True story - I was staying with my buddy Alan at his grandparents' cottage in Cape May for the summer of '85 and they dropped us off to see LIFEFORCE, by which I mean, to see THE GOONIES which was playing in the adjacent theater of this old Cape May dual-plex out there - gone by now I'm sure, we had to buy tickets for that as we lacked ID and LIFEFORCE was R (we had to sneak across the lobby to the theater, but we were masters of that by then). Anyway, we couldn't have known then that the film was the shorter American cut. We just knew it seemed put together by a sugar-addled Armenian (and we knew one, Peter Oskanian) with no regard for pacing or tone. We agreed the babe was hot, but the rest was ridiculous --I forgot all about it by the end of the week. I still refuse to see THE GOONIES though. It felt then, and still does, like some contrived Raiders of the Lost Ark Jr. League edition, shamelessly marketed to those too young to realize they were being pandered to, for whom RAIDES OF THE LOST ARK was too scary but who liked the ride. (I'd also been burned by TREASURE OF MATECUMBE nine years earlier, which I saw as a double feature matinee with (wait for it...) SONG OF THE SOUTH, at the Plymouth Meeting Mall as a kid with mom. TREASURE was Disney's bait-and-switch promise of Pirates of the Caribbean style skeleton pirates and delivering banal plotting I was too bleary from Uncle Remus to follow. The skeleton just being one cutaway shot to one in a corner of a cave.
With the advent of widescreen HD however, especially now that the longer British cut is more widely available, well, it turns out Alan and I were wrong. LIFEFORCE is very memorable. It still seems rushed, but it's a little funnier--in a deadpan manly way--and better every time I see it. The sugar-addled Armenian has been replaced by a very deadpan Ukranian. As with other 'Ten Reasons' films like DREAMCATCHER and 1978's THE LEGACY it might not hold up to logic's cold light but I'd watch it a fourth or fifth time over sober, logical better-made inquiries any old time. Still ain't seen THE GOONIES though. No director's cut shit gonna change that.
I should preface that, even for its longer cut, LIFEFORCE has issues: dried corpses come to life are just painted body stockings over what looks like half-inflated sex dolls are used on some of his zombie/vampire undead --they look worse even than some of the corpses in Hopper's next film, TEXAS CHAINSAW 2. And the intro is pretty slow, though the VO about the "Minerva Engine" and its constant acceleration creating gravity deflects our attention into thinking, especially with the thunderous Mancini score, that this is going to be an old-school space adventure rather than.... what it is. I wish the score was more analog synth, not that Mancini's score isn't full-bodied and bold as love and way better than anything we might hear from John Williams (love those gongs!)
For these alluring sirens archetypes to function properly, the girl has to be mad hot, young, and visceral, so she overloads a straight male's circuitry and leaves him exposed to danger. When there's someone like Natashsa Henstridge in SPECIES or Matilda May in LIFEFORCE: impossibly young, perfectly formed, as if from heaven's mint, then it all works (and when there's someone like Liz Taylor in DOCTOR FAUSTUS, it doesn't). I mention all this not to seem sexist or ageist but because nature and the unconscious is sexist and ageist. Whether we're 17-18 (as I must have been) or 80 we know we'd damn our souls to hell and jump off a cliff or whatnot if Henstridge in SPECIES or May beckoned. We'd have no choice.
I should preface that, even for its longer cut, LIFEFORCE has issues: dried corpses come to life are just painted body stockings over what looks like half-inflated sex dolls are used on some of his zombie/vampire undead --they look worse even than some of the corpses in Hopper's next film, TEXAS CHAINSAW 2. And the intro is pretty slow, though the VO about the "Minerva Engine" and its constant acceleration creating gravity deflects our attention into thinking, especially with the thunderous Mancini score, that this is going to be an old-school space adventure rather than.... what it is. I wish the score was more analog synth, not that Mancini's score isn't full-bodied and bold as love and way better than anything we might hear from John Williams (love those gongs!)
1. Mathilda May as the Space Girl
For these alluring sirens archetypes to function properly, the girl has to be mad hot, young, and visceral, so she overloads a straight male's circuitry and leaves him exposed to danger. When there's someone like Natashsa Henstridge in SPECIES or Matilda May in LIFEFORCE: impossibly young, perfectly formed, as if from heaven's mint, then it all works (and when there's someone like Liz Taylor in DOCTOR FAUSTUS, it doesn't). I mention all this not to seem sexist or ageist but because nature and the unconscious is sexist and ageist. Whether we're 17-18 (as I must have been) or 80 we know we'd damn our souls to hell and jump off a cliff or whatnot if Henstridge in SPECIES or May beckoned. We'd have no choice.
That's why, when Scott shouts in her face during the climactic soul drain, "WHAT ARE THESE FEELINGS?!" it's gut-bustingly funny. He seems to react towards her touch by screaming at the top of his lungs. A lot of time she has no real acting to do, just a wolfish smile and eyes that dilate and occasionally widen (with spiral irises!) as if throwing a lot of invisible carnal force in these male's directions. You can feel it. You can feel why she scrambles these men's senses so completely. She's "totally alien... and totally dangerous."
