Vampires in space? We got you covered.
Coming off Poltergeist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, director Tobe Hooper must have been on a high and probably thought he could do anything. Which may explain we he picked this absolute nuts movie. Produced by Cannon films (remember them?) who spent big money they were clearly hoping that Lifeforce would be the next big sci fi blockbuster. What they actually got was a super camp, Hammer horror style sci-fi cult movie, which may have come as a real surprise to them.
So the story....
A crew of astronauts find a spaceship hidden around Halley's comet. On board they find some crazy bat like creatures and 3 apparent humans. On the trip back carrying the humanoids and a bat creature, all hell breaks loose. A fire breaks out and Everyone on board appears to be dead, although an escape pod is missing. It's pretty obvious to anyone watching this that the humanoids found on the spaceship are gonna wake up. What might surprise the viewers is that they are shapeshifting, lifeforce draining vampires, who eventually go around infecting London with a weird physic control.
Now as you can imagine this was a little too cray cray for mainstream audiences in 1986. Which wouldn't have been a problem if Cannon hadn't spent $25 million on it. It flopped hard commercially and critically. The real problem is that the screenplay doesn't commit. It wants to be this weird hybrid of sci fi and fantasy but never really achieves it. The book its based on is actually called space Vampires, but the title was changed for the film as it was thought to be to camp. But that’s what it should have been in the first place. The story is ridiculous, but Hooper makes the film far to serious than it should be.
Now with that all said it might actually sound like I dislike this movie. But that couldn't be further that the case. I really like it. It has great music, some decent 80s FX and some excellent campy acting. I just wish Hooper had gone in harder on the camp because I don’t actually think its camp on purpose, it just comes of that way, which just makes me like it even more. It feels like the film makers are ashamed of its source material and maybe had watched Alien a few to many times. With all that being said this is a real guilty pleasure of mine and defiantly deserves a bigger audience.
Movie Rating 7/10
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