| Lifeforce | |
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Movie poster |
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| Directed by | Tobe Hooper |
| Produced by | Yoram Globus Menahem Golan |
| Screenplay by | Dan O'Bannon Don Jakoby |
| Story by | Colin Wilson (novel) |
| Starring | Steve Railsback Mathilda May Peter Firth Frank Finlay Patrick Stewart Michael Gothard |
| Music by | Henry Mancini |
| Distributed by | Tri-Star Pictures |
| Release date(s) | June 21, 1985 |
| Running time | 116 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $25 million |
| Box office | $11,603,545 |
Lifeforce is a 1985 science fiction film directed by Tobe Hooper from a screenplay by Dan O'Bannon and Don Jakoby, from the novel The Space Vampires, published in 1976, by Colin Wilson.
Contents |
While investigating Halley's Comet, the crew of the space shuttle Churchill finds a 150-mile long spaceship hidden in the corona of the comet. Upon entering the alien spacecraft, the crew finds hundreds of dead and shrivelled bat-like creatures and three naked humanoid bodies (two male and one female) in suspended animation within glass coffin-like containers. The crew recovers the three aliens and begins the return trip to Earth.
During the return journey, Mission Control loses contact with the shuttle as it nears Earth and a rescue mission is sent to find out what happened on board. The rescuers find the Churchill completely gutted by fire, except for the three suspended animation cases bearing the aliens. All three are taken to European Space Research Centre in London where they are watched over by Dr Leonard Bukovski (Michael Gothard) and Dr Hans Fallada (Frank Finlay). Prior to an autopsy taking place the naked female 'vampire' (Mathilda May) awakens and sucks the titular "life force" out of a guard. She then escapes the research facility and begins draining various humans of their life force and moving through various host bodies. It transpires the aliens are a race of space vampires that consume the life force of a living being, rather than blood.
Meanwhile, in Texas, an escape pod from the shuttle Churchill is found with Col. Tom Carlsen (Steve Railsback) still alive. He is flown to London and tells how the crew were drained of their life force. To save Earth from this fate, Carlsen set fire to the shuttle and escaped in the pod. During hypnosis it is clear Carlsen has a psychic link to the female alien. Carlsen and Col. Colin Caine (Peter Firth), a member of the SAS, trace the alien to the body of a nurse at a hospital for the mentally disturbed in Yorkshire. They believe they have managed to trap the alien girl within the heavily sedated body of the hospital's manager, Dr Armstrong (Patrick Stewart). However, the entire episode was a trick to lure them away from London.
As Carlsen and Caine are transporting Dr Armstrong in a helicopter back to London, the alien girl breaks free from a sedated Dr Armstrong and disappears. When they arrive back in London it is clear that a plague has taken full control - even the prime minister has been infected and martial law has been enacted to prevent the spread of the plague out of London. The two male vampires - previously thought destroyed - have also escaped from confinement by taking the forms of the soldiers guarding them, and begun to transform most of London's population into vampiric zombies. Once transformed, the victims cycle into living-dead every two hours and seek out the living, absorbing the life force from their victims. These people themselves become zombies and the transformation process repeats. This energy is then collected by the male vampires who direct it to the female vampire who transfers it to the waiting spaceship in Earth's orbit.
Fallada manages to impale one of the male vampires with a sword made of lead. He surmises that the legends of vampires may well be drawn from a previous visit by this space vampire race. Carlsen then admits to Caine that whilst on the shuttle he felt compelled to open the female vampire's container and to have shared his life force with hers. Carlsen realises his psychic connection is being used to lure him back to the alien so she can regain the life force she shared with him. She is located lying upon a church's altar transferring the energy to her spaceship.
Caine follows Carlsen and dispatches the second male vampire (with the lead sword, obtained from Fallada, who Caine had to kill due to becoming infected as with the others at the research centre) before locating Carlsen who sacrifices himself by impaling himself and the female alien in the process. Wounded but not fatally, the female vampire returns to her ship, releasing a burst of energy that blasts the top off the church building in the process and taking Carlsen with her. The two ascend the column of light to the vessel, which then departs towards the comet it came from.
Lifeforce was the first film of Tobe Hooper's three-picture deal with Cannon. The other two films are the remake of Invaders from Mars and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.
Filming began on February 2, 1984. Before Tobe Hooper was finally approved, Michael Winner, at one point, was offered the chance to direct the film.
The movie was originally filmed and promoted under the same title as Colin Wilson source novel. Cannon Films, which was the studio that backed and produced the film, reportedly spent nearly US$25 million in hopes of creating a blockbuster movie, and disliked The Space Vampires for sounding too much like another of the studio's typical low budget exploitation films. As a result the title was changed to Lifeforce, referring to the spiritual energy the space vampires drain from their victims, and it was edited for its U.S. theatrical release by Tri-Star Pictures into a 101 min. domestic cut version that was partially re-scored by Michael Kamen, with a majority of Henry Mancini's original music remaining.
