Review by Stephanie Scaife
Caution: moderate spoilers and NSFW pictures of Mathilda May ahead.
Tobe Hooper has had a mixed and oftentimes disappointing career as a filmmaker; the highs of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, widely regarded as one of the best horror films ever made, and the lows of, well, just about everything else he’s ever done. Poltergeist proved to be a massive success, and although a large part of that may be due to the involvement of Spielberg it certainly must’ve paved the way for Lifeforce, a bizarre and self indulgent homage to the Hammer horror film, and more specifically Quatermass.
Based on the Colin Wilson novel The Space Vampires, Lifeforce was bankrolled by Cannon Films and suffered from running over schedule, as well as much tinkering and cutting in post production resulting in a heavily edited US theatrical cut that made little to no sense, and forwent most of the Henry Mancini score, arguably one of the best things about the film to begin with. Over the years it has largely been this version that has been available, but now thanks to Arrow Video we’ve been given a double Blu-ray set that contains both the US theatrical version along with the longer international cut that reinstates the soundtrack, the full opening sequence and, apparently, more naked Mathilda May.
I have to admit to only having a vague idea as to what Lifeforce was before I sat down to watch it recently. In my head and probably based from some of the posters I’d seen, the assumption I had made was that it was a cheap knock off of Alien, which is actually pretty far from the truth. In fact when I looked it up on IMDb, the synopsis given makes it sound like perhaps the best film ever made: “A race of space vampires arrive in London and infect the populace”. The end result, however, is a mix of the two. It’s easy to understand how it has become a cult favourite despite its obvious failings, because it makes up for these in droves with its sheer ambition and, again, naked Mathilda May.
The plot is about as convoluted as they come and it definitely lost me in places, but in these instances I think it is best just to go along for the ride and appreciate the sheer spectacle on show. In essence though Lifeforce is about a mysterious 150-mile long spaceship that is discovered in Halley’s Comet that contains the perfectly preserved bodies of three humanoid creatures who are recovered by Colonel Tom Carlsen (Steve Railsback) and the crew of his ship, the Churchill. On their return to earth the Churchill loses contact and is recovered with only the humanoids remaining intact, the only other survivor being Carlsen who turns up in an escape pod. They are taken to a research centre in London where it transpires that our three humanoids, one female (Mathilda May) and two male (Chris Jagger and Bill Malin) are space vampires that are also seemingly incapable of wearing clothes and who instead of sucking blood, like regular run of the mill vampires, drain their victim’s “life force”. The female vampire escapes and is traced to Yorkshire via a psychic link that she shares with Carlsen – whilst there Patrick Stewart pops up as the manager of the hospital, hamming it up a treat. This little sojourn into Yorkshire, however, is all an elaborate ruse to lure them out of London whilst the two male vampires turn the population into zombies. This all leads to a rather bizarre finale where St Paul’s Cathedral blows up and the female vampire is beamed back aboard her unfeasibly large spaceship.
Lifeforce really doesn’t make a lick of sense, but it’s so completely batshit insane that it’s impossible not to stare, transfixed with dropped jaw. You have to love Cannon films for producing things like Lifeforce, something that would never happen today (and perhaps with good reason too), and it is very much a fascinating oddity that any genre fan needs to see, because love it or hate it there really isn’t anything else quite like it. Arrow have of course gone the full hog with regards to packaging and extras: both the theatrical and international versions have been lovingly transferred into HD by Hooper himself, and there are multiple audio commentaries, making-of documentaries, interviews and everything else you’d expect that makes every Arrow purchase so desirable, even if the film in question isn’t up to much.
Lifeforce is available now on Blu-ray in the UK from Arrow Video.