Rating: ** and a half
Not too long ago I watched THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT with Geena Davis and Samuel Jackson. The movie was about a housewife with amnesia who discovers she was a super secret agent...my friends insisted it was the most ridiculous movie they had ever seen. It was ridiculous allright, but they obviously had not seen LIFEFORCE, perhaps the most preposterous nonsense ever put on screen.
The plot (and I'm serious that this is the plot): A space shuttle goes to examine the tail of Hailey's Comet. In it they find a huge spacecraft in which there appear to be frozen some naked humans, including a beautiful naked woman. They take the humans back to their shuttle. For some reason, which you find out later, everyone on the shuttle is killed, except for one American major who is saved for another reason and escapes in a pod.
Another shuttle comes and discovers the frozen human things and takes them back to earth. BIG mistake. They turn out to be these weird vampires who walk around naked and suck the life out of people, who are left with no force. Wait a minute...life...force...life...force...LIFEFORCE!!! Sometimes I impress even myself. Anyways, soon the people who have no lifeforce need it back and they in turn are vampires.
Meanwhile, the chase is on to find the original beautiful naked woman, a chase which takes the heros accross the English countryside to places as random as a insane asylum run by Captain Picard! Yes, there actually is a celebrity in this movie, Patrick Stewart. By then, however, it is too late and London has already been turned into a vast pit of crazed vampire people. There is a secret in the American major which ends up being the key to the whole movie. Ultimately, the film has a finale which you have to see to believe.
LIFEFORCE was directed from Tobe Hooper who went from the Texas Chainsaw films to this pulp crap. Now, it's crap I say, but it has one shared similarity with THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT: it's so ridiculous you can't help but have fun. There are some great special effects in LIFEFORCE and there are some awful ones. There are some good performances and there are some awful ones. But, you just can't help but wonder who dreamed up the plot for this horror/sci-fi mess. It's as if a bunch of college kids got together, dropped a lot of acid, and the result was the screenplay to LIFEFORCE.
Still, you have to give them credit in some respects. The movie has gore, nudity, and it is extremely fast-paced. It is definitely a busy film and holds your attention. In fact, I don't even know if I could call this movie a good one or a bad one, it's too ridiculous to even judge. Therefore I just have to give it a mediocre rating, because I don't even know what to think. It's that weird. I say, see it. It's fun, but you'll need a shower after seeing it. Rating: ** and a half (out of a possible 4)
