Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7025 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-02-18
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 97 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Director Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce, the follow-up to his most popular hit Poltergeist, is a film that must be seen to be believed. That's not really a compliment, though, since Lifeforce isn't much of a movie when all the sound and fury is over. But you've got to admit there's something crazily admirable about a picture that starts out as a science fiction mission to Halley's comet, turns into an alien-invasion thriller featuring a beautiful naked woman (Mathilda May) who's a vampire from space and escalates into an end-of-the-world disaster flick.

Armed with a big budget and a special effects crew led by Star Wars pioneer John Dykstra, Hooper and Alien cowriter Dan O'Bannon have whipped up a concoction that's got everything anyone could ask of a horror movie--from zombies running amok in London to rotting corpses and energy bolts that signal the apocalypse to come. Keeping it all together is Steve Railsback as the Halley-mission survivor who holds the key to mankind's salvation--but what fun is saving the world when you could be seduced by a sexy naked space vampire? Check out Lifeforce to see how it all turns out. --Jeff Shannon

Special Features
2.35 Wide Screen
DVD 9
English
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital 5.1 English
Dolby Digital 5.1
Original Theatrical Trailer
Interactive Menu
Chapter Selection
English

Synopsis
As Tobe Hooper's LIFEFORCE begins, American and British space travelers discover humanoids while exploring near Halley's Comet. The astronauts bring three of these aliens aboard their spaceship and head back to earth. However, their guests turn out to be evil vampires who kill all but one of the astronauts, Carlsen (Steve Railsback). After the ship arrives in London, the monsters--led by a beautiful female (Mathilda May)--escape and wreak havoc throughout the city, transforming humans into zombies. Meanwhile, the surviving astronaut and Caine (Peter Firth), a determined police inspector, frantically try to track down the creatures, and destroy them. But the 'Space Girl' has a strange hold over Carlsen, and he has trouble fighting the urge to join her. Can Carlsen overcome the alien's mysterious powers and help Caine stop the fiends before London and the rest of the planet are destroyed

Customer Reviews

Best in its class
It's the best space adventure, beautiful naked vampire, zombie plague that destroys London film ever made.

The greatest naked space vampire zombies from Halley's Comet running amok in London end-of-the-world movie ever made
Danny Boyle was not the first person to realise that zombies can run like the clappers. That honour belongs to Lifeforce, which is, of course, the greatest naked space vampire zombies from Halley's Comet running amok in London end-of-the-world movie ever made. Tobe Hooper may have made a lot of crap, but for this deliriously demented epic sci-fi horror he deserves a place among the immortals. Plus it offers space vampire Mathilda May, the best thing to come out of France since Simone Simon, spending the entire movie naked. Which she does very, very well. Just bear in mind that while she is the most overwhelmingly feminine presence anyone on Earth has ever encountered, she's also "totally alien to this planet and our life form and totally dangerous." It's a pitch meeting I'd have loved to have sat in on: Astronauts from the British space program find three naked humanoid alien life forms inside a giant 150-mile long artichoke/umbrella shaped spaceship hidden in the tail of Halley's Comet filled with giant desiccated bats and bring them back to Earth with near apocalyptic results as they proceed to drain the population of London of their lifeforce amid much nudity, whirlpools of thunder and spit your coffee across the room direlogue ("I've been in space for six months, and she looks perfect to me." "Assume we know nothing, which is understating the matter." "Don't worry, a naked woman is not going to get out of this complex."). Oh, and we'll get the writers of Alien and Blue Thunder to write it with uncredited rewrites by the writer of Mark of the Devil, The Sex Thief and Eskimo Nell and the director of The Jonestown Monster. Sounds like a winner, here's $22m - have fun. And they do, they do.

