Lifeforce (1985)

I can honestly remember a time when vampires scared me.  Christopher Lee’s intense portrayal of Dracula in the Hammer films hit me like a ton of bricks.  I watched in queasy astonishment as the upraised, juicy, blood-tinged bite marks of his victims were unveiled on screen.  Even while watching such films on Creature Double Feature in the bright light of a Saturday afternoon (okay, in a darkened basement; work with me here), my skin crawled.  After watching Tobe Hooper’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, I slept with the covers pulled up right to my chin (because, y’know, vampires are incapable of pulling covers down to get at the warm, succulent necks of chubby Horror fans).  While there has always been a sexual component to most neck-biter works, they rarely failed to be frightening as well.  Vampires are, after all, monsters.  They prey on the living.  Their whole world view is bathed in blood.  Over time, the sensual angle came more and more to the forefront, as did the emphasis on their superhuman abilities.  Vampires have gone from being twisted bastardizations of humanity, lurking around fog-shrouded graveyards and raining death down upon their victims to angst-ridden, love-struck superheroes, who you wouldn’t mind tipping back a drink with if they just so happened to drink…wine (or whatever their non-sanguinary tipple preference would be).  I’m not going to point to any one example or franchise as being the turning point in this regard, because things like this are usually a progression of events rather than spontaneous occurrences.  And there are vampire stories today that keep the creatures’ ghoulish origins close to their hearts, to be fair.  It’s just that the balance of power (so to speak) has shifted.  Here’s to hoping it shifts back before the day I die.

While investigating Halley’s Comet up close, the crew of the S.S. Churchill discovers a large spaceship hidden in its tail.  Inside the ship are crystal sarcophagi containing two handsome young males (Chris Jagger and Bill Malin) and one astounding young female (Mathilda May), all very naked (and some bat things, but we all know what the astronauts would rather investigate).  When the space shuttle is eventually found burnt out in Earth’s orbit like an interstellar Demeter, the crystals and their contents are brought back to the European Space Research Centre.  And Hell is soon unleashed upon the planet.

Hooper’s Lifeforce is a mash-up of genres, in much the same way that its clearest predecessor, Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires is.  They both involve creatures which have the attributes of classic vampiric legends but with Science Fiction trappings.  Both also attempt to come up with a reason why vampires were ever “invented” as boogeymen on our planet.  I’m a sucker for Cosmic Horror of this variety, though I think that Lifeforce leans more toward the Cosmic side than the Horror side.  It also ramps up the sexuality angle, making this one something of a triple threat.  May’s Space Girl spends a large portion of her screen time in the buff, and it is her relationship with Steve Railsback’s Colonel Carlsen that is the prime driving force for the plot.  In an odd way, you could look at this as a reversal of the traditional Dracula/Mina Harker seduction trope.  It’s not quite as clean-cut as that, but we’ll come back to that issue later.  Carlsen has nightmares where he has sex with the Space Girl (what torture).  Her first words in the film are “use my body,” and she then proceeds to suck a man dry via liplock (not of blood, though; see the film’s title for further reference).  Carlsen behaves as if he doesn’t want anything to do with her, even though his first contact with her left him “invigorated.”  After Carlsen has a psychic vision of the Space Girl (in another woman’s body now) seducing a middle-aged man, he behaves like he’s jealous.  Their story is a romantic chase (boy meets girl, boy loses girl, girl gets boy), though for as much as they want to come together, they don’t want to come together.  The Space Girl beckons him to her, though their consummation can only end in either total victory or total destruction.

There are other sexual aspects to the film other than this gender reversal.  The spaceship that houses the space vampires is shaped vaguely like a penis.  Its interior (which is likened to the inside of an artery) is also reminiscent of a vaginal canal.  The entry to where the crystals are kept opens accompanied by blinding light, revelatory in its connotations as the “promised land” in sexual terms (as well as a signpost to ultimate knowledge).  When Carlsen enters it, the camera is turned upside down, the same as his world and his perspective on it are about to be.  After an encounter between Dr. Bukovsky (Michael Gothard) and the Space Girl, he describes her as “the most overwhelming [sexual] feminine presence.”  This intensity of female sexuality is horrifying to (most) males.  The male vampires, by contrast, don’t appear to have the same powers of seduction.  They are more blunt instruments, knocking stuff around as if with their bare penises (which are never shown on screen in case you were wondering).  More interesting, these monsters pass on their vampirism to the humans that they kill, and this evokes notions of sexually transmitted diseases, specifically HIV/AIDS, in how this is displayed visually.  They becomes husks, wasted away.  When the human victims come back to life, they, of course, seek out the lifeforce of others.  If they cannot get it, they dry up, rot out, and eventually explode in a cloud of biological desiccation.  Unfortunately, this element is treated as little more than a “zombie apocalypse” device in the film.

