Lifeforce (with Melinda Mock and Rob Hill)

[00:00:04] Welcome to Movie Oubliette, the film review podcast for movies that most people have mercifully forgotten. I'm Dan. And I'm Conrad. And in each episode, we drag a forsaken film out of the Oubliette. Discuss it and judge it to decide whether it should be set free. Or whether it should be thrown back and consigned to oblivion forever. Movie Oubliette Movie Oubliette

[00:00:32] We review the films others tend to forget Come with us and let them know the Movie Oubliette Welcome to episode 173 of Movie Oubliette, the multi-continental podcast for fantastical films with me, Conrad, hastily arranging a guest co-host in Cambridge, UK. And me, Melinda, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, starting to plan a trip to Alaska next winter. Ooh.

[00:00:59] We focus on forgotten fantasy, sci-fi and horror films because we love exploring derelict spacecraft, giving hickeys to shriveled corpses, and chasing naked women through Hyde Park. Oh my. So, welcome, Melinda. Definitely not Dan. Definitely not Dan. And unfortunately, for the first time in Movie Oubliette history, Dan is unwell. Well, I'm sure he's been unwell in the last few years.

[00:01:28] But for the first time, he's been unable to join a recording session because he's not well. So, you very, very kindly and bravely volunteered to step into the breach at the last minute. I did. And it did take some bravery with this film. But, you know, I'm always there for you, Conrad. Well, it's much appreciated. And actually, your perspective on this film will be very welcome, I'm sure. So, you're planning a trip to Alaska. I am.

[00:01:56] So, I grew up in Alaska and I have a big birthday next year. And so, I thought, what better way to celebrate it than to haul Michael all the way up to the frozen tundra of Alaska in February when it's really cold? Because if you're not going to Alaska when it's cold, did you even go to Alaska? Well, exactly. You don't want to see an Alaska that doesn't look like you imagine Alaska. Right. I mean, in the summertime, it's all pretty brown. But I also kind of wanted to see the Northern Lights as well.

[00:02:25] So, yeah, looking forward to that. Oh, that sounds like marvellous fun. Yes, yes, hopefully. So, Conrad, what do we have in the mailbag this week? Well, from Matt on Facebook. Hi, guys. Thanks for your hard work bringing forgotten and ignored films into the light. Watching the white-hot hatred being poured on the Snow White remake, which seems mostly deserved,

[00:02:50] has reminded me of how much fun everyone had hating on Battlefield Earth back in 2000. Perhaps it's too easy to make fun of, or maybe it's been covered too thoroughly, but I'd love to hear your takes on it. What do you think? Have you ever seen Battlefield Earth? I've seen the riff tracks of Battlefield Earth. Ah. Which was quite entertaining. Yeah, no, I can imagine. Yeah. I feel like it's a warranted diss on that movie. It's not great.

[00:03:18] It's also very Scientology heavy. Yeah. What do you think? So, I understand. I've never seen it. I've only ever seen sort of clips and still shots of Travolta looking ridiculous. So, I've never actually sat through it to see what it's about. Well, you might enjoy hating on it. I don't know. I feel like I would enjoy watching it with you. I just don't think that by myself on a Saturday that I would take the time. No, I don't blame you.

[00:03:44] We also heard from James Skerman on Instagram about Redline, and he points out that Cherry Boy is a Japanese phrase that means male virgin. So, Cherry Boy Hunter has a particular type, I guess. Oh, okay. Good to know. I did not clock that. Yeah, it's very good to know. And finally, we heard from Serge of Cold Crash Pictures. Hello, Serge. Hello, Serge.

[00:04:14] And he says, always been a big fan of arachnophobia. It's got a great balance of some tricky tones, excellent production standards, great performances, and it takes an inspired interest in all the characters' non-spider-related problems. The only reason I don't consider it the best horror comedy of 1990 is because that's the same year Tremors came out. Oh, that's right. Yeah, no, I quite enjoy arachnophobia.

[00:04:42] I think it's quite funny and it's good. How are you with spiders? They don't bother me. Yeah. So, you're the one that throws them out of the house if there ever is one. For sure. I mean, I don't pick them up with my hands, but I try not to hurt them. I feel like they're our friends, you know? I don't want them on me when I'm ever. I don't want them on my body, but if they're just over there, I'm fine. Yeah. Have you ever heard that rumor that we supposedly ingest one or two every month while we're asleep? Yeah, I don't believe that.

