I was a little tired today and wanted to watch some mindless entertainment when I came across Lifeforce (1985), a cheeseball sci fi/horror epic I haven't seen since it's original release in 1985. The two main things I remembered right off were 1) it was boring and 2) a girl walks around naked for half the movie. This plus the nostalgia factor was enough for me to dig in for another heaping pile of...Lifeforce!
But something has changed since the last time I saw this film 22 years ago. I've matured, I have a different way of seeing things. And now, I can see this movie wasn't boring but actually an exciting unintentional comedy of epic proportions. Lifeforce, produced by those B movie experts at Cannon films (the home of Chuck Norris in the 80's) is intended to be a blockbuster film of Spielbergian range. The London Symphony Orchestra performs the score, make up and special effect wizards like John Dykstra were brought in and to direct it all was Texas Chainsaw's very own Tobe Hooper. The plot would involve a threat to all mankind. You could virtually see Cannon films pushing every penny both borrowed and owned into this film to make it a hit.
It's that zeal that makes it so fun to watch. Because the movie itself has a junky plotline, bizarre characters and spaceship designed to look like an artichoke. Add ridiculously bad acting, lame effects and Patrick Stewart before Star Trek TNG and bring to a boil. What you end up with is a movie so bad that it all becomes funny, like the funniest comedy I've seen in quite a while.
The plot is about a space shuttle investigating Haley's comet (remember when that was a big deal?) and finding an artichoke, I mean spaceship inside. The astronauts go inside to find stone bats and three naked people in plastic coffins. The lead astronaut has his world rocked by a hot French alien played by Mathilda May. Next thing you know, all the people on the shuttle are dead and so Britian retrieves the aliens. The girl begins sucking the life out of all the guys and possessing the bodies of her victims. The victims she doesn't possess become life sucking zombies themselves or turn to dust if they can't.
That's more plot than anyone needs to know about this flick, because it's not about plot. It is about the fun of watching a bad movie be poorly made with millions of dollars. The special effects are meant to look impressive but instead look like models filmed in someone's basement. The lifeforce energy is represented by a blue light that looks painted on the frames in post production. In a flying helicopter scene you can see the wall of the set outside of the front window. And those aren't the highlights!
Highlights include seeing Patrick Stewart talk in a girl's alien voice and then almost make out with a guy mimicking a seizure while grips throw trash around the room to imitate a possession. Watching really fake looking puppets pretend to be people drained of their "lifeforce" and then exploding in a fury of brown dust. Seeing the surviving astronaut act out his "mental link" with the girl vampire with overblown screaming and sweating in his nightmares and visions. And watching security guard after guard see the girl Space Vampire attacking a person on a security camera and then running to that room instead of alerting other security guards.
Last week I saw the competent comedy Talledega Nights (2006) and though it was entertaining, I didn't laugh nearly as hard as I did at Lifeforce. I won't even bother to go into detail of all the implications that go with a hot naked girl draining men of their "lifeforce" by opening her mouth. All this plus a cast of fifty extras made up to look like thousands and a sweeping orchestral score that outshines anything on screen.
Lifeforce reminded me of all those Steven Benchley and Stephen King miniseries that used to show up on tv in the late 90's. Big cast of has beens, weak special effects and an empty plot padded to fit a greater scale and length. But now, Lifeforce has taken...um, a life of it's own...and become a fine example of misplaced intentions resulting in pure comedy gold.
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