LifeForce, a Story of Love

So I am talking to my nephew the other day, and I forget the title of an older movie I used to love. It took me a few minutes to recall the name of the movie, mostly because i am old now, but the movie was called LIFEFORCE. This immediately made me want to see the movie again, because it had been my favorite movie for YEARS. Yes, even more than Aliens.

So, being the internet junkie that I am (I exaggerate, I'm actually a gaming junkie, the internet is just my normal mode of playing games), I promptly go to hulu.com. Hulu is a website where they have some TV shows and movies that you may have missed during the week, so you can watch what premieres you missed or catch up on your favorite shows. I've watched Kung Pow there (the entire movie) before, so I thought, HEY, MAYBE THEY HAVE LIFEFORCE!!!!! Yes, that was exactly my thought exclamation points and all. Hulu did not have Lifeforce, however, it linked me to Crackle.com, which did. So, within 30 seconds of wanting to watch an old movie that you probably couldn't rent or buy on DVD anymore, i was watching it over the internet. I turned to my nephew and said THE INTERNET IS AWESOME!!!!! I LOVE THE INTERNET!!!!! He's deaf now.

So basically, Lifeforce is a story of love. This shuttle commander flies off to visit Halley's Comet (hey the movie was made in 1985, Halley's comet was big back then), intending to study um... you know... comet-related... stuff... And instead they find an alien spacecraft! Well, not instead. I mean, the comet was there, too, but who the hell really cares? It's a goddamn comet. It's like made of ice and rock and space shit, and has a long tail made of tied-together space ribbons. Whatever. ANYWAY, if you'll quit goddamn interrupting, I'll get back to my story.

So basically, it's a story of astronaut-boy meets space girl, boy loses space girl, space girl wakes up naked inside a secret SAS base (SAS because the entire movie was filmed in and is based on london, i believe, and is entirely believable, I mean, who here hasn't woken up naked inside an SAS base after a bender?), spacegirl wanders off naked, SAS recruits boy to find spacegirl, boy finds girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl, boy and girl engage in kinky alien space sex scene in a catacomb beneath a london church. Now, I am a little kinky, but in a catacomb beneath a CHURCH? Good god, man. Have some respect for the dead. Oh, and somewhere in there, there's zombies and aliens and vampires thrown in.

If you don't want me to give away anything because you think you may watch this movie, then stop reading here. Or don't. Because you may find my synopsis of this sordid tale of love has little to do with the actual movie, and my insane ramblings may only confuse you. Which may be another reason to stop reading here. But anyway, I am going to mention some of the good parts.

First thing I'd like to mention is, the space chick is naked for half the movie. I first saw this when I was like 16 or 17, and I can tell you as a 16 year old geek, there's nothing quite like a naked chick walking around. Come to think of it, I don't mind naked chicks walking around much at 39. Hot naked chicks, I mean. And the space girl is pretty hot, I mean, she's french, and we're not talking year-1990+ stinky hairy skanky french chicks, like in La Femme Nikita or anything, oh noes, Mr Bill. Oh NOES. We are talking primo, mid 1980's french chick here, when france was still cool to visit and they didn't lynch americans in the street. So think John Cusack's french girlfriend in Better Off Dead walking around naked for half the movie, minus the orange-tossing-at-stopsigns thing, and that will give you some idea of what I am talking about.

For that matter, Better Off Dead would have been a much better movie if whatever her name was had been naked through half of it, don't you think? Hollywood, you guys should pay attention, I may be onto something here. Keep remaking films, I mean obviously, no one can stop you from raping my childhood, but make all the hot female leads spend half the movie nude. Think how much more money transformers would have made if Megan Fox had been naked during most of Transformers! And honestly, do you think she'd have minded? I don't want to sound mean here, but she doesn't seem like the type to mind showing off her naughty bits. I could be wrong. But anyway, I digress.

LifeForce seems to have all the pieces of every sci fi or horror film ever made, and instead of sucking, like you'd think it would, it turned out to be AWESOME. I mean, maybe none of the actors are particularly well known nowadays, but back in the mid 80's these actors were pretty big deals. Well, one of them was slightly popular, anyway. Hell, it's got Captain Picard in it, for crying out loud! And they wanted Anthony Hopkins to play one of the male leads! And they wanted Billy Idol for it, but he was getting his hair restyled, or something. But basically, it's got zombies, vampires, aliens, space ships, naked chicks, it's like a teenage geek's dream come true. The only thing that would have made it better would have been to include giant robots (and the alien ship might count since it's something of a transformer itself) and possibly a lesbian sex scene might have made it the best movie of all time. It does have Steve Railsback in it, and in the 80's, steve railsback was The SHIT. I have no idea what he's doing now, maybe putting on a spider man costume and playing at kid's birthday parties for cash, like I hear Tobey Mcguire's doing. Or whoever that guy was who played in the spider man films. The films were decent but I had never heard of tobey-whoever before or since. Maybe that's why he's doing birthday parties now.

There's also this awesome scene where they think they have the she-alien trapped in the body of captain picard, but as they are taking her and another body back to a secure facililil... a secure facilill... a secure location, the bodies start erupting with blood and piss and bile and vomit and snot and it all flows into the center of the helicopter and forms into the body of the space-girl, but she only maintains this form long enough to eject her mental essence from the place and then splashes to the floor like a half-digested dinner at a cheap bar. I mean, where the hell else can you see shit like that? I haven't seen anything even close to that kind of special effects since the time someone spiked my melonball with acid back in '94.

The interesting part about this movie is, you could take all the aliens, zombies, vampires and space ships out of it and it'd still be a wonderful story about love. Probably one of the most romantic movies ever, not unlike Return of the Living Dead 3. Shut up, that movie was THE most romantic movie EVAR, and I will not hear your lies. I cried at the end.

So basically, without the aliens, zombies, etc, the movie plot goes like this. Man meets woman. Woman destroys all man's friends and wrecks his ride. Man flees. Woman becomes a slut and proceeds to suck the life out of anyone she meets and infecting all the survivors with STD's, as many women are wont to do. SHUT UP I AM NOT BITTER, YOU GODDAMN LYING WHORE!!!!! Man cannot live without woman and goes back to her. Man and woman die in a tragic suicide pact during wedding ceremony.

You know, if you were to call the man Bubba Joe and the woman Lorna, there'd be a great country music song in there somewhere. I'd write it myself but I can't see through the tears. Poor Bubba Joe. He shoulda frying-panned that bitch. He shoulda frying-panned that bitch and SENT HER TO HELL!!!!!!