[00:05:11] I did wake up with one on my face one time, like a big one. Yeah. So, maybe that's true. Yeah, maybe it is true. This was back in college. I did, and I woke up screaming because I could feel it crawling on my face. Oh. It's real upsetting. That is upsetting. I didn't like that particular spider, I will say. No, I think that's fair enough. You don't want to face hug her late at night. Oh, no. Wow. Well, thank you, everyone, for getting in touch. We do love hearing from you. Absolutely.

[00:05:41] So, Conrad, what film do we have this time? Well, let me just ambel on over to the Oubliette to find out. Oh, it appears to be in some sort of operating room. Oh. And there's a lot of Blu-rays just laid out on the table here. Wow. One of them's Alien, there's Quatermass, and a box set of Hammer Vampire movies. Nice blend. Nice blend. Yeah. There's this naked, coverless Blu-ray in the middle.

[00:06:11] Oh, wow. Sparks of lightning coming out of it. Oh, no. It's just sucking something out of the other Blu-rays. Oh. That's kind of inappropriate. Yeah. Oh, all the other Blu-rays are just husks of ash now. Oh, no. That's a bummer. Well, I guess I'll just bring the other one back. Yeah. Whoa. Whoa. Something's happening to me. Okay. And I'm back. Well done. I'm glad you survived. Yes.

[00:06:40] So, what is the film that we have this time? Well, we have the 1985 British science fiction horror film, directed by Tobey Hooper, Life Force, based on a screenplay by Dan O'Bannon and Don Jacoby of Arachnophobia fame, oddly enough. And they are adapting the Space Vampires novel by Colin Wilson.

[00:07:04] And it stars Steve Railsback, Peter Firth, Frank Finlay, Mathilde May and Sir Patrick Stewart. Ooh. Jean-Luc. Yeah. And what is this wonderful treasure of a film about, Conrad? Well, Life Force takes place in an alternate 1986 in which the UK has a successful space program.

[00:07:25] More believably, their shuttle mission to Halley's Comet discovers a derodic spacecraft containing the dried-up husks of bat-like aliens and three naked humanoids seemingly in suspended animation. Colonel Tom Carlson is bewitched by the only woman in the trio and is determined to take them back to Blighty.

[00:07:48] Unfortunately, when the space girl wakes up, she's as ravenous as she is ravishing and unleashes a devastating naked campaign of life force sucking and shape-shifting across an unsuspecting London, leaving a trail of desiccated denizens in her wake.

[00:08:07] Can the stiff-upper-lipped Colonel Colin Kane of the SAS and the fabulously named Dr. Falada figure out how naked space vampirism works before the credits roll? Will Carlson have another flashback about what happened on the space shuttle, even after it's blatantly obvious what he did?

[00:08:29] And can the trio put a stop to the horniest plague before all of merry old England's life force has been drained and beamed via St. Paul's Cathedral to a great space umbrella in the sky? Wow! Find out after the break! Stay tuned!

[00:09:04] Joining us today is an insightful and hilarious film critic, author of the bad movie bible and maker of YouTube videos that explore the very best, the choicest, the suspiciously smelling but still technically edible cream of 80s and 90s genre filmmaking. It is, of course, returning champion Rob Hill. Hello, sir. Hi, God. Thank you very much. That's quite an introduction.

[00:09:29] I always like to do my introductions, but your content deserves quite the fanfare because you have done some very, very brave and amazing things, including, I was particularly enjoying your latest video as of recording, which is your deep dive into the best, worst and weirdest Robocop knockoffs. Was that a fun one to explore? It was, actually, yeah. The nature of the mother movie, as I call them, does sort of tend to dictate how enjoyable boring blockbusters episodes are. Yes.

[00:09:58] And I'm a big fan of Robocop and obviously I like my sci-fi and my action, so the knockoffs are all fun as well. What I particularly love is that you have like a globetrotting span to this. What's your favourite weird and wonderful discovery while you were looking into these? For Robocop, I mean, originally, a few years ago, my friends at Nanaland, the French bad movie enthusiasts, they put me on to Shock to Larai, which is the Bangladeshi Robocop ripoff. Oh, wow.

[00:10:27] Which was immense fun. I mean, I just, I adored that. Discovering that a few years ago was incredible. But this time I came across a movie myself called Gatot Kachudu, which is a Telugu language Indian Robocop knockoff, which is a completely different plot, but the robot in it is clearly modelled on Robocop. And it's a musical and Robocop dances. And that's all you really want from a movie, I think. Is it easy to find these with subtitles? No.

