Few movies have the audacity to combine Tobe Hooper, Dan O’Bannon, space vampires, and Mathilda May walking around London completely nude while Patrick Stewart channels his inner demonic puppet. Lifeforce is one of those rare cinematic accidents that feels like it was made by throwing Alien, Quatermass and the Pit, and a Cinemax After Darkfeature into a blender and hitting purée. The result? A beautiful, deranged mess that bombed at the box office but now holds court as a cult classic—like an eccentric uncle who only shows up at funerals to talk about Halley’s Comet.
Space Vampires, Because Why Not?
Based on Colin Wilson’s novel The Space Vampires (yes, that’s the actual title), the plot follows astronauts who discover a giant spaceship hiding inside Halley’s Comet. Inside: shriveled bat corpses and three very naked humanoids in glass coffins. Naturally, they bring them back to Earth—because if there’s one lesson sci-fi films keep teaching us, it’s that astronauts never, ever learn.
The female vampire (Mathilda May) wakes up, immediately drains a guard’s life force, and struts out into London like she’s on the world’s weirdest Victoria’s Secret runway. Meanwhile, the male vampires explode, resurrect, and generally cause mayhem. By the halfway mark, London is a smoldering, plague-ridden ruin full of energy-sucking zombies. It’s like 28 Days Later, except with more nudity and fewer budget constraints on dry ice.
Mathilda May: The Gravity Well of the Film
Let’s not kid ourselves. The movie’s reputation rests heavily on Mathilda May’s performance—or more accurately, her complete lack of clothing for most of it. She doesn’t so much act as glide ethereally, draining men of their life energy with the same casual ease you or I might order a latte. Critics may have groaned in 1985, but horror fans recognize it now: May’s Space Girl is iconic. Imagine Dracula, but instead of a cape, she wears nothing but your will to live.
It’s exploitation, sure, but it’s exploitation delivered with such commitment that it becomes almost operatic. She’s hypnotic, terrifying, and oddly tragic. And if you can keep a straight face when Peter Firth’s SAS officer gravely intones, “She was the most overwhelmingly feminine presence I’ve ever encountered,” you deserve a medal.
Railsback, Stewart, and the Theater of the Absurd
Steve Railsback plays Colonel Carlsen, the astronaut psychically linked to Space Girl because he couldn’t resist opening her glass case like a kid sneaking cookies. Railsback spends much of the film looking sweaty, haunted, and perpetually on the edge of a breakdown—which, to be fair, is the appropriate reaction to being mind-linked with a naked alien who wants to devour humanity.
Then there’s Patrick Stewart in a supporting role, possessed by Space Girl. Watching Captain Picard vomit blood while moaning in a French accent is worth the price of admission alone. Stewart, bless him, goes all in. Somewhere between exorcism victim and Shakespearean tragedy, he proves once again there’s no paycheck too weird for a proper actor.
London Falls, St. Paul’s Explodes
The third act goes full apocalypse. London becomes ground zero for a plague of energy-zombies as the aliens siphon souls to their orbiting ship. We’re treated to shots of burning cars, collapsing order, and extras flailing dramatically in Trafalgar Square. By the climax, the showdown takes place inside St. Paul’s Cathedral, because apparently nothing says Gothic spectacle like impaling a naked vampire goddess in one of England’s holiest sites.
Carlsen, locked in a weird love-death tango with Space Girl, impales them both with a leaded iron sword, shooting their combined life energy up into space in a giant laser beam. Subtle? Absolutely not. But it’s a finale that somehow manages to be simultaneously ridiculous, haunting, and weirdly romantic—like if Romeo and Juliet had been rewritten by a teenager obsessed with Heavy Metal magazine.
Tobe Hooper’s Cocaine Space Opera
Fresh off the chaos of Poltergeist and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Tobe Hooper leaned into Cannon Films’ bottomless bank account and gave us something utterly unique. It’s a movie that doesn’t care if you laugh, scream, or just sit slack-jawed. It’s part Hammer Horror, part sci-fi disaster flick, and part softcore fever dream.
The effects—desiccated corpses shriveling like rotten fruit, soul energy streaking through the air like lightning, and puppets flopping in grotesque spasms—are pure ’80s cheese in the best way. This was a time when special effects teams weren’t afraid to ask, “What if Dracula looked like beef jerky hooked up to Christmas lights?”
Final Verdict
Lifeforce isn’t just a film—it’s an event, a spectacle, and maybe an accidental comedy. It’s a story about space vampires, sure, but also about excess, about Cannon Films burning through money like a drunk uncle at a casino, about Mathilda May being forever immortalized as the most memorable alien seductress in horror history.
It’s messy, indulgent, occasionally brilliant, and undeniably entertaining. Tobe Hooper shot for the stars and ended up somewhere between Shakespeare and skin flick, with a detour through zombie apocalypse.