Which brings me to the problems I have with the film.  Being an adaptation of a novel (The Space Vampires by Colin Wilson), you can expect a certain amount of either streamlining or sprawling in terms of the plot.  With the former, you stand the chance of losing some of the more intriguing elements.  With the latter, you stand the chance of losing focus entirely.  And unfortunately, that is the case here.  There is a ton of exposition running through this film, and it is delivered by men basically standing around the Space Research Centre, observing some admittedly engaging events unfolding right in front of them.  We could probably call this the Kaiju Expositional Device (or KED), since it’s a common complaint of films involving giant, Japan-crushing monsters.  Railsback does the film no favors, since his usual “smolder/explode” method of acting is on full display, and rather than conveying the conflict within his character’s mind, he simply comes off as overwrought and cranky.  The logic gaps in the plotting refuse to be sewn up, no matter how much you stretch your thinking to make the ends meet.  The majority of characters outside of Carlsen and the Space Girl (including Peter Firth’s Colonel Caine, who serves no purpose other than as an authority figure by which Carlsen can access certain British government facilities; a role which could easily have been written around or out) mean little to nothing in the grand scheme of things.  The script leaps around, playing out the same scene using the same beats ending the same way just so it can be repeated again until it all comes full circle (and a rather small circle, at that).  Most disappointing, though, is that the siege of London is little more than a set of minor obstacles to drag the runtime out a bit further.  It’s almost an afterthought rather than a planned set piece.  Lifeforce is a mess of a film.  In its desire to achieve an epic sense of scope (evidenced right off the bat by Henry Mancini’s bombastic, symphonic score), it loses sight of its story in a forest of details it doesn’t take the time to flesh out satisfactorily.  Despite its good looks and infrequent moments of enjoyableness, it is a fairly dull, dry affair.  A bit like the prey of the space vampires.

MVT:  The level of production value and the special effects work are very impressive.  No surprise since John Dykstra was involved.  If nothing else, between the effects and the striking beauty of Ms. May, the film is never ugly to behold.

Make or Break:  The scene involving one Patrick Stewart is one step beyond ridiculous in a film loaded with ridiculous scenes.  I actually verbalized the sympathy I had for the actors while watching it unfold.

Score:  6/10         

Born Of Fire (1987)

The five of you who regularly read these missives of mine may recall that I’ve mentioned in the past that I play bass (or have; it’s been a while).  I have no aptitude for reading music; I was simply gifted with a reasonably good ear and a knack for mimicry.  Helpful, since I started off playing punk and hardcore music with my first electric bass.  Wait, that’s not entirely true.  I did at one point in time learn to read music.  When I was in grade school, we had a music class (it was pretty much mandatory, but then again, we had small classes), and it all commenced with the flutophone (essentially the red-headed stepchild of the recorder).  Once a week, Mrs. Doyle would come into our classroom, and she would go over scales and songs (she used to say the Bs were flat because she sat on them; har dee har har).  It was fun, as it should be.

Eventually, we all graduated to stringed instruments, and my choice was the double bass.  We would learn a couple of songs for the annual “concert,” and one of them was invariably Hot Cross Buns which would be played in pizzicato.  It should go without saying that the truly unsubtle plinking of sixth-grade fingers on the instruments’ strings was like a concerto in Hell.  Like the music in Jamil Dehlavi’s Born Of Fire but without the practiced musicianship.  Since I didn’t keep up with playing after the classes were discontinued, any skill for reading eventually faded away.  I don’t really mourn this lack of expertise, but every now and again I think maybe I should give proper music training another go.  Just one more in an ever-growing list of woulda, coulda, shouldas in my life.  Onward and upward…

When a truly unusual solar eclipse occurs (a skull passes in front of our lovely Sol) and a volcano thought extinct suddenly erupts, an astronomer (Suzan Crowley, credited only as The Woman) just knows something is up.  So, what would you do?  Well, it doesn’t matter, because she goes to a concert showcasing flautist Paul (Peter Firth), who suddenly has visions of a woman (you’ll never guess who) being attacked by a group of men and hears music that he is not playing.  Stringing together clues about his deceased father’s quest for the Master Musician (Oh-Tee), Paul decides to travel to Turkey and search out the truth.