[00:10:57] Okay, I was going to say, that seems like that would be a huge challenge, but that sounds amazing. I mean, generally, Indian movies are quite, if you identify them, if you know they exist, so many of them are on YouTube. It's unreal how many of them are on YouTube, but they very rarely have subtitles and they're often three hours long. So you have got to be committed. Yes. Wow. That's great. Yeah. I hope everybody who's listening checks out your channel because it's absolutely marvellous.

[00:11:24] But if you're looking for something that's delirious and, quite frankly, impossible to comprehend, you could go no further than today's choice of film for discussion. Life Force, the 1985 British science fiction Lovecraftian naked vampire epic directed by Texas Chainsaw Massacre's Toby Hooper. Rob, when did the charms of Matilda May first enter your life? Well, I was nine. Oh, wow.

[00:11:55] No, looking back, I must have been about nine or ten. And I do remember, I can picture it now, actually, very, well, maybe it's not strange at all. But one of those cardboard promotional displays, a three-dimensional thing, used to hang from the ceiling of my local video shop. The cover art, basically, the spaceship with a painting of Matilda May stretched out across it. And some very carefully and strategically placed sort of smoke effects, I think they were or something.

[00:12:25] And I do, I mean, I remember that, obviously, I was 10 years old or something. But I didn't see it for a few years after that. And to be honest, all I remember from that first viewing is what I think most people remember, man, woman, straight or gay. You're going to remember Matilda May. Very true. My experience, just quickly, I have an older brother, Gary. He discovered this first. He was a teenager. He was very interested in it.

[00:12:53] And he would only show me sneaky clips of it. And he kept stopping it at tantalizing moments. But he wanted me to see little bits of it. It was sort of like this forbidden fruit, this scandalous, big budget movie that I only got to see in its fullest form later in life. Melinda, how about you? Well, I definitely saw this movie in the video store.

[00:13:18] But because it's in space, I just had no interest at all because I famously hate space movies. So anyway, luckily, Michael, my husband, had a copy of it. And when you kindly asked me to co-host the show, I just was like, hey, we can finally take the shrink wrap off of that guy and put it in. So there you go. It was definitely an interesting Wednesday afternoon. I can imagine, yes.

[00:13:44] I think Michael managed to snag himself a copy of the 4K edition, which sold out in the UK rather rapidly. I did seek it out. But for some reason, people want a highest possible definition restoration of Tobey Hooper's life force. I can't imagine why. Right. So I guess a good place to start is how this thing came into being.

[00:14:08] Because it's an enormously budgeted film, but it's British and in the 80s, which is not a combination that I am accustomed to. Does anyone know much about Canon and Golan and Globus? Yeah, a little. Yeah. I mean, I think that their sort of overarching story is well known, isn't it? They came to America. They wanted to make American movies. They bought Canon. They borrowed heavily to fund a whole cycle of early movies, several of which did really well.

[00:14:37] I think it was Enter the Ninja that kind of really established them financially, gave them some independence. And then they wanted to branch out. Come the mid-80s, they decided they wanted to go up a level, which is, I think, generally sort of seen as their great disaster. They started making much more expensive movies. They bought pretty much every cinema in the UK and chains around the world. They overextended dramatically.

[00:15:01] But this film, Life Force, catches them right on the cusp of it all going wrong, effectively. So it's kind of there. It's one of three or four films they made, the others being Masters of the Universe, Superman 4, Over the Top, the Stallone movie. One of a handful of movies they made that were a big budget. And this is, I mean, no one knows quite for sure. You never did with a Canon movie. But the budget is considered, I think, somewhere between $20 and $30 million, which is massive.

[00:15:31] Didn't this come on the heels of the Runaway Train movie that was actually really well received? And so they thought, ah, we can just spend all of this money and we'll be really successful. Exactly. Yeah, it's a classic story, isn't it? They had a lot of early success and a lot of early failure as well. But the success, you know, I think they figured out or they thought they'd figured out the formula. And of course, they overextended. But they kept going for a long time because they kept, you know, they had a lid on costs in a way that the other studios didn't.

[00:16:01] And that doesn't really show on screen in a movie like Life Force. It doesn't look cheap. It doesn't look like they penny pinched. You know, I think the money's kind of on screen, especially in the early visual effects shots. Yeah, I mean, it comes at a time when things were really going crazy in the UK in terms of big productions because something Melinda and I are intimately familiar with. Legend was shooting around the same time. So it was Return to Oz, a film we've also covered on Movie Uliad.

