Directed by Tobe Hooper, 1985, 116 minutes (International Cut)

Colonel Carlsen (Steve Railsback) and his crew encounter a derelict alien spacecraft in the coma of Halley’s Comet. They retrieve some dormant, humanoid aliens from the vessel. When one of the aliens is brought back to earth it escapes and unleashes a vampiric plague.

I met my first love on Station Street, opposite the underground bus depot. I was a timid lover, a first-year student away from home for the first time, confined in dingy student halls and too scared to use the communal kitchen. When not in class I spent as much time as possible away from my digs and wandered the city to escape my neighbours, raucous alpha males doing what freshers do. For a socially inept small-town boy those cold city evenings were filled with an exhilarating sense of liberation. Memories of my walkabouts are always accompanied by the Waterboys’ anthem “The Whole of the Moon” which got so much airplay that autumn. In the eighties Birmingham had an embarrassment of cinemas. The Tivoli (now the Electric, which claims to be Britain’s oldest working cinema) may have been rather dowdy compared to the palatial Odeon and less hip than arthouse favourite the Triangle, but it suited me. I trysted there three, sometimes four times a week. Tickets were ridiculously cheap, so I wasn’t too choosy about what I saw. Although wilder delights were promised by the prawn cinema upstairs, I preferred the bigger screen which interspersed not-quite-new releases with notorious cult shockers.  The wilder the Tivoli became, the more I adored her.

In that first flush of infatuation, I made no distinction between picture and picture house. For me the Tivoli simply was cinema, a physical and imaginative escape from the banality of the real. Now that the multiplex has leeched all sensuality from the cinematic experience for most of us going to the pictures has become as bland as mall shopping. As a child my parents, like fussy matchmakers, chose my partners and I soon realised that unless the main feature was Harryhausen it would make less impression on my imagination than the Kia Ora or Pick and Mix. Disney sentiment and Hollywood musicals were no longer sufficient, I needed more red meat in my diet. In November 1985 “Lifeforce” served as my initiation into adult cinema; my first 18 certificate. In honesty, I’m no longer certain where I saw it first, but in memory it was the Tivoli. I still remember how impossibly grown up I felt when I bought my ticket.

One of the first lessons that I learned is that love is highly subjective. Critics may have savaged “Lifeforce”, but I thought it was the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen and saw it three times. In hindsight this was the beginning of a lifetime’s pursuit of dodgy, deviant, and derided cinema. Communicating my passion to friends (and anyone else willing to listen) became on object lesson in defending the indefensible. The avant-garde pundits who had praised Hooper’s “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974) for its transgressive, gaunt surrealism, baulked at “Lifeforce” as much as mainstream critics. Hooper’s output demonstrates very little of the artistic minimalism of his most acclaimed film and it is possible that his masterpiece was a happy accident, any stylistic subtlety a symptom of financial constraint. When Cannon gave him a proper budget for “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2” (1986) he created a monstrous, bloated bloodbath of prosthetic mayhem.

Fresh from the box-office bonanza of “Poltergeist” (1982) Hooper was hot property but his transition from low budget independence to big studio politics had been a little choppy. Debate about his working relationship with Steven Spielberg and director credit for “Poltergeist” rattled on through the eighties and perhaps Hooper wanted to move out from Spielberg’s shadow. When Golan and Globus offered him a very large amount of money to spend on his own horror epic Hooper leapt at the opportunity. Cannon had a reputation for sleazy extravagance and lurid tales of financial chicanery surround the production of “Lifeforce”, but I didn’t care how much it had cost; for me the money was there on screen for all to see. The climactic apocalypse where coruscating streams of energy erupt from hapless victims to surge explosively through the streets of London was (and remains) breath-taking. As a Star Wars fanatic, I recognised and relished the artistry of John Dykstra’s space sequences and admired the gothic Collector Ship which looked like the image of Halley’s Comet found in the Bayeux Tapestry. Long regarded as an ill omen, the comet was due to return in 1986, and this supposedly invested “Lifeforce” with a little profitable frisson; instead, it heralded catastrophic box office returns for Cannon. “Lifeforce” taps into eighties angst in its own unique and probably accidental style. Back in 1985 the vampires’ first victim with its combination of extreme facial wrinkling and incongruously bouffant coiffure bore an uncanny resemblance to Ronald Reagan. By grossly exaggerating the physiological effects of the sexual vampirism described in Wilson’s source novel “Lifeforce” may have reflected public fear (fanned by tabloid hysteria) surrounding the spread of AIDS. For an infatuated teen, “Lifeforce” seemed full of wild and undisciplined energy. It represented a degree of personal freedom that I’d never been able to find at home with my parents. I may have invested Hooper’s folly with an unrealistic burden of expectation but since that day for better or worse, I’ve been free to choose my own entertainment.

