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

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