2. Ancient Alien Hypothesis explaining the Periodic Reality of Vampirism via Halley's Comet
Several steps ahead of our current internet paranoia dot-connectors (myself included), Dan O'Bannon's (the co-creator of ALIEN) adaptation of British mystic Colin Wilson's novel is adept at connecting ancient vampire lore with pre-Halley pass excitement. Here it turns out vampires are ancient aliens who basically ride around in the wake / gravitational drag of Halley's comet, deep in hibernation until they get near enough on the long orbit to sense the brain waves of life forms to feed on, then draw them close and assume the forms they most desire so they'll get brought in. Jungian archetypal psychology, ancient alien theory and Bob Lazar's Area 51 statements (how we're a soul farm, and aliens want to make sure no extra-planetary force damages their harvest's 'containers'), and even Cronenberg-Romero-style outbreaking (the emptied containers come back and have an hour or so to try and 'fill up' again or they exploded in a shower of dust, ditto their own victims, etc.,) all ties in perfectly with the 1986 (then a year away in real life) arrival of Halley's comet. as explored in another personal favorite, from the previous year, 1984's NIGHT OF THE COMET. It's all connected. By Halley.
Several steps ahead of our current internet paranoia dot-connectors (myself included), Dan O'Bannon's (the co-creator of ALIEN) adaptation of British mystic Colin Wilson's novel is adept at connecting ancient vampire lore with pre-Halley pass excitement. Here it turns out vampires are ancient aliens who basically ride around in the wake / gravitational drag of Halley's comet, deep in hibernation until they get near enough on the long orbit to sense the brain waves of life forms to feed on, then draw them close and assume the forms they most desire so they'll get brought in. Jungian archetypal psychology, ancient alien theory and Bob Lazar's Area 51 statements (how we're a soul farm, and aliens want to make sure no extra-planetary force damages their harvest's 'containers'), and even Cronenberg-Romero-style outbreaking (the emptied containers come back and have an hour or so to try and 'fill up' again or they exploded in a shower of dust, ditto their own victims, etc.,) all ties in perfectly with the 1986 (then a year away in real life) arrival of Halley's comet. as explored in another personal favorite, from the previous year, 1984's NIGHT OF THE COMET. It's all connected. By Halley.
3. Addiction
One of the few scientists in Britain's space building who gets the full Mathilda May sex treatment but survives, our Bukovsky is left a shivering wreck. That he can't help the investigation as he's too worn out from almost hooking up would be either laughable or idiotic in lesser hands, but Gothard, with his great deep actorly voice, masterfully makes his declaration both hilarious and deadpan believable. Too bad he barely got to speak as the Germanic assassin in FOR YOUR EYES ONLY! Most of his other credits seem to be in long-forgotten BBC shows and direct-to-video OOP stuff.
Gothard, you're so good here you deserve better! I love his reactions to all the veiled disses from the other guys, ala 'you were overpowered by a cute young naked woman who'd just come out of a long coma?' And he's like 'yes.' You also have to like how his groovy space center is in, like, the heart of London, and guarded at night only by a few bumbling security guards, when compared with, say Area 51 and the military fuss we'd make over a similar alien body find.
5. The Col. Caine / Quatermass Connection
With his dope name offset by his halo of blonde curls, Peter Firth (EQUUS) is in rare form as the 'what you haven't heard of me?' Col. Caine, the big MI6 or Special Service guy called in on these spook details. Once the space girl busts loose and the body count's too big to cover up, Caine's the man they send for, and we're treated to his spirited cut-the-shit/ solve-the-problem attitude with the scientist survivors. Curly tow-headedness or not, Firth slams it out of the park.
Note: don't watch EQUUS (1977) the same night as LIFEFORCE, or ever.
6. The comical reaction cutaways.
In my favorite scene, Railsback interrupts an interview with the nurse to grab her and start slapping her around: "This woman is a masochist!," Railsback shouts. "An extreme masochist! She wants me to hurt her!" How he knows this is a mystery (or I forget). Maybe it's the David Bowie poster on wall, the Hallmark store harlequin decor like it's her junior college one-bedroom, bespeaking the nature of the nursing profession in the world of socialized medicine. Railsback's abuse of this poor lady, all but 50 Shades of Gray-molesting her right there in her room while Firth looks on, trying to seem more concerned than kinkily turned on ("I'm a natural voyeur") is a true highlight of the genre, highlighted by when Railsback screams in her face, "Are you IN THERE???" - I've seen this movie a dozen times and I'm always in hysterics at that. Not to mention pretty soon he's pumping Patrick Stewart the same way.
7.b. 
Railsback's make-out sesh with Patrick Stewart, in whom the Space girl is hiding (?) so Caine can drug him/her so she can't escape. Wait, so she isn't bound to any one body (?). The rules of the plot don't necessarily make sense by then but who cares? Think of this scene as forerunner to when Stewart channels Jean Grey's romantic goodbye to a crying Cyclops in XMEN 2 and you realize old Patrick Stewart is the go-to sci-fi channeler of psychic babes!
