ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

2

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Three movies about folks who are searching for somethings.

Kirk and company are looking Spock.

Aliens are searching for souls.

Other aliens are searching for comrades they left on Earth.

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Lifeforce (1985)

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_______________ A film by Tobe Hooper
_________ starring STEVE RAILSBACK * PETER FIRTH
FRANK FINLAY * PATRICK STEWART and introducing MATHILDA MAY

_________ Lifeforce (1985) ORIGINAL TRAILER


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LIFEFORCE — I understand that a good DVD of this film exists, but I have an old Laserdisc from the nineties and didn't bother getting the DVD.

This sci-fi horror film throws a lot of stuff together. It begins in outer space, and the first 15 minutes are similar to the early scenes in ALIEN (1979). Later the 'vampires-from-space' scenes on Earth resemble such zombie films as DAWN of the DEAD (1978) and other similar monster films.

Later scenes recall moments from POLTERGEIST (1982) — suggesting possession, spirits in movement, the light shows, and the last act is an apocalyptic end-of-the-world scenario.

In light of all I just described, the film has to be at least somewhat interesting. But the first act may be a bit derivative of ALIEN Here's what I mean.




Well, except for the nude 'Space Girl' — there was nothing like that in ALIEN.

And though the film, like a few others in the eighties, seemed to follow in ALIEN's footsteps, it also may have influenced later films like [color=darkred]EVENT HORIZON[/color] (1997) and SUPERNOVA, not to mention the HELLRAISER films and others I can't think of now.

This was written by Dan O'Bannon — yep, the ALIEN writer (based on a novel The Space Vampires. Hmmm, wonder if the sixties film PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES (1965) had any influence? O'Bannon was really on this 'Horrors From Outer Space' kick, but might have been a big influence on the direction sci-fi films took in the eighties & nineties.

However, whereas all these other films stayed in their outer space region where we expect them to — astronauts encounter threat in deep space and so on — this one switches to Earth early on and only returns to outer space in a few flashbacks.



LIFEFORCE also presents a few interesting ideas. Besides suggesting the 'true' origins of the vampire legend, it also hints about the true nature of what many think of as a soul. In the context of this film's story, life is more malleable than we think. It can be drained from a person but then returned, thereby returning the person to life (the essence of vampire mythology in the movies).

The scene that sticks out to me is the one of the young soldier returning to life after draining a doctor. He looks as surprised as anyone else, but also elated in the first few seconds about being alive again and maybe a bit mad. It's a memorable few moments.



Also, I'd forgotten as to why the three aliens found on that alien spaceship looked like humans. As I watched this again, I found that an explanation is provided (now, now, we don't want to give everything away). The female-shaped alien is the one we see the most of (can't complain — oh, yes, another later film I'm now reminded of — SPECIES in 1995, which featured a nude Natasha Henstridge in several scenes. Mathilda May spends most of her scenes in the nude in LIFEFORCE. Ah, Mathilda, Mathilda . . . if only you weren't a space vampire.



Patrick Stewart, soon-to-be Capt. Picard on TNG, appears only after the 2nd hour begins and his scenes are rather brief; he spends much of them on his back, semi-conscious. He plays the enigmatic head of an asylum, of all things.

This isn't all that great a film, however. It gets a bit murky at some points — near the end, the hero (Railsback) is told by the Space Girl that he is like her, that he always has been (wha..?). The film is on the slow side for about half-an-hour near the middle and the conclusion is anti-climactic, abrupt and unclear.



BoG's Score: 6.5 out of 10


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus
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Star Trek: The Search for Spock (1984)

STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK

starring WILLIAM SHATNER * DeFOREST KELLEY * JAMES DOOHAN * GEORGE TAKEI * NICHELLE NICHOLS * WALTER KOENIG * GRACE LEE WHITNEY

CHRISTOPHER LLOYD * MERRITT BUTRICK * ROBIN CURTIS * MARK LENARD * JOHN LARROQUETTE * ROBERT HOOKS * JAMES SIKKING * PHILLIP ALLEN * MIGUEL FERRER

JUDITH ANDERSON * and LEONARD NIMOY as Spock

Directed by LEONARD NIMOY



The 3rd Star Trek film was the logical, well-paced and predictable follow-up to Star Trek II:The Wrath of Khan. Only, there were obvious, immediate drawbacks that unavoidably prevented it from matching the quality entertainment value of Star Trek II. If you haven’t seen this, be aware there may be some SPOILERS coming up.

