Lifeforce (Son of "Quatermass and the Pit") (1985) Part 1 of 3

Consider this my "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!" moment. 💥

Notice: Please be advised that there are photos containing nudity near the end of Part 3 of this blog post.

As I did in my book, I’m using the opportunity this blog holds to vent or discuss my feelings about occasional other movies I feel have been unfairly treated. For instance, I believe that Tobe Hooper’s 1985 science fiction epic Lifeforce (a worthy successor to Hammer's Martian classic Five Million Years to Earth) is woefully misunderstood and has been unjustly maligned for thirty years. Because Lifeforce immediately preceded Hooper’s remake of Invaders from Mars (1953) and since the two films shared much the same creative talent, I’m spending a few moments here commenting on Lifeforce to finally give it its due. Lifeforce is in my mind a brilliantly conceived and perfectly executed—truly a perfect—great film. But as you will see below, I’m in the minority, it would seem.

Tobe Hooper used $25,000,000 to make Lifeforce, a positively fun, thought-provoking science-fiction/horror movie that, among other things, paid clear homage to Hammer's final decade of over-the-top delights and in particular to Nigel Kneale's thought-provoking science-fiction/horror movie Quatermass and the Pit. (see commentary on Pit: https://redplanetonfilm.blogspot.com/2017/07/five-million-years-to-earth-quatermass.html .  Henry Mancini's martial score is absolutely genius, and I never tire of reveling in its sublime intensity. The story and plotting is perfectly coherent with a clear beginning, middle, and end. It's a bit of a mystery story as the heroes try desperately to locate the alien girl. The story is linear in the extreme. There is absolutely no confusing mixture of genres. The production values, practical effects, and special visual effects are absolutely first rate. There is nothing wrong with the film, nothing bewildering, nothing incoherent; in fact, it does everything right. It is lyrically beautiful. In my view it is a perfect film. It is a wonderful entertainment, every bit as much as The Wizard of Oz.

That said, I repeat, Tobe Hooper’s 1985 science-fiction epic Lifeforce is woefully misunderstood and has been unjustly maligned for thirty years.

The majority opinion, from 1985 to the present

So much for my opinion. Now, how does one factor my perceptions alongside most other critics’ opinions both in print and on the Internet over the years, with a big bump in 2013 due to the release of the Blu-ray unaccountably setting off a tsunami of renewed (mostly sarcastic) attention. Of course, most critics (and they are legion and include 2013’s newcomers) have reviled the film, saying things like:

"uneven"

"ridiculous"

"crazy"

"ludicrous over-acting"

"indulging in the most reactionary representations of sexuality"

"a melodramatic travesty"

"hysterical"

"a mess"

"deeply silly"

"an object lesson in failure"

"the worst movie ever made"

“a truly bad movie ... a real contender in the worst big-budget 
movie ever stakes”

“the narrative borders on incoherence”

"No life. No force. No dice."

"one of the flat-out looniest movies ever produced"

"tasteless and lurid and demented"

"a car-crash of a movie"

"over-ambitious"

"unfocused and overblown"

"illogical"

"incredibly slow"

"a jaw-dropping farce"

"absolutely boring"

"a miasma of lazy storytelling, massive plot-holes and tragic performances"

"Lifeforce is a dog....sink[s] to an astonishing new low on a regular basis"

And trust me, this is only the tip of the iceberg!

Another annoyance

One of the presumed aspects of the film that is mentioned over and over and again, in fact, nearly always, and often in combination with the above sorts of hysterical belittlements, is that Lifeforce supposedly mixes genres to an extreme extent. Sometimes the reviewers say this is a good thing. Others complain that this is ill conceived. Yet, as I said above, the movie is linear and has a beginning, middle, and end. Each “act” makes perfect sense and flows from one to another seamlessly. Thus, there is no reason to artificially call attention to different aspects of the plot as though there is something intrinsically separate or different about its various plot elements. After all, would you ever stop to analyze Casablanca as a mash-up of romance and war movies, or even if you did, to make a big deal of it? Or Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula as a combo classic horror movie with a tragic love story, or to make a big deal of it? There is simply nothing intrinsic about Lifeforce’s various plot elements that demand that reviewers should dismantle the movie and call attention to its various layers, yet it happens time and again, as for example (and, again, this is merely a sampling):

“[It is] a movie that borrows a little from a dozen other influences and blends them together…

“The film hits every genre and hits it hard…”

“Hooper’s film melds together so many different genre conventions…”

“[I]t is a kitchen sink mash up of every known genre laced together...

“It’s accurate and fair to say that Lifeforce…blends together three, distinct genres that are generally kept poles apart from each other….”

“The film is a hybrid of genres...”

“…starts as outer space saga, then becomes a vampire movie, then turns into an end of the world story…”

“Lifeforce conjures no less than every conceivable doomsday scenario…”

“…its got a little bit of everything blended together...”

“Lifeforce is a mixed bag of tricks….”

