Lifeforce (1985)
MGM DVD (region 1)
d. Tobe Hooper; pr. Yoram Globus, Menahem Golan; scr. Dan O'Bannon, Don Jakoby; novel. Colin Wilson; ph. Alan Hume; m. Henry Mancini; ed. John Grover; cast. Steve Railsback, Colin Firth, Mathilda May, Frank Finlay, Patrick Stewart, Michael Gothard (116 mins)
It is said that director Tobe Hooper’s one and only enduring classic remains The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a controversial film that angered many uptight critics when the New York Museum of Modern Art decided to add a print of the film to its permanent in-house collection. Although Hooper made moves to the mainstream with the provocative Funhouse, it was not until his association with Steven Spielberg on Poltergeist that Hooper was actually poised to become a major Hollywood “player”. Although Poltergeist was a success, there were many critics who gloatingly delighted in asserting that Hooper was merely a Spielberg puppet and had little creative control of his own. Perhaps in an effort to prove that he was a director, even auteur in his own right, Hooper subsequently went on to direct two big budget science fiction films, Lifeforce and a remake of the 1950s cult classic Invaders from Mars. However, both of these films flopped with critics and audiences alike and soon Hooper was doing the sequel to his best known film in order to keep himself a viable figure, if now doomed to be on the genre fringes of American film. Despite their relative panning, both of Hooper’s big sci-fi pictures are intriguing works and the bizarre Lifeforce is especially fascinating as a full-blown, distinctly Jungian vision on AIDS-era paranoia reaching apocalyptic proportions. It is Hooper’s most neglected work.
Lifeforce begins as a science fiction and soon segues into intensely paranoid horror. On a mission to study Halley’s Comet a US astronaut crew, led by Steve Railsback, discovers a mysterious spacecraft in the comet’s coma. They inspect accordingly and find three nude human bodies encased and preserved. They take them on board, though Railsback is soon strangely attracted to the female. Shortly, a retrieval ship must come to their assistance and discovers most of the crew dead. The space bodies are taken to an English research center, headed by a scientist (Frank Finlay) and an SAS officer (Peter Firth). There, the seemingly dead female (Mathilda May) comes alive and soon proves herself a space vampire, capable of sucking out the life energy of her victims. She escapes her confines with ease and is thus loosed in London and surroundings. Study of her victims quickly reveals a budding plague: the drained victim must feed off the lifeforce of another within two hours or perish – thus, an epidemic could be in progress if May is not found. An escape pod returns to Earth containing Railsback, claming a psychic link to May, who teams with Firth to track down May as she moves from body to body. This leads to a hospital for the criminally insane (run by Patrick Stewart). Returning, they find that the plague has spread, turning London into a quarantined war zone. Railsback senses May’s presence and tries to get to her. read more