Lifeforce

Invasion of the nude space vampires.

Life­force is based on a book called The Space Vam­pires, by Colin Wil­son. As the film’s cred­its roll, you might be mis­taken for think­ing it was actu­ally based on a book called The Sexy Nude Space Vam­pires. I know I was. The sexy nude space vam­pire is a young Mathilda May, prowl­ing the streets of Lon­don and the sur­round­ing area with her boobs out, and seduc­ing elderly farm­ers who can’t believe their luck on windswept road­sides. Thank­fully, the elderly farm­ers remain fully clothed.

But how did it ever come to this? I’m glad you asked. It starts with a mis­sion to Haley’s Comet aboard a space shut­tle called Churchill. Once there, the crew dis­cover some­thing lurk­ing in the comet, a huge space­ship filled with dead aliens, and three humanoid crea­tures wear­ing not a stitch of cloth­ing, and encased in glass coffins.

Because the crew don’t realise they’re in a movie, they go for the dumb option, and decide to take the three glass coffins back to Earth. It’s not so much a mis­sion dic­tated by sci­ence and a thirst for knowl­edge, more by the cap­tain of the shut­tle pop­ping a boner when he claps eyes on Mathilda May’s tits.

See film, or inter­net, for uncen­sored version.

“I feel invig­o­rated,” he says. Yeah, sure you do. Other mem­bers of the crew com­plain of feel­ing “drained”. I sus­pect, with Mathilda stored for all eter­nity in the wank bank, they might’ve vis­ited the space toi­let off cam­era to crack one out.

Back on Earth, the vamps escape cap­tiv­ity, giv­ing a clutch of deadly seri­ous British thes­pi­ans the runaround in Lon­don. The likes of Frank Fin­lay, Patrick Stew­art (in not much more than a cameo, sadly) and Peter Firth seem entirely unaware that they’re in a cheesy sci-fi hor­ror movie. Or maybe their com­mend­able earnest­ness in the face of such silli­ness is just a sign of the true pro­fes­sional: they might not be star­ring in a Shake­speare play, but you wouldn’t think so to watch them. They sim­ply get on with the busi­ness of act­ing, the sort of thing they can do in their sleep, even with lim­ited material.

Indeed, when Mathilda May body swaps, and ends up fully dressed, it takes some skill for an actor to make the line, “And now she has clothes!” sound utterly fore­bod­ing. Some­how, Peter Firth man­ages it. I’m sure I detected a slight flicker of dis­ap­point­ment in his eyes though. And I’m gen­uinely sur­prised the group of blokes stood around him at this point didn’t sink to their knees and scream, “Nnnnooooooo!!”

That vam­pires orig­i­nated from outer space, and have vis­ited Earth before, giv­ing rise to the folk­lore that we know and love today, is an inter­est­ing con­cept. I’m sur­prised it hasn’t really been done since, at least not to my knowl­edge. Life­force doesn’t explore the idea to any great extent, save for some philo­soph­i­cal mus­ings from Fin­lay, as it’s more inter­ested in nudity, car­nage, and over the top light shows.

It’s not a great movie, but it has bags of energy and B-movie charm to spare.