Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: Lifeforce!

If random stills from your movie don't look like Frazetta paintings, you are doing it wrong.

As we've discussed previously, vampires have been played out for a long time. Lifeforce (1985), directed by Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2), however, neatly sidestepped the clichés and pitfalls by reframing the vampire as an extraterrestrial shapeshifter which hacks the Jungian depths of human psychology by posing as a naked hottie to extract the precious Lifeforce (1985) from unwary man.

Me when a random 7 smiles at me bc she thinks I'm learning disabled.

Steve Railsback (not a porn name) plays the hapless astronaut who alone survives the wreck of the spaceship Churchill (for this movie is set in Bri'ain) to find himself forever bonded to the vampiress (Mathilda May) who stalks the streets of Merrie Englande in the buff. Though the bravura opening sequence is set in spehss, to anyone unfamiliar with Bri'ish TVkino Yes, Minister (and it's diminishing-returns sequel Yes, Prime Minister), it's 1980s Bri'ain that makes for the more offputtingly alien setting. Fortunately our un-dead Stacy makes short work of most of that unfortunate country.

Neat detail: Thotsferatu has cool spiral eyes.

SAS Colonel Colin Caine (Peter Firth) enlists Railsback to track down the spehss vampiress in much the same way half-bitten Mina helps track down Dracula in Bram Stoker's novel, but in Lifeforce the vampires can body-hop like Jason in The Final Friday, so this section of the movie leads us on a merry dance around the soggy Bri'ish countryside and a sanitarium run by Patrick Stewart (Star Trek The Next Generation), who engages in Exorcistesque shenanigans as he channels the exhibitionistic vampire chick.

Young Patrick Stewart reacts to Old Patrick Stewart making Picard (Currentyear+whatever the fucc)

This chews up much of the second act before being handwaved away as mostly the distraction it is, before we plunge headfirst into the borderline non-sequitur that is the third act, in which London becomes overrun by zombies, causing explosions somehow.

Mostly Peaceful Protest or football hooligans? Hugh D. Syde!

But, like all trve kvlt KNHOs, we're not here for a coherent plot, but for the experience. The best way to describe Lifeforce is like if 2001-era Kubrick directed a Heavy Metal segment. The slick widescreen photography, random fish-eye lenses and frequent left-turns into bad-trip psychedelia make this easily the best 2001 pastiche since Star Trek The Motion Picture, while the visual effects by John Dykstra leave most of its contemporaries in the dust. Sadly audiences in 1985 overlooked this gem so now you have to watch Captain Thormerica and the Wasp 2: Multiverse of Gayness every year.

Nooo my worst fear: sex with a beautiful woman. I'm going insaaane nooo

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2!!!

There are two types of people in this world: those who think The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the late Tobe Hooper's greatest masterpiece, and those who have seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

The Breakfast Club knockoff poster is a clue that this is going to be on another level.

Where 1 was frankly restrained for a movie called "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", 2 lives up to the derangement implied in such an ostentatious title, opening with a high speed car chase in the middle of which Leatherface slices up these two fratbois' car.

Everything better on a moving vehicle.

Hearing their death screams as the fratbois' final moments are recorded on her radio show, Final Girl Stretch (played by Caroline Williams and her legs) decides to team up with Lieutenant Lefty Enright, a based Texas lawman played by Dennis Hopper in the same year he won acclaim for his role in Blue Velvet. Together they will set a trap for the murderous family of cannibals.

Hopper has a rather condensed arc in which he learns the very important lesson that to defeat a chainsaw-wielding killer you must yourself learn the art of the chainsaw. To this end we get to witness him shopping for chainsaws, which he tries out in an excellent scene by going apeshit on a log.

You fuck that log up Denny.

The movie then bravely dispenses with the customary second act and launches straight into an extended climactic sequence that takes up like two thirds of the runtime. This dude who I think is named "Chop Top" but is referred to at one point as "Chrome Dome" due to the metal plate in his head, breaks into the radio station and chases Stretch around with the questionable assistance of Leatherface.

This scene kind of goes on too long but it has a nice uneasy mood about it so paradoxically it works.

Leatherface corners Stretch who basically offers to fuck him if he'll spare her life, which Leatherface (whose IQ, to be charitable, might be in the 60s) seems to weigh up for a while. This scene is an hysterically funny satire of the film criticism cliché that killers' weapons constitute a phallic substitute, with Stretch basically grinding her crotch on Leatherface's chainsaw. Had the scene gone on a little longer this might not have been a Texas Chainsaw sequel, but a Pumpkin one.

This is what film critics actually believe.

However Leatherface is then called away to the family residence and Stretch, whom he neglected to kill, follows him there, only to become trapped in the family's lair: an abandoned theme park, which is one of my favourite movie sets.

Thank you Tobe, very kino!

Stretch meets Leatherface again, who's kind enough to give her a skin mask of her own, fresh from her station assistant, which she doesn't seem to appreciate too much.

Bride of Leatherface

Naturally she winds up at the famous family dinner table and the old grampa gets wheeled out to try and crack her head, at which he fails consistently, giving Lieutenant Enright time to show up and engage Leatherface in a chainsaw duel.

This is a correct use of the medium.