“How often do you find a sci-fi/horror hybrid that dares to walk the high wire?”

Variant U.K./European graphic/poster.

The trouble with both

As I point out constantly in my book, there is something suspicious when reviewers across the board begin saying the same thing over and again more or less at the same time. I cannot help but feel that these critics are taking the path of least resistance by repeating other critics ad infinitum. It's like lemmings, and it is simply boring—not to mention annoying—to see the same thing said in review after review, over and over and over again as though saying it so often makes it true. Probably, all these reviewers/critics/commentators are just trying to be in the “in crowd,” trying to be popular—a perfectly normal human behavior, but it’s one thing to revel in piercings or Adele or Subarus, and quite another to destroy a multi-million dollar objet d'art along with the careers and reputations of its creators.

1985 Lifeforce trailer.

Greater latitude than the book

All the quotations above are nonsense of the highest order—pointless, mind-numbingly endless, lemming-like criticism—at least in my view. Frankly, I’m convinced that much of this criticism was and is purely prudist in origin, as Mathilda May unconcernedly walks totally nude through much of the film, and far too many "modern" commentators are apparently made much too uncomfortable to be able to view the film in an objective light.

Special photo juxtapositions by Thomas Kent Miller;

copyright © 2016-2017 by Thomas Kent Miller.

  
But I will discuss this in the third part of this article

In the meantime, here is the link to Part 2

Formal Notice: All images, quotations, and video/audio clips used in this blog and in its individual posts are used either with permissions from the copyright holders or through exercise of the doctrine of Fair Use as described in U.S. copyright law, or are in the public domain. If any true copyright holder (whether person[s] or organization) wishes an image or quotation or clip to be removed from this blog and/or its individual posts, please send a note with a clear request and explanation to eely84232@mypacks.net and your request will be gladly complied with as quickly as practical.

Lifeforce (Son of "Quatermass and the Pit") (1985) Part 2 of 3

Notice: Please be advised that there are photos containing nudity near the end of Part 3 of this blog post.

Greater latitude than the book  💥
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 .
Since Lifeforce immediately preceded Hooper’s 1986 remake of the 1953 Invaders from Mars and since Hooper’s two films shared much the same creative talent, it was not, and is not, inappropriate to finally give Lifeforce its due. This blog provides me with greater latitude than the book, where I merely touched on this subject. Here I will discuss Lifeforce here without restraint, particularly in relation to Hammer Films’ Five Million Years to Earth/Quatermass and the Pit. My book contains many Mars movies—but few are perfect. Five Million Years to Earth is one of the perfect ones. Like Casablanca, not one frame is out of place. It is my sincere position that the same can be said of Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce, which is brilliantly conceived, perfectly executed, and is, frankly, a truly great science-fiction film, jump-starting from the very first pulse-pounding note of Henry Mancini's epic martial score to the final shot of the vampires’ spaceship drifting off.

Bullied into failure

I find it truly reprehensible and incomprehensible that the film was bullied into failure and obscurity.  Lifeforce was and is a practically perfect film, but its own Tri-Star distributor for obscure business reasons chose to malign the film and recut it into insensibility for American audiences; further, the company went out of its way to do "its utmost to distance itself from the director's intentions and spirit," according to Cathode Ray Tube.com creator Frank Collins. Naturally, in a situation like this, the negative energy filtered down from the top and the critics and then the public followed suit, and then maligning the film became the order of the day—the “in thing” to do!

In fact, I spell out the process in Mars in the Movies, saying, "The best in human nature does not thrive when there is disharmony. There are many fine films that have tanked at the start not due to the inherent quality of the movie but because of the climate of hostility that for some reason exists within the management of those films' respective studios. This negativity affects pre-release promotion and creates an environment of rumor that, once begun, is impossible to shake. And once a negative rumor begins to circulate, a kind of pack mentality takes over and critic after critic, often not even consciously, sense the prevailing attitudes and climate about a movie and automatically dismiss it. Of course, critics' dismissals seldom automatically spell disaster for a movie, but there is something about malice generated at the top executive level of a film's own company that is far more toxic than common garden variety criticism." All and all, this sort of rabid behavior is a sad commentary on the proclivity of humans to so easily fall into lemming-like actions, attitudes, and opinions.

Vindication

In Mars in the Movies, I say, "What virtually all critics miss, among other things, is that Lifeforce is largely a remake of Five Million Years to Earth/Quatermass and the Pit….  I have been perplexed why I’ve not found anyone else who noticed such an obvious Hammer connection.”

Alas!  At the time I wrote that, I was not familiar with a certain comment made by genre expert Stephen Jones in his The Essential Monster Movie Guide: A Century of Creature Features Film, TV, and Video (2000) that read: “Loosely based on Colin Wilson’s novel Space Vampires, [Lifeforce], Hooper’s lively blend of science-fiction and horror begins like Alien (1979), turns into a remake of Quatermass and the Pit (1967), and ends up looking like a Hammer gothic.” (Obviously, this is yet another of those ubiquitous recurring references to the mixing of genres (see Part 1 of this posting), but at least the Quatermass and Hammer parts are right on the money.)

