- Included with the Quatermass Movies.
- Lifeforce (1985), also worth mentioning, is truly over the top, drenched in full-frontal nudity, deviant sexuality, and telekinetic battles.
Martin Winfree
December 15, 2018
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Shared with Public
One more movie that is worth mentioning in this list is another long-time favorite of mine called Lifeforce (1985), whose director Tobe Hooper also helmed the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). This horror/science fiction film is truly over the top, drenched in full-frontal nudity, deviant sexuality, and telekinetic battles (and worse) of the sort that were only hinted at in Five Million Years to Earth. The capsule review in the New York Times TV listings when Lifeforce was on one of the local channels closed with: “Pulverizingly brutal stuff.”
Based on a novel by Colin Wilson called Space Vampires (which I also had pre-Katrina), a titanic spaceship many miles in length arrives at Earth while hidden inside Halley’s Comet (which of course turned out to be miniscule in size in its 1986 arrival, compared to how we all expected it to be based on the 1910 appearance, when the comet’s tail actually bathed Earth if I remember right).
The spaceship in the Lifeforce film looks a lot like that unique, elongated object called ‘Oumuamua that has been determined to be the first interstellar object to be spotted traveling through our Solar System. There are some who are still convinced that ‘Oumuamua is some sort of spaceship.
At one end of the alien spaceship in Lifeforce are three humanoids, a woman and two men, with all three naked and unconscious. They are brought aboard a joint exploratory American/British spacecraft called the Churchill that had been sent toward Halley’s Comet. All three of the aliens make it to Earth and begin a seemingly unstoppable campaign of absorbing and collecting the “lifeforce” (or human souls) from the people of London and then, presumably, the rest of our planet. At length, the surviving astronaut Tom Carlsen uses the close connection that he has with the female and is able to stop them.
There have been many editions of Lifeforce, and I have acquired a half dozen or so over the years, both pre-Katrina and post-Katrina. Every one of the videotapes or DVD’s that I have purchased seems to be different – and I can never remember that happening with any other movie. In some, there is a lot of narration, and in others, none at all; sometimes there is a long introductory section aboard the Churchill, and other times they are almost immediately on board the alien spaceship; sometimes one of the male aliens speaks, and sometimes they are both mute throughout the film; the nature of an early sexual encounter by the “space girl” with a human woman is explained with differing levels of detail; and the amount of nudity exhibited by the space girl (played by Mathilda May) seems to vary considerably, though it is always copious.
Since I put up this post, in 2020 a version of Lifeforce was shown on the Tubi network that again was unlike any that I had seen before. Many unfamiliar scenes aboard the spaceship the Churchill were shown, and the interior of the alien spacecraft was much better lit.
Steve Railsback plays the surviving astronaut Tom Carlsen; he famously gave a truly terrifying performance as Charles Manson in a TV movie called Helter Skelter (1976), and he is really on his game here as well. Also on hand are Peter Firth, who has had several nude scenes of his own during his career (though not in this movie); and Patrick Stewart, many years before his turn as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