True, there's enough promise in the raw material to have made something genuinely creepy and thought-provoking (at a time when AIDS hysteria was approaching its height, a sexually transmitted 'plague' offers ample opportunity for allegory), but in the hands of the Go-Go boys at Cannon, what could have been another Quatermass and the Pit quickly turns instead to be more Plan 10 From Outer Space. It's full-to-bursting with delirious inanity, be it Frank Finlay's hilarious death scene ("Here I go!"), Peter Firth's grand entrance ("I'm Colonel Caine." "From the SAS?" discreetly shouts Michael Gothard across a room full of reporters: "Gentlemen, that last remark was not for publication. This is a D-Notice situation" he replies to the surprisingly obliging pressmen), the security guards offering Mathilda May's naked space vampire a nice biscuit to stop her escaping, reanimated bodies exploding into dust all over people, the sweaty Prime Minister sucking the life out of his secretary and London filling up with zombie nuns, stockbrokers and joggers as the city gets its most comprehensive on screen trashing since Mrs Gorgo lost junior at Battersea Funfair and went on the rampage. And that's not mentioning the "This woman is a masochist! An extreme masochist!" scene or the great stereophonic echo effect on the male vampire's "It'll be a lot less terrifying if you just come to me" line while a lead-stake wielding Peter Firth adopts his best Action Man voice to reply "I'll do just that!" In one scene alone you have a possessed Patrick Stewart embodying the female in our deeply confused astronaut hero's mind, Steve "I-never-got-over-playing-Charlie-Manson" Railsback and his amazing dancing eyebrows in full-on "Helta-Skelta!" mode trying to resist the temptation to kiss him, the inimitable Aubrey Morris (the only man who makes Freddie Jones look restrained) playing the Home Secretary Sir Percy Heseltine as a kind of demented Brian Rix, Peter Firth (one of those actors who always looks like he must have been a Doctor Who around the time no-one was watching it anymore) hamming up the blasé public school macho in the hope that no-one will ever see it and the peerless reaction shots of John Hallam as the male nurse who keeps on opening the door mid-psychic-tornado to bring in more drugs. As if they needed any more in this film. It's just a shame that Frank Finlay's mad-haired scientist who isn't qualified to certify death on alien life forms (a role originally intended for Klaus Kinski) missed out on the action in that one.

No matter how mad you think the film is, it still manages to get madder still, whether it be a zombie pathologist ("He too needs feeding") exploding all over the Home secretary's suit, Patrick Stewart's blood and entrails forming a naked Mathilda May or the space vampires turning St Paul's Cathedral into the world's biggest laser-show to transport human souls from the London Underground to their geostationary mother ship. I loved every gloriously insane moment. In it's own truly unique way, this might be the greatest film ever made.

The DVD offers the original 116-minute version that opened in the UK rather than the heavily edited 101-minute US version, which not only offers much more hilarity for your dollar, but also fully restores Henry Mancini's score to its original glory (the US version covered a lot of the gaps with additional cues by Michael Kamen and James Guthrie). Although a somewhat surprising choice at first sight, Mancini cut his teeth on many of the classic Universal sci-fi horrors of the 50s and his score is quite superb, with a terrific driving main title that offers a rare reminder of just how interesting he could be away from Blake Edwards. Sadly there's no more than a trailer by way of extras, though it would be nice to hope some day for a special edition with some of the deleted scenes from Hooper's originally intended 128-minute cut: from what's on display here, these might just offer even more comedy gold!

not one of tobe hoopers best .
i bought this movie purely on the reputation of "the funhouse " eaten alive" & "texas chainsaw " movies by horror director tobe hooper.but i was disappointed ! even with all the horror,sci-fi effects it was too tame!
steve railsback played an astronaut on a mission involving haleys comet,he finds 3 lifeforms which turn out to be space vampires! the rest of the crew of the "churchill" spacecraft perish & carlsen(railsback)escapes in a pod back to earth,but a rescue mission brings back all 3 lifeforms to earth bringing catastrophic
consequenses.humans are drained of energy &become zombie like .other stars
in this movie are frank finlay,colin firth & patrick stewart who dies a
nasty bloody death! i bought the r1 ntsc copy and @ 119 minutes you start
yawning, lots of nudity & gore but maybe because the production was centred in london it was "restrained" in some way by u.k. laws.