How To Make A Horror Film
Lifeforce is a 1985 science fiction film directed by Tobe Hooper from a screenplay by Dan O’Bannon and Don Jakoby, from the novel Space Vampires by Colin Wilson. The film starred Steve Railsback, Peter Firth, Frank Finlay, Mathilda May, Patrick Stewart, Aubrey Morris, Michael Gothard, and Nicholas Ball. The film bombed on its original release, but has since become a cult classic.
While investigating Halley’s Comet, a space mission aboard the space shuttle Churchill finds a large spaceship hidden in the comet’s nucleus. Upon entering the spacecraft, the shuttle crew finds three human bodies, two male and one female (played by Mathilda May), in suspended animation in the spacecraft. The shuttle starts the return trip to Earth with the three beings. On Earth, Mission Control loses communication with the shuttle. As it nears Earth, a rescue mission is conducted. The rescuers find the Churchill gutted by fire, except for the three suspended animation cases bearing the aliens. The three are taken to earth where they eventually unleash havoc. They are actually members of a race of space vampires that consume the lifeforce from living beings and send it to their ship.
The three vampires escape from confinement and proportionally transform most of London’s population into zombies. Once transformed, the victims cycle into living-dead every two hours and seek out the living, absorbing the life force from their bodies. These people then also become vampires and the transformation process releases their life force which the male vampires direct to the female vampire who transfers it to the waiting spaceship in Earth’s orbit.
The shuttle mission’s only survivor, a British colonel and a scientist attempt to destroy the space vampires before they subjugate the planet.
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