I was so stunned by the pyrotechnics that I was blind to my beloved’s flaws; “Lifeforce” is hobbled by two horrendously miscast leading men: Steve Railsback and Colin Firth are fine actors, but both seem utterly adrift amidst the mayhem, unconvincing as action heroes and unable to connect with the audience. The dialogue is, on occasion, risibly inept but delicious, hammy support performances offer some compensation: Frank Finlay wraps his elegant theatrical diction around some florid exposition as thanatologist (really, look it up) Hans Fallada; Aubrey Morris’ plummy Home Secretary, Heseltine (a name that had unintentional, topical resonance in eighties Britain) seems far too civilised for Whitehall. Star billing goes unreservedly to Mathilda May whose steely bravado seals the show and effortlessly subverts any tendency to view her performance as mere titillation. As she confronts clueless security guards (one of whom makes the mistake of offering her a biscuit) May appears very much in control and makes her male opponents look like ham-fisted schoolboys.

Time has been kind to “Lifeforce”. Following poor commercial performance in cinemas it found new life in the burgeoning home video market. The original US theatrical cut is sloppy but the international cut, available on home media releases since 1994 provides a neater, more coherent experience, it also restores opening credits that showcase Henry Mancini’s stirring main theme. The cult afterlife of “Lifeforce” demonstrates that critical reception and box office performance constitute only part of the personality of any film, or any other piece of art. The deficit is supplied by our own responses, coloured by memory and emotion. Why we love what we love remains a mystery. Now that home cinema allows endless replay films age with us, nostalgia and experience tint each viewing like camera filters. Now that passion has mellowed into affection, I try to understand why “Lifeforce” has stayed with me when so many other films I saw at that time have faded from memory. The Tivoli didn’t make me hip overnight; I developed an intense adolescent crush on “A Chorus Line” (Richard Attenborough, 1985) the following year but I’ve not felt any urge to see it since.

Love doesn’t heed the criticism of others; it disregards logic. This much is true regardless of whether we are talking about love for a person or for a film. Tobe Hooper’s “Lifeforce” is not a good film, it may have accrued a degree of cult status, but it lacks the artistry and cult cachet of “Re-animator” (Stuart Gordon, 1985) or “Return of the Living Dead” (Dan O’Bannon, 1985) released in the same year. Perhaps I latched onto “Lifeforce” because the horror is presented in such a homely package, offering safe passage between childhood and adult pleasures. Despite the nudity and violence, it looks like a late entry in the Quatermass series, familiar as an eccentric, drunken uncle. Stuck somewhere between horror and science fiction it feels awkward, it doesn’t quite belong; so “Lifeforce” and I had much in common in the autumn of 1985. Since then, I’ve revisited it many times: First, I found a fuzzy ex-rental videotape, then imported the first DVD release, I’ve just taken delivery of the 4K disc. Most of my student friendships are now lost to time but, in the words of Scott Walker, ‘…first love never ever dies’.  I watch “Lifeforce” every couple of years (usually in autumn) and remember my sweeter, simpler self, gazing awestruck at the cinema screen so long ago.

Quotes:

“Carlsen, she’s not human, she’s not a woman. She’ll destroy you…” Colonel Caine (Peter Firth)

“…She’s destroyed worlds” Colonel Carlsen (Steve Railsback)

“It’ll be much less terrifying if you just come to me” Second Vampire (Bill Malin)

Connections

Film

‘Quatermass and the Pit’ directed by Roy Ward Baker (1967)

‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ directed by Tobe Hooper (1974)

‘Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films’ directed by Mark Hartley (2014)

‘Scala!!!’ directed by Jane Giles and Ali Catterall (2023)

Reading

Space Vampires by Colin Wilson NB. The novel is a clever, elegant read; don’t let the film persuade you otherwise.