Lifeforce Year: 1985 Director: Tobe Hooper Written by: Don Jakoby, Dan O'Bannon Threat: Alien Weapon of Choice: Sword Based upon: novel - The Space Vampires - Colin Wilson IMDb page:

Other movies in this series:
None

The tyranist's thoughts
I dig on this movie. Not just a little either. Way back in the fertile spring before we started up the HFC, Rish and I watched a lot of horror movies. He was taking off for the summer and we knew that we ought to get as many in as we could. On one of those fateful nights we rented Lifeforce. The cover claimed Patrick Stewart. How could we pass it up?
The movie is about a bunch of space vampires that are brought to earth by an expedition to Halley's comet. That's it, folks. And yet, the movie is almost endlessly fascinating.
It features a largely British cast, as it should, and has a European feel to it. Not quite the good old terror-from-space American flicks we grew up with and not quite the high Italian gore fest you might think. It moves forward with dignity and grace in spite of its lurid story.
I'm not a huge Steve Railsback fan (he reminds me of some of the people who tried to beat me up in high school), but he's great here. And his chemistry with Mathilda May is undeniable. Of course, the fact that Mathilda May spends a solid portion of the movie naked means her chemistry with Marilyn Manson would probably have been nice just because they set us up for it.
The script is solid, but doesn't stand out. The effects are sometimes cheap, sometimes really neat and beneath it all the premise while being wonderfully simple, leaves us with a good story to enjoy.
Don't forget that Patrick Stewart thing. Amazingly in a movie that required almost no acting by anyone, he still manages to outperform everyone else. With the possible exception of Mathilda May. I wasn't paying attention to her performance much so maybe I'll have to go back and see it again.
You should probably see this if you are a) a vampire movie fan since it changes the mythos in interesting ways, b) a zombie movie fan since a large amount of the action involves the sycophantic zombies the vampires leave behind, or c) a Patrick Stewart fan. I recommend it to the last category of people based on the simple fact that I'd like, just once, for somebody to have seen him in anything other than Star Trek. On that note, I should probably explain that even though my own familiarity with Mr. Stewart began with Dune one year previous to this movie, I'm betting that no one else recognized him then and so he gets the future celebrity Skull. Not even you Excalibur fans.

Rish Outfield's reviews
I saw this for the first time quite a few years ago. I gleaned two things from it (pretty much the same two things tyranist mentioned in his review): that Captain Picard was in it, and (more importantly), that a chick was naked throughout pretty much the whole thing.
I saw it again in 1998. Then, last Wednesday night, at a friend's house, I saw it again.
Though I noticed a bunch of interesting new things this time around--for example, the special effects work, done by John Dykstra, still hold up today (for the most part), probably because a lot of them were physical, anamatronic, or minature effects; and that the idea of a bunch of British astronauts didn't really work--what I took from it were those same two things.
Somehow, Patrick Stewart manages to be riveting, bringing some kind of difficult-to-explain charisma and power in his very small role. And Mathilda May, as the unstoppable, telepathic space vampire, is just about the most beautiful creature ever to come out of Halley's Comet. And yes, she spends virtually 100% of the film completely, stark, raving, buck naked.
I've stated before that Tobe Hooper has made two good movies (only one, if you subscribe to the legend that Spielberg actually directed Poltergeist). This is one of them. Some of it is a bit silly, a couple moments aren't completely successful, and I have to admit I fell asleep at the end, but this movie is visually cool, cleverly told, and fun.
All good things.

Total Skulls: 13

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears		Patrick Stewart
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?