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DRAWBACK #1: There was no Khan here. Instead, we meet a nasty Klingon named Kruge.

DRAWBACK #2: There was almost no Spock; he was, uh, missing in action for most of the film.

DRAWBACK #3: There was no Saavik, as we’d known her in Star Trek II. Actress Kirstie Alley did not return in the role, for reasons I forget, and was replaced by actress Robin Curtis. Curtis utters her lines in that unemotional tone indicating she follows the Vulcan way, but the delivery comes across as very flat and robotic, with no undertone to suggest suppressed passions. In her first scene, she calls David (Kirk's son) "so human," but it comes across as a meaningless statement. Is she insulting him? Humoring him? Praising him? It feels like none of those, like nothing. She is the weakest character in the story, which continues directly from the end of The Wrath of Khan.

DRAWBACK #4: And, finally, this was the middle film in the informal trilogy of Star Trek II, Star Trek III and Star Trek IV. As it goes with most middle films in trilogies, there’s no real beginning — the film starts in the middle of a story — and no real ending; there were unresolved issues at the conclusion which would be addressed in Star Trek IV.



Still, this was probably the best odd-numbered Trek film (the 1st, 5th, 7th and 9th films all had serious drawbacks, to varying degrees).

In the plot, Kirk and his small crew head back to Earth in a scarred, damaged Enterprise and everyone aboard is understandably depressed. McCoy does them one better; he behaves as if possessed.

By what? A Vulcan spirit?

Upon their arrival home, the ship is promptly decommissioned. An admiral here states that the Enterprise is 20 years old. He must mean 20 years since the 1st big refit, when Kirk first began commanding her. She's 40 years old if you count the missions of Captain Pike and Captain April.



Everything appears to grind to a halt. There's a nice scene of the surviving crew socializing in Kirk's apartment when who should show up but Spock's father, Sarek (actor Lenard reprising his role from the original series). Kirk now has his new mission and it's a doozy — it's basically the Mission: Impossible-style entry of the Trek films. You know Kirk will succeed eventually, but getting there is most of the fun.



A lot of the plot involves the bureaucracy of Starfleet and the current climate of 23rd century Earth. We don't see too much — an amusing scene with McCoy in a weird bar, for example. There's also the amusing sequence with the new starship, the Excelsior, and its smug captain (played by Sikking).

All these, however, stray from the premise of the original series, where it was understood humanity had evolved over the past couple of centuries. All the characters here behave in much the same way as we would expect 20th-century people to behave. The story concentrates a lot on intrigue and machinations, as if we’re seeing an underbelly to the 23rd century Federation which has not been revealed before. It resorts to the visuals of odd aliens or strange locales to elicit a reaction from viewers, not the overall idea of a futuristic society.




This film also returns the brutish Klingons to the forefront as Trek's most nasty adversaries. They last made a brief appearance in the first Trek film and were best known as the bad guys of TOS up to this point. This film was 3 years before TNG would begin to show the Klingons in a more sympathetic light.




I think the filmmakers went a bit overboard in depicting the Klingon bridge as the polar opposite to the typical Starfleet bridge. Kruge's pet (a dog turned inside-out it seems) and Kruge's penchant for vaporizing officers who say the wrong thing plunges this into dark satire.

The Klingons get as far as they do in this story based on dumb luck and it's only when they deal a fatal blow to Kirk's family that they're elevated to 'villains we love to hate,' and turns this into a fitting precursor to the 6th Trek film, where Kirk's antagonism towards Klingons gets the most play.




We also have a yin-and-yang theme at play here. Kirk will succeed in his quest to find Spock and aid the suffering McCoy (excellent performance from Kelley, as usual), but only if he loses a couple of other things precious to him.

The Genesis Planet is remarkable in some ways (though it sometimes has a 'studio set' feel), a continuation of its creation in Star Trek II, but David used unethical shortcuts to get the job done and so must pay a price for his transgressions.