[00:16:30] So a lot of really big, expensive, elaborate productions spanning multiple stages. I think there were 38 sets. It was one of the largest spaceship interiors ever constructed. And they recreated six blocks of London on the back lot. So it's not location shooting. They just rebuilt London, including a tube station. It's quite astonishing in terms of its scale.

[00:16:57] But it does feel terribly, terribly unfocused. My takeaway. I mean, just looking at the production design of the opening scene, which is this grand exploration of this derelict spacecraft in the tail of Halley's Comet. I mean, it's big and impressive, but it just looks like a mess. Yeah. Which I think is kind of a good summary for the whole film. Yes.

[00:17:22] Yeah, I think if Melinda isn't a fan of space movies, I'll take this point and run with it because I am. And I agree. It's a bit of a disappointment in a way, the exterior of the ship. But it's also a big talking point, isn't it? Because you've got half the people who worked on the production were convinced it was meant to be a giant penis. Right. Which I've never really understood because, I mean, anatomically, it's... It's kind of upsetting if that's true. Exactly. I don't...

[00:17:51] I mean... I'm not going to demonstrate anything, but it's like... But John Dykstra, who actually designed it, said he based it on an artichoke, which, you know, it does look a lot more like. But the thing that I never saw, I watched a documentary on the making of Life Force, which is actually quite expansive, you know, for a relatively unpopular movie. It's very expansive, the documentary. And no one commented on the fact it looks just like the discovery from 2001 A Space Odyssey. Yeah.

[00:18:19] And, you know, a lot of the crew were sought out. A lot of the effects crew were sought out specifically because they'd worked on 2001. Conrad and I watched 2010 in an episode of Dreamland, which is another podcast we've done. And between that and 2001 and Star Trek The Motion Picture, which does have some ties to this film also, I was kind of getting those vibes. And I was kind of comparing the space scenes here to those.

[00:18:45] And I don't, I mean, I know that this is actually still really good, especially considering that it's a canon film, but it's not quite up to those levels. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I always think a lot about Star Trek The Motion Picture, especially because there is, you know, the opening scene is almost identical to that equivalent scene in The Motion Picture when they, you know, discover V'ger. And tonally as well, it's very much like those movies.

[00:19:10] Well, and I think the special effects were done by Apogee or however you say that, you know, the same people who did Star Trek The Motion Picture. So, yes, that's probably why they kind of feel similar, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's John Dykstra, ex-ILM member doing all of the effects. But I mean, I have to say they don't look great. That's the thing that really surprised me because those other movies have got this sort of stately grandeur to them that never gets old.

[00:19:35] Whereas this one, looking at the space shuttle, as it's approaching this phallus in space as it's supposed to be, it's just a wash of black and green. It's really ugly. It's like Star Trek Nemesis. It's just, you know, and everything looks like it's just a cardboard cutout. It doesn't seem to have any dimensionality to it. You're right. You're right. I think the actual model of the alien ship, if it even is a model, I think a lot of it was a painting. But you're right. There is something wrong with the shuttle.

[00:20:03] And I think part of it is the fact that it's got this kind of green wash over everything. And it creates this effect where the shuttle kind of disappears into the distance at a strange angle. The green somehow affects the depth of field in such a way that it just makes it look slightly wrong. So I think the interior of that alien spaceship, that's what I think of when I'm in space in Life Force, because I think that is absolutely stunning. And it's all real as well. It was all made. Yeah. I think it's going for Giga. Yes.

[00:20:33] H.R. Giga in terms of the designs. It's very much going for that alien look. It also kind of reminds me of The Abyss. Yeah. I don't know. There's something about it. Maybe it's because The Abyss is sort of like underwater space movie. But yeah, there's something similar there. The other thing that's a bit of a mess is the story. The structure of the movie I find confusing, particularly who is our protagonist here?

[00:21:02] Does anyone have a sense of who the main character is? I think it's meant to be the American who isn't in it for half the movie and then turns out to be kind of a baddie anyway. Yeah. Yeah. And is he one of them? Because at the end, Matilda May's character intimates that he is a space vampire himself. And I don't... I mean, spoiler alert, but... It's not clear, is it? And it's not... We do establish that she gives him some of herself. So she might be talking about that.

[00:21:32] But the way she says it, I think it does imply the way that she talks about making this immediate connection with him. And so I think it does imply that there is an ancient race of vampires on Earth and he might be descended from them or something like that. And that's a Lovecraftian thing, right? Like, these ancient beings that have been on Earth forever and they're hiding in the shadows or they're going to take over. But that's kind of not really explored or developed at all in the film. So you're just kind of like, what? At the end, you're just going, how is he one of them?