The film starts with this quote from Celaleddin Rumi: “In the rhythm of music a secret is hidden: If I were to divulge it, it would overturn the world.”  Intriguing stuff.  Music, as a form of expression in the film, is a pathway to the soul and to ultimate power.  But it can be used for good as well as for evil, and at least in some part, the film is about finding one’s voice in this way (which does your soul contain or contain more?).  The Master Musician does not speak a single word; the only noise he makes emanates from his flute (and surely there’s nothing phallic about that).  His music causes chaos and disorder, makes the Earth revolt against itself, calls forth the fire from its inner depths.  Paul’s journey is about discovering the power of the music within himself (“your flute will guide you;” again, nothing phallic to see here) and commanding the Everlasting Note (via circular breathing?  We’re never told).  But it is his search for this inner music that can also kill him if he cannot understand its might.  The Silent One (Nabil Shaban) is a deformed mute.  He is twice cursed, since he is an outcast from his village and, perhaps more importantly, he has no voice or instrument.  In this world, he is utterly powerless.  For him, though, his destiny will be shaped by tragedy and will even cross both value lines.  The Woman is a catalyst for emotion for all the characters, and while she plays an important part in the story, she cannot shape it because she has already been shaped by it.  In effect, she is an instrument as much as the flutes and somewhat passive in the grand scheme of things.

Alongside this element is the allegorical struggle between good and evil, where the Devil (or Iblis) is embodied by the Master Musician and Mankind is embodied by Paul (and his father before him).  It is the playing out of Lucifer’s contempt for men preceding his fall from Heaven.  Since he refused to kneel before men, he was cast out, and the Musician dwells in a deep cavern by an abandoned mosque to symbolize Hell.  When we are first introduced to Paul, it is in a shot that begins on the apse of a church depicting God in Heaven and tilts down to Paul playing his concert.  It associates him with the power of Good while also placing him underneath Heaven; he’s another pawn in the conflict, his significance notwithstanding.  Paul’s apartment is decorated with intricately latticed woodwork like you might find in a church, and he even has a pew in his loft.  The battle is also symbolized in the use of fire and water/ice.  Paul’s father was found burned to death.  The Master Musician commands flames from his eyes, mouth, his flute, and the Earth itself.  The Djinn character is basically a fire elemental distinguished by its burnt flesh and smoking footprints.  Conversely, there is an icefall where a character is killed.  It is also the place which will protect Paul as he grasps for his musical/spiritual mastery.  The waterfalls Paul passes on his journey is considered the graveyard of the Djinn, water conquering fire like scissors beats paper.

While you could pick apart the metaphors in Born Of Fire all day, the film by itself is something of a mess from a storytelling aspect.  The performances are cold, the characters always at a remove.  This does play into the point of the film, but it can make for some hard going.  Further, the editing is unconcerned with any real cohesion.  Paul sees the Djinn on the side of the road, stops, and appears to approach her.  Cut to: Paul arriving at the village.  Later, he plays the Master Musician’s flute, and as we anticipate some sort of climax, the filmmakers again just cut to another scene, behaving as if nothing of any consequence has happened.  There are elisions of time we cannot fully connect, though to some degree it feels as if we are expected to have done.  Even the basic premise is engaged and discarded almost randomly throughout, and this confuses the figurative facets somewhat, since the film appears to make points and then its own counterpoints, sometimes within moments of each other.  In spite of this, I did find myself enjoying the film, though more for its provocation of thought and its stunning cinematography, courtesy of Bruce McGowan, than as an entertaining narrative.

MVT:  When I boil it down, the beauty of the film is truly impressive.  Even when not being used symbolically, the camerawork and compositions are gorgeous and often even breathtaking to behold.  

Make Or Break:  There is a scene at the icefall which involves some profuse bleeding.  It is horrifying and beauteous at the same time, and for me at least, this is the image which will remain stuck in my head from the film most of all.

Score:  6/10