Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site topaz.ARPA
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!columbia!topaz!boyajian%akov68.DEC
From: boyajian%akov68.DEC@decwrl.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: LIFEFORCE (review)
Message-ID: <3087@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 3-Aug-85 07:58:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.3087
Posted: Sat Aug  3 07:58:04 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 4-Aug-85 06:28:04 EDT
Sender: daemon@topaz.ARPA
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 63

From: boyajian%akov68.DEC@decwrl.ARPA  (JERRY BOYAJIAN)


This is long overdue. I wanted to give my opinions on LIFEFORCE
a month ago, but wanted some time to think through just what I
thought of it. Besides, I read and enjoyed the novel on which it
was based --- Colin Wilson's THE SPACE VAMPIRES --- back when it
first came out about 10 years ago, and I wanted to re-read it in
order to see how close the movie was to the book.

When I saw it, I was given one of those ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT
rating cards, and I ended up giving the movie a "C". I thought it
was an OK movie, but not as good as I'd hoped.

Wilson, like Whitley Strieber later did in THE HUNGER, gave the
vampire a science fictional rather than a supernatural background.
Again, like Strieber, he had the vampires drain human's life force
rather than blood. Wilson's novel was a mixture of criminal
psychology, sex, alien invasion, vampirism, and a touch of Lovecraft.

Tobe Hooper (the director of the film) took the superficial aspects
of the novel and made a Grade B monster movie out of it. What is
surprising is that Hooper (and writers Dan O'Bannon and Don Jakoby)
was quite faithful to the ideas, concept, and many of the details
of the novel. Nevertheless, the feel of the film was that of a
simple monster movie.

The story would have been fine, but I had three major quibbles.
First, that Fallada, the Eminent Scientist, constantly lept to wild
conclusions about the aliens with no evidence to support him. The
novel had such, but the details of his (and Commander Carlsen's)
investigation were skimped over in the movie. Secondly, the vampires
were dispatched in so hackneyed a manner. And thirdly, the whole
Halley's Comet bit was just too topical. What bothered me about it
was that it sets the movie in 1986 rather than some nebulous near
future, which strained my credulity a little too much. Face it, we
just don't have the technology for a manned trip to Halley's Comet.

The acting, other than that of Fallada (played by Frank Finlay ---
Porthos from the Musketeer movies) and Colonel Kane (Peter Firth ---
whose name is familiar, but I can't place him), was abyssmal.
Marie Mayer, who played the lead vampire, wasn't a very good actor,
but she had an unearthly (very appropriately) beauty that was quite
striking.

The special effects were uneven, but when they were good, they were
spectacular! The animation of the corpses (especially the scene where
one of the corpses fills out back into life while his victim shrivels
up into a new corpse) was terrific.

All in all, though I had some problems with it, there was enough in
the film that I liked to feel that my time and money were not wasted.



P.S. It struck me that the scenes of chaos in London were very similar
to the end scenes in FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH. I wonder if Hooper
meant this as an hommage.

--- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Acton-Nagog, MA)

UUCP:	{decvax|ihnp4|allegra|ucbvax|...}!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-akov68!boyajian
ARPA:	boyajian%akov68.DEC@DECWRL.ARPA