It's a tough, morally unyielding Trek universe we seem to have here when, despite epic struggles, one barely breaks even. The limitations of series/sequel films such as this (as opposed to on-going TV series) are delineated by the unceremonious sudden discard of concepts, such as the planet and characters such as David. Why introduce such in one film only to dispose of same in the next?





Even more, there was this tendency here for shock effect — to try and draw in audiences with clumsy revelatory scenes or mass destruction, projecting the less-subtle facets of most action films in the later eighties, the nineties and so on.

Rather than the majesty of the also action-filled Wrath of Khan, this one is just violence and crude exposition. Even so, Nimoy's directing debut wasn't too bad, and he expanded the roles for the other regulars to good effect — Scotty, Sulu, Uhura and Chekov all got to shine in at least one scene, unlike the previous 2 Trek films, better demonstrating that this was, in fact, a team of heroes. This positive was probably a benefit of Nimoy being a fellow actor and personal acquaintance of the regulars.

Anyway, Nimoy fared even better with the next one, the 4th film, The Voyage Home (1986).



We all knew he'd be back, didn't we? There was a saying passed around back then in the media, along the lines of "in science fiction, no one ever really dies or stays dead."

This just shows how little those in the media understand science fiction. Of course, this lack of understanding applies to the general populace and also explains why actual science fiction has been devolved in popular culture over the past few decades, including in Star Trek.



BoG's Score: 6.5 out of 10


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus
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Cocoon (1985)

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A story of alien visitation: this concerns a trio of retirees (Wilford Brimley, Don Ameche, Hume Cronyn) in a retirement home who make a habit of sneaking into a deserted estate to relax in the large swimming pool over there.

The property is suddenly purchased by a group (Brian Dennehy and Tahnee Welch, among others) who are aliens in disguise. These aliens used to live on Earth 10,000 years ago in the fabled Atlantis.

They're here to retrieve some of their brethren, who were left behind when Atlantis sank, and they're incubating in alien cocoons. These cocoons are deposited to the bottom of the swimming pool and, when the old guys take their usual swim, they feel highly rejuvenated — even recharged as far as their sex drive.

Even more, one of them goes into remission from his cancer!

Steve Guttenberg also stars as the local loser charter boat captain who is hired by the aliens to take them out to the spots on the ocean where the cocoons are waiting.

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The film is pretty lightweight, directed by Ron Howard before he got enough experience to create complicated films.

The cocoons, for example, look pretty creepy and alien, and might be toxic in that swimming pool for all that the old men know, but they don't really give it another thought when they first see these things, enjoying the pool without much delay — maybe they're too old to care?

The old wives are played by Jessica Tandy and Maureen Stapleton.

Both Guttenberg and the old men quickly find out that they're dealing with aliens, but their astonishment is very short-lived — Guttenberg especially overcomes his fear quickly because he just seems too dense to fully grasp the revelations. The aliens themselves are very benign, almost absent of much personality — which was unusual for Dennehy, who is known for fierce, bulldog characters.

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Overall, the film doesn't ring true and is downright ludicrous.

A 4th old guy played by Jack Gilford rejects the entire notion of the rejuvenating pool and is too cantankerous to appreciate such advantages, even for his ailing wife. He ruins things by opening his mouth at the wrong time, and soon all the rest home occupants barge over to the pool, draining the "life force" so that things go badly for the cocoons.

Yet, the aliens later invite the old people to accompany them even though they caused permanent damage to Dennehy's friends. The old guys want Gilford to come along — but why would they want this stupid troublemaker to go with them?

Many things don't make sense by the end, and there's some bad acting by a daughter of one old couple, as well as a grandson who also almost ruins things.

I think director Howard tried to copy some of the success of E.T. (1982), and in a sense he did succeed, because this was a modest box office success, spawning a sequel in 1988.

BoG's Score: 5 out of 10

___________________ Cocoon (1985) - Trailer

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Cocooned Trivia: the daughter of Brimley's character is played by Linda Harrison, who will always be best known for her role as Nova in the first 2 Planet of the Apes films (1968 & 1970).

~ Her son is played by Barrett Oliver, from The Never-Ending Story (84) and D.A.R.Y.L. (85). Both of them also returned in the Cocoon sequel.

~ Tahnee Welch is the daughter of famed icon Raquel Welch (One Million Years BC/1966).




BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)