The screenplay was written by Dan O'Bannon and Don Jakoby. Script doctors Michael Armstrong and Olaf Pooley did some uncredited work on the script. Incidentally, it was Tobe Hooper who came up with the idea of using Halley's Comet in the screenplay.
John Gielgud, Klaus Kinski and Olivia Hussey were originally announced to star in late 1983, according to the film news section of Teletext. At one time, George Peppard was attached to the role of Colonel Carlsen, and over 1000 actresses were considered and/or interviewed for the female vampire. Cannon initially offered the role of Caine to Anthony Hopkins, who turned it down. A deal was then negotiated with Terence Stamp for the same role, but this fell through as well. Michael Gothard also screen tested for Caine, but when Tobe Hooper met Peter Firth he offered him the role and Firth was approved by the studio.
When filming began the important cameo of Dr. Armstrong had not been yet cast. Later, John Gielgud was initially cast for the role, but was replaced by Patrick Stewart. According to some biographies of Gielgud, he departed the production because of a disagreement over his fee. Frank Finlay replaced Klaus Kinski in the role of Fallada, while Olivia Hussey was replaced by Nancy Paul in the role of Ellen Donaldson. Tim Dry and Sean Crawford were interviewed for the male vampires, and Billy Idol was considered for the role of one of them as well.
The role of Kelly, played by Chris Sullivan, was actually a composite character of six previous ones. This merger was initiated by Tobe Hooper after he met Sullivan, who was initially offered the role of a crew member before they decided that the role should be played by a female.
Chris Jagger (brother of Sir Mick) played one of the male vampires.
The BBC newsreader early in the film, John Edmunds, was an actual BBC newsreader from the 1960s to early 1980s.
Jerome Willis spent three weeks working on this film, playing the role of the pathologist.
The film marked the fourth project to feature special effects produced by Academy Award winner John Dykstra. The umbrella-like alien spaceship was modelled after an artichoke, while the model London destroyed in the film was actually the remains of Tucktonia, a model village near Christchurch, UK that had closed not long before the shooting of the film. It took a week to film the death scene of the pathologist played by Jerome Willis, and bodycasts of Frank Finlay, Patrick Stewart and Aubrey Morris were made by make-up effects supervisor Nick Maley for their death scenes.
James Horner was first asked to write the film score before Henry Mancini was brought in and composed an occasionally atonal score. For the US domestic cut version, Michael Kamen was approved to write the occasional alternative music cues that were partially re-scored and placed in at the last minute for some of the US domestic prints of the film.
The initial cut of Lifeforce as edited by Tobe Hooper was 128 mins long. This is 12 minutes longer than the final version which had several scenes cut, most of them taking place on the space shuttle Churchill. According to Nicholas Ball, who played the main British astronaut Derebridge, it was felt that there was too much material in space and so the majority of the Churchill scenes were deleted. Also, most of Nicholas Ball's performance ended up on the cutting room floor according to an interview he gave on the UK talk show Wogan in 1985.
Patrick Stewart said in interviews that he was disappointed at the cuts made to the film and that Tobe Hooper was his favorite director to work with.
According to interviews with Bill Malin, who plays one of the male vampires, the film went over schedule during production. Because of this some important scenes were never shot, and the film was shut down at one time because the studio had simply run out of money.
Despite being credited on the US domestic cut, the following actors were deleted from that cut of the film: John Woodnutt, John Forbes-Robertson and Russell Sommers. The Churchill commanding officer Rawlins, played by Geoffrey Frederick, was British, but in post-production it was decided to re-voice him by Patrick Jordan, a US performer. Also in the US version, some of Geoffrey Frederick's voiceover heard on the Churchill is also dubbed.
The film was edited for its U.S. theatrical release by Tri-Star Pictures to a 101 min domestic cut version that was partially re-scored by Michael Kamen, with a majority of Henry Mancini's original music still remaining. The original 116 min international theatrical cut version, which is now currently available on video and DVD, contains more violent and erotic footage that Tri-Star cut from the domestic version, along with the entirety of Mancini's full music score in place of Kamen's occasional music cues placed at the last minute for U.S. domestic prints of the film.
Lifeforce was released on June 21, 1985 to disappointing box office returns. The film opened in fourth place, losing the head-to-head release battle against the Ron Howard sci-fi film, Cocoon. In total, Lifeforce earned $11,603,545[1] at the US box office, a poor return on its estimated $25 million dollar budget.
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