[00:22:01] Like, he's just a human. I don't get it. Yeah. That character is emblematic of everything that's wrong with the movie, really. I like Steve Railsback as an actor. I do like him, but he doesn't work in this for me at all. Well, he's trying to do something a bit ethereal and a bit weird and out there and it's not really working. And you also don't want that from your ostensible main character, I don't think. You want someone driving the plot all the way through, don't you? Ideally. I mean, you don't have to do that. Cinema can be art. It can be anything you want it to be.

[00:22:31] But if you've got a narrative story like this, I think you want a central character making decisions that impact what happens, that drive everything forward and who you relate to somehow. Right. And there just isn't that in this movie. No, you just have a guy who looks sweaty, confused, under the influence of something and bellowing his head off at all times. And also seemingly within inches of either sexually assaulting or kissing someone or fighting it. Or from Patrick Stewart.

[00:23:00] Or from Patrick Stewart, yes. Sir Patrick, who of course often in interviews points out that Steve Railsback is his first on-screen kiss, which I think is marvellous. Is it the acting though or is it the direction? Because it feels like he's being directed to act, especially in the first part in the space scenes. He seems really bored. He's delivering lines like, look at the spacecraft. And you're like, are you serious right now?

[00:23:25] Like if you're going into the tail of a comet and you see like, I don't know, even when they see the giant bat creatures inside the whatever, he just seems really bored. And it's, how are you bored right now? Yeah. I feel like too many people watched Alien and thought, let's try and copy that. And it's not an Alien knockoff, which it often gets accused of being. I mean, the first act arguably. But he's not the right kind of actor to do that kind of really low-key Tom Skerritt type. Right.

[00:23:55] You know, seen it all, been there. But it just doesn't quite pull it off for me. No. And when you're set in 1986, I think, because that's when Hayley's Comet was due to make her visit, you really should be quite astounded to find an alien derelict spacecraft in the tail. That's the thing that upsets me because I'm a big fan of space movies too. I'm a sucker for a derelict spacecraft. There's nothing I like better than exploring derelict spacecraft.

[00:24:21] This one fumbles the ball completely because Railsbeck looks bored or high. Yeah. And it's all cross-dissolves. There's no suspense. There's no sense of wonder. There's no pacing, no reveal, no elegance in the camera work. It's just, here's this shot and now we're going to slowly cross-fade to the next shot over the next 30 seconds. Yeah. I honestly don't know what Tobey Hooper was going for. There's no realism to it either.

[00:24:50] I like, especially space movies set in current times. There needs to be procedural stuff in place to make it believable and convincing. And there's a bit in that opening scene where they're all in the alien spaceship, or some of them are in the alien spaceship. The guys back on the ship, back on the Churchill, they suddenly see this massive alien ship starts to unfurl and unfold, and these arms start coming out. And everyone inside then finds a massive alien bat dead.

[00:25:20] And they're like, should we go back to the ship? And Railsback's like, no, no, we'll carry on. It's all right. Don't worry. Just let me know if anything else happens out there. Exactly. I laughed out loud at that line. I was just like, are you serious right now? There's so much of that in this movie, not even just in space, but just protocols of military things. Like where you're going, that is not how that would work at all. And it's fine for, you know, in certain types of movies, it's fine to ignore that. But this is going for like a serious vibe.

[00:25:48] This is going for a legit, you know, realistic thing. Yeah. It is, yeah. I don't know. There's just something about Brits in space anyway, that I find really hard to stomach. There's just something about us. We don't really belong there running a spaceship. We're too far too provincial for that. It's funny because when I was doing the research for this, it was like, are there any US, UK space missions? And apparently there was something called the Chiado. I hope I'm saying that right.

[00:26:17] Chiado mission that was in 1985. And the UK built the spacecraft that was launched in Europe. And there's something to do with America was involved, but it was designed to study Halley's Comet. Because Halley's Comet back in the day was like this big thing. And everybody was all, in 1985, it was like, oh, it's coming next year. It's coming next year. And then, of course, famously, I don't know if you guys remember, but. You couldn't see it. Yeah. Well, you couldn't see it. And it was this huge dud. And everybody was like, wow, all this buildup for like a year or two.

[00:26:46] And it was lame. It was absolutely huge news. I remember very well. Yeah. Yeah. I remember Halley Bopp because that was visible. Right. But Halley itself was, yeah, a huge failure. I just feel like it's kind of reminiscent of the film. Anyway. In terms of the Brits in space, another thing I'd like to point out, of course, this film has two cuts. So we watched the international cut, which is widely regarded to be closer to the director's original intended vision.

