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From SCIFIPEDIA
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Lifeforce is a 1985 movie that combines a space shuttle mission with extraterrestrial vampires. It based on a novel by Colin Wilson, a writer noted outside the genre for his nonfiction and his non-speculative novels. Wilson has dabbled in science fiction, too, and probably his best-known work within the field is The Space Vampires (1976), a sometimes ponderous adventure story.
Spoiler Warning: Plot details and/or information about the ending follow. If you wish to enjoy the work first, stop reading here and return at another time.
Plot
A human spaceship encounters an apparent derelict ship that contains several bodies held in suspended animation. The bodies are initially believed to be those of human captives, but they turn out to be the host bodies for fugitives from Rigel, who extend their own lives by drawing the lifeforce out of others. Brought back to Earth, they escape and wreak havoc.
Wilson's novel came to the screen in 1985 with the title Space Vampires replaced by the less descriptive Lifeforce. Directed by Tobe Hooper of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame, it starred Steve Railsback as an American astronaut and features Patrick Stewart in a minor role. The vampire metaphor is explicitly stated in the movie and, in fact, earlier visits by the Rigelians are credited with having given rise to the legend. The female Rigelian escapes military custody after sucking the life out of a hapless attendant, using the resultant lifeforce as a weapon. She disappears into London.
The chase follows, with Railsback particularly sensitive to the Rigelian thought patterns. The authorities discover that the bodies are just shells, that the Rigelians can move from one body to another, therefore complicating human efforts to track down their alien foes. Two of the aliens are at large, one male and one female, and it is crucial to destroy at least one of them before they can get together and mate. Meanwhile, the invaders use their powers to set up a psychic power drain as more and more of the city's inhabitants succumb to their influence and become ravening zombies. Despite all the chaos, the protagonist saves the day, impaling the invader with a metallic stake and fulfilling the vampire metaphor.
The film is filled with striking visuals, and the individual performances are all admirable, but at times the chaos seems to have spread to the screenplay, making it difficult to follow the progression from one scene to the next. The viewer is left to wonder how the Rigelians would have reached the surface of the Earth had they not luckily been discovered by the human spaceship. A significant variation from the book is that, in the former, the evil Rigelians were defeated in part by the intercession of their own race, which does not happen in the motive version. The novel ends with an optimistic view of human destiny. The movie ends with merely a sense of relief.
Cast
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