This is a film that I bought almost two weeks ago, but I delayed watching it
until today. The reason is simple: I've been giving priority to my True
Stories marathon. After watching the first 30 true films, I'm going to slow
down so that I don't delay watching any new purchases.
"Lifeforce" is a British sci-fi horror film made in 1985. A team of British
and American astronauts investigates Halley's Comet as it passes the Earth.
They find a large space ship travelling with the comet, hidden by the comet's
glow. They enter the space ship and find it full of thousands of large bats,
all dead. The only survivors on the ship are three beings, seemingly human, in
suspended animation pods, two men and a woman. The team takes the pods into
their space shuttle before the comet passes.
Radio communication on the space shuttle breaks down. Over the next few weeks
everyone on the shuttle dies mysteriously. Their bodies dry out. Only the
shuttle's leader, Colonel Carlsen, survives. While looking at the woman in her
pod, he feels a psychic link with her and knows she's responsible for the
deaths. He starts a fire on the shuttle to destroy everything, and then ejects
himself in an escape pod.
Unfortunately, a rescue team is sent to the shuttle. They find the three
suspended animation pods and bring them back to Earth. They're stored in a
Space Research Centre in London.
The woman is the first to wake up. She kisses a security guard, and his body
is dried out, leaving him dead. Or so it seems. She easily escapes from the
centre, kissing anyone who tries to stop her. The two men escape later, but I
don't want to go into too many details.
I'll just try to describe what's happening. The film is complicated, but it
makes sense, if you pay attention. When the woman kisses a man, she absorbs his life
force, leaving his body a dead husk. After two hours the man awakes and
attempts to absorb the life force from someone else by touching him. If he
can't find anyone to absorb within a few minutes, his body turns to dust and
perishes. If he finds someone to absorb, his body returns to its original
appearance, while the other becomes a dead husk in his place. This isn't the
end, because the restored person runs around absorbing as many others as he
can. So, effectively, it's a rapidly spreading plague.
An added complication is that the three original beings, the woman and the two
men, have the ability to enter and possess humans.
It's claimed that the three beings, and others like them, have been
accompanying Halley's Comet for centuries. They've visited Earth before, as
the comet passed, and they were the inspiration for vampire legends.
This leaves a lot of unanswered questions. How did they come to Earth in the
past, if nobody fetched them from their space craft? If the plague spreads so
fast, how did humanity survive their previous visits?
This is an enjoyable film, more horror than science fiction. The special
effects are reasonable, considering how old it is. Patrick Stewart plays a
small but significant role. The Blu-ray disc also contains a director's cut,
so I'll return to the film later this year.
Success Rate: - 2.2
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