.

The shuttle mysteriously returns to Earth without any living astronauts on board. An investigating crew recovers the comatose humans from the comet, and bring them to a space center in London for study. That's when the hot chick wakes up and starts running around stealing humans' life forces. The humans with stolen life forces wake up roughly 2 hours after "death" and go looking for someone else's life force to steal. This chain reaction starts a zombie-like epidemic and apocalypse, as the hot space chick gains the ability to jump from one body to another and the craft from the comet menacingly enters into orbit above Earth.

One surviving astronaut from the original Halley's comet mission turns up and seems to have a strange connection with the female alien. As played by Steve Railsback, he's almost always on the brink of insanity, delivering his lines with manic desperation. He teams up with the comparatively cool, collected and logical investigator for a super-secret division of the government, played by Peter Firth. The two attempt to track down the alien woman and put an end to the potential apocalypse, eventually leading them to an insane asylum run by a doctor played by Patrick Stewart (SWEET!!!!!!!) who isn't what he seems.

Probably the most notable (and weird) thing about this movie is that the hot alien chick (Mathilda May) spends almost all of her screen time completely naked. Most of this is in the first half hour, or so, of the film, as she eventually starts hopping from body-to-body and later even dares to wear some clothes (kinda) in her last couple scenes. Still, it's an interesting footnote and she is incredibly beautiful. On one hand you wonder how a naked chick could cause so much havoc, but on the other I guess it kinda makes sense everyone freezes when they're suddenly approached by an incredibly attractive naked woman. I mean, what would you do? Sure, once she starts shooting lightning out of her eyes and mouth there's trouble, but by the time she gets to that point, it's too late.

As the movie unfolded, I had to admire it. It doesn't really make any sense, and it wobbles wildly from good production values to bad, from good acting to awful, but the sheer audacity of it is impressive. And, most importantly, it's fun. There are a couple good scares and every ten minutes or so the movie throws something new at you, giving a new twist to the material, that sends the story in an unexpected direction.

I'll give it this: it never stops for a breather. They edited the hell out of this thing. If a movie this uneven was bloated by even a few extra minutes of screen time, it'd sink. Since it stays light on its feet and never stops, it works.