8. Headlong Momentum
Railsback's make-out sesh with Patrick Stewart, in whom the Space girl is hiding (?) so Caine can drug him/her so she can't escape. Wait, so she isn't bound to any one body (?). The rules of the plot don't necessarily make sense by then but who cares? Think of this scene as forerunner to when Stewart channels Jean Grey's romantic goodbye to a crying Cyclops in XMEN 2 and you realize old Patrick Stewart is the go-to sci-fi channeler of psychic babes!
With no adamant denial and military bullshit obstructing things (the way Qaatermass and the Pit had to contend with the dogmatic skepticism and paranoia of the aptly named Col. Breen), no one challenges each others' authority or theories here. There's no time. Thus a cool boy's club network of brains and quick thinkers make it hum: Gothard and Frank Finley carry the first chunk of the film once we're back on Earth, before Railsback and Firth take over; then Aubrey Morris comes in! The way these three jet around in the helicopter makes for some highly amusing and very British business. We're spared all the laggy elements, needing to convince the PM, etc. --yet the pace is never too choppy and forced. I like for example that all of London goes to shit in the time it takes Caine and company to chopper over to the looney bin and back. In other words, like only a handful of other films in its genre, there's a sense that events progress with or without our heroes witnessing it, and faster than they can really control or halt with any effectiveness.
9. Great ensemble of adult males who like to scream a lot:
Aubrey Morris (yessss?)! Patrick Stewart! (Arrrgh!) Frank Finlay ("here.. I .... go") --all sublime. The amount of first-rate British male acting muscle here is pretty substantial, they have a great rapport, and I love little bits all over this movie, like Col. Caine's asking of normal questions, and the pained but polite answers of Gothard's Bukovsky and death-studying doctor Kulada (Frank Finlay), or the way Aubrey Morris' govt. man just rolls with the weirdness, looking up to these taller actors with a kind of puppyish adoration, trusting their thespian chops to get him out of any bad script scrape and just covering his mouth with a hanky when he starts to 'break' (as in burst out laughing). Deadpan dialogue is punctuated by screaming hysterics (at least four male actors scream at the top of their lungs for several consecutive breaths - with Stewart and Railsback taking at least two turns). With only two women with speaking parts in the whole cast (one on the space crew is basically an extra), it's very much a story of male sexual panic, but so cloaked in British reserve that the deadpan hilarity magnifies with every new beat, not unlike the ever-accelerated Minerva engine! Scream your heads off, men! Here she comes again!
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| A rose by any other name would still carry deep post-Giger fallopian resonance |
10. The odd mix of super low budget with big budget sequences.
All the money must have been spent out in space, the effects are all cool if it's a bit slow (and the British-style space suits evoking Kubrick more than Ridley Scott) so that by the time we get to the climax of all the dead hanging around outside London's Carfax Abbey or St. Paulie Girl Cathedral or wherever, London is represented by basically just one big alleyway of writhing extras, all crowded together to seem like all London is just stairs and back alleys, going up in smoke; again we get a QUATERMASS AND THE PIT evocation for that film too tore down a small section of London outdoor space to evoke the whole, and in the end, it's tough to tell which side won. I love it for that.
The ship, full of captured souls like a trunk full of groceries, heads off to deep space once more, until the next time Halley runs past, which should be in a mere 41 years!! If I'm still alive, I hope they make a sequel, or if I'm not, that they 'wake' me up!
All the money must have been spent out in space, the effects are all cool if it's a bit slow (and the British-style space suits evoking Kubrick more than Ridley Scott) so that by the time we get to the climax of all the dead hanging around outside London's Carfax Abbey or St. Paulie Girl Cathedral or wherever, London is represented by basically just one big alleyway of writhing extras, all crowded together to seem like all London is just stairs and back alleys, going up in smoke; again we get a QUATERMASS AND THE PIT evocation for that film too tore down a small section of London outdoor space to evoke the whole, and in the end, it's tough to tell which side won. I love it for that.
The ship, full of captured souls like a trunk full of groceries, heads off to deep space once more, until the next time Halley runs past, which should be in a mere 41 years!! If I'm still alive, I hope they make a sequel, or if I'm not, that they 'wake' me up!
I didn't even mention the groovy score! No time! ARGGGHGHHH!
WHAT ARE THESE FEELINGS??!?!
Just read this-- and have to suppress a giant chuckle. I saw this in multiplexed form myself on opening night --packed in with a bunch of slacker weirdos filling this cramped, draped cube. A very raucous group. Almost as if dropped into a Porky's or Animal House sequel.
ReplyDeleteAnd this was before
Miss May's assets caused quite a stir; noisy rumblings from rear and a lot of hooting. I absolutely hated the Mancini doing Conti score. Hideous. It would be an interesting double feature with An American Werewolf in London, I think.
Ensconced in curtained catacomb,