Plot Synopsis: While investigating Halley's Comet the space shuttle Churchill encounters an alien spacecraft. This leads to a chain of events that results in London being menaced by a deadly "space vampire" who drains the lifeforce from her hapless victims, eventually causing them to turn into lethal zombies looking for more human energy themselves.
The film is roughly based on paranormal enthusiast Colin Wilson's 1970s novel The Space Vampires.
Much of the notoriety of, and continued interest in, the film resulted from French actress Mathilda May(as the space vampire) spending the bulk of her time in the film naked. Altho' relatively unknown in the English speaking world she's had a fairly successful career in France, and appeared in the 1997 Bruce Willis/Richard Gere flick The Jackal.
Personally I found the handling of the aliens by the British space program authorities unbelievable. They've found 3 mysterious, presumably alien, beings in a space shuttle, the crew of which are all dead, and what do they do? Stick them in an unlocked room that looks like a high school chem lab, guarded by unarmed and unprotected rentacops, in the basement of some London building. The guards aren't even physically separated from the aliens.
The end sequence of London being menaced by thousands of zombies seems very reminiscent of the ending sequence in 1967's Quatermass and the Pit, aka 5,000,000 Years To Earth. Some have gone so far as to suggest that Lifeforce can be seen as in part a remake of/homage to the earlier film. Personally I found the ending of the earlier film far more effective and disturbing given that it was merely normal people driven made who were menacing each other, not alien generated life sucking zombies.
Guess I'm the only one who's seen this flick.
No I have seen it. I just do not have much to say about it. I first saw it on video at a friends house as a teen and the whole naked chick running around was about as far as i got into the plot. After maturing a bit and watching it again, It seems like an ok B Movie with an ok plot, decent F/X for the time and the naked woman running around :-) Not something to watch everyweekend, but not too bad.
I saw the heavily edited version on TV back around 1990, which means no naked chick. (Sigh.) This version also featured several continuity gaps, which I presume were scenes cut to fit in more commercials.
I should watch this again someday.
On the other hand, I did read the novel a couple years ago after finding it at a second-hand bookstore. Certain elements of that were lacking, to put it nicely, but others were intriguing, and would have been interesting to see in the movie. Sorry, I can't really remember anything specific about the book or the film at this point to make comparisons. I guess my impression of the book was that it was fairly ho-hum, sort of like the film.
One thing I forgot to mention was the prescence of Patrick Stewart in the film in what must have been one of his last roles before being cast in Star Trek: TNG.
Most obvious nit to me...
Early on in the film, we are shown that the effect of the 'vampires' on human beings leaves a behind a dessicated corpse. At the end of the film, these give way to zombies that look more necrotic than dessicated - as if they've been buried and rotting but not dried out.
Anyone else notice that?
I saw this as a kid in 1985 and loved it. I couldn't understand why some reviews were so negative. I thought it was great. Fast-paced, wonderful effects, a beautiful naked woman, and for it's time amazing make-up and animatronic puppets. The scenes of the emaciated zombies in the hospital were particularly impressive.
I could never have even dreamed that the old bald-headed guy at the rural clinic (Patrick Stewart) would go on to become the captain of the Enterprise. He looked quite wimpy here.
Great schlock movie--although the best part was the naked chick!
Watched this on Tubi yesterday. First time I've seen it in decades.
So, in 1986, Britain had an active space force capable of reaching Halley's Comet. Must be the Whoniverse Britain.
The movie suggests that events like this happened when Halley's Comet came within range of Earth, every 76 years. The last time, before this, was 1910. Surely there would have been accounts of a vampire apocalypse happening that year. There were newspapers in 1910.
And how would have the vampires gotten to Earth in 1910? We had no space shuttles back then.
Wouldn't it have made more sense to stash the three bodies in a secure location, out of the middle of nowhere. Instead they have them in the middle of one of the biggest, and most populated, cities in the world.
Interesting that the British Prime Minister is shown to be man. At the time of this movie, it was a woman (Margaret Thatcher). Of course, said PM gets turned into a vampire himself.
The alien vampires return to Halley's Comet as the movie ends. Well, we now know about them and have 76 years to prepare for the next encounter. We should be ready for them by the time 2061 rolls around.