Lifeforce is clearly a sort of $25 million amped up remake of 

Five Million Years to Earth / Quatermass and the Pit.

Thankfully, the word “virtually” covers a multitude of sins and kept me from painting myself into an embarrassing corner! Nevertheless, my point is still valid since, clearly, too many critics who really ought to have known better were either uncharacteristically dim or too apoplectic from 1985 to 2013 to see any obvious connection. Some, however, in their 2013 comments on the Blu-ray finally took the blinders off and, surprise!, saw the similarities, though, again, only saying so begrudgingly, and likely only because some other critic had called attention to the fact, but even still, usually making irrelevant or incorrect claims regarding Quatermass in general and not about Quatermass and the Pit. As I researched and wrote the book, I admit I was not at all aware that the Blu-ray release had generated so much—a veritable flood—of commentary and criticism.

Nevertheless, it was when I watched the making-of documentary on the Lifeforce Blu-ray, that I saw in an interview Tobe Hooper explain how Cannon gave him $25 million, free-reign, and the novel The Space Vampires by Colin Wilson, and said, basically, go knock yourself out (hoping for a Star Wars–like reception). Hooper then shares how giddy he was. “I thought I’d go back to my roots and make a 70 mm Hammer film.” I felt so totally vindicated!

After all, the connection between the two films is utterly obvious for anyone with a basic foundation in science-fiction cinema (and as an aside, while researching my book I discovered to my utter astonishment that far too many so-called science-fiction film experts have no basic foundation and regularly speak nonsense as a result):

• Quatermass and the Pit/Five Million Years to Earth is about an alien species (Martians) that had been influencing the development of humankind (through genetic mutation) for millions of years—from which derives the ancient legends of the devil—and concludes with epic scenes of London being destroyed by vast, nearly occult powers in the form of rampaging lightning-like bursts of (paranormal) energy focused on a huge glowing alien manifestation made of pure energy (the giant head of a grasshopper-like Martian, see figure below), which is effectively short-circuited by cold-iron, the traditional enemy of the devil (in the form of an overhead crane), by way of self-sacrifice.

Quatermass and the Pit's "huge glowing alien manifestation made of pure energy".

• While, Lifeforce is about an alien species (vampires) that had been influencing the development of humankind (through absorption of its life force) for millions of years—from which derives the ancient legends of the vampire—and concludes with epic scenes of London being destroyed by vast, nearly occult powers in the form of rampaging lightning-like bursts of (spiritual) energy focused on a huge glowing alien manifestation made of pure energy (the huge column of human souls rising into space, see figure below), which is effectively short-circuited by cold-iron, the traditional enemy of the devil (in the form of a fearsome sword), by way of self-sacrifice.

.

Lifeforce's "huge glowing alien manifestation made of pure energy".

Clearly the title "Five Million Years to Earth" 

was consciously derivative of Ray 

Harryhausen's "20 Million Miles to Earth".

The fact is that I "got" this, or understood this, at my first viewing (it may have helped that Five Million Years to Earth was one of my favorite films at the time!). But it might be enlightening to explain the background of my first viewing. My first son Nicholas was born on February 15, 1985. Then there came a period of several months when getting him to sleep was difficult. My wife and I took turns holding him on our shoulders and walking him around the house endlessly. I mentioned this to my friend Gail Morgan Hickman, and he suggested that I play the video of Lifeforce to keep my mind occupied.  He said he thought I'd like it. I'd never heard of the film and had zero preconceptions. We'd only just bought our first VCR, and the whole idea of home video was new to me (though very quickly I learned to loathe VHS, but that is a very different story). At that time, I watched Lifeforce over and over, and please note this was the tragically cut American pan-and-scan version. The film was nonetheless riveting despite having these serious counts against it. And it did the trick. (And it was probably helpful that I was at all times too preoccupied pacing around the house to be too critical!) The film kept my brain occupied as my perambulation soothed Nicholas into sleep night after night.

Two more fine films that were absolutely destroyed by negative and/or confused energy generated at the top executive level of their respective film companies (per Mr. H. Ellison and Mr. M. Sellers, respectively).  Ahhh!  I can see all the eyebrows raising, the nostrils flaring, and hear the harsh mutterings of disbelief. For details about the care and feeding of lemmings, please see my book Mars in the Movies: A History.

Continued in Part 3

Formal Notice: All images, quotations, and video/audio clips used in this blog and in its individual
posts are used either with permissions from the copyright holders or through exercise of the doctrine
of Fair Use as described in U.S. copyright law, or are in the public domain. If any true copyright holder (whether person[s] or organization) wishes an image or quotation or clip to be removed from this blog and/or its individual posts, please send a note with a clear request and explanation to eely84232@mypacks.net and your request will be gladly complied with as quickly as practical.

http://www.mcfarlandbooks.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-9914-4