[00:27:15] It's longer. It has the original score. Whereas the American theatrical cut is about 15 minutes shorter. Large portions of it were rescored. And it's going for being tighter. But I quickly skimmed it last night just out of interest. And I was immediately enthused by the fact that all of a sudden it was an American-British mission rather than a British mission that happens to have Steve Railsbeck on it.

[00:27:40] And most of the crew are dubbed with American accents, even those with Union Jack patches on their shoulders. Oh, my God. Even more hilariously, there's one character I think is supposed to be the radio guy who speaks with an American accent at the beginning. But then in one of the countless flashbacks that Railsbeck narrates in the middle of the movie, all of a sudden he's British again. Wow. So it's really inconsistent and slapdash.

[00:28:05] I think they sensed that there was a credibility issue with Brits in space and tried to cover it up. I kind of wish that the movie were called Brits in space now. Brits in space. I would like that. So there's that problem. There's also the problem, as I've hinted at, that we keep having flashbacks. So you don't even get all of the derelict spacecraft exploration at the beginning. You keep having to come back to it and learn more as the film progresses,

[00:28:34] which I actually find just stops the movie dead and is really frustrating, especially towards the end when it happens in the helicopter for no apparent reason. I love that scene in the helicopter. Man, I love that scene. Oh, yeah. Broncos. Yeah. So structurally, I just find the film just incredibly frustrating. Yeah. I made a note, actually. Yeah. So Steve Railsback stayed in space, basically. In his mind, he's still in space. Yes.

[00:29:04] Peter Firth, down on Earth, he's in a World War II movie, or at least he thinks he is. He's executing some sort of advanced mission against the Nazis throughout the movie. That's exactly what you do in those movies. Right. But it is also this kind of weird, psychosexual noir. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:49] It's not really mitigating an alien vampirism outbreak in the UK, frankly. SAS just sounds very official and sort of like the Green Berets of Britain, right? Exactly. Yeah. And it travels as well, I think, doesn't it? I think people around the world would be vaguely familiar with the SAS, maybe. Yeah. But it's just like asking the Marines to lead an investigation. I'm not quite sure why this is happening. They'd literally just freed the Iranian embassy a few months before, and then they're put straight on the alien space vampires.

[00:30:19] I do love the scene where he's introduced in his raincoat. And for some reason, there's newspaper journalists everywhere thrusting microphones in people's faces. And somebody accidentally reveals that Colonel Colin is from the SAS. And he just covers one of the microphones with a hand and says, gentlemen, that last remark is not for publication. This is a denotis situation. And they take that guy's camera because they had a photo of the guy from the SAS. What's he going to do with it?

[00:30:48] What's the problem there? Especially as he spends the rest of the movie telling everyone he talks to that he's a colonel in the SAS. Right. It's not like he's James Bond. Like, he's not undercover. Like, it's very weird. But I mean, credit to Peter. I think he actually does a really good job of creating this very businesslike, very determined character that is actually making decisions and investigating and trying to drive the plot. Yeah. And brave, but in a terribly British way. There's a lovely moment where he's sort of going to drive into London that's in flames

[00:31:18] and besieged by zombies at that point. And somebody says, you don't want to go in there. And he just says, I know I don't. I like him in this movie. I think he's absolutely brilliant, to be honest. But and he would have made it or he could have or that character could have been expanded into the lead. But as it is, he's clearly a supporting character, isn't he? He's just been given a lot more to do than usual because he's completely one dimensional. There's no arc. He's there to perform a role. But that job could have been expanded, kind of combined with the Steve Railsback character,

[00:31:48] maybe, and turned into a consistent lead throughout. Maybe the two of them together could make up one. Exactly. I think that's kind of what they were going for in a way. But they also landed Steve Railsback with the responsibility of being the weird trippy guy who keeps dropping out of the story for half an hour at a time. Right. Which is what everyone does. I mean, Matilda May is the same thing. The star of each act is almost not in either of the other two acts. Right. That's a good point, actually.

[00:32:22] Matilda May. She makes a very big impression at the beginning of the movie, particularly on, let's just say, the majority of teenage boys who viewed it back in 1985. Yeah. We should talk about her. Yes. There are three. Another one of the problems this movie has is it's a little unbalanced because the three big scenes that everyone remembers all come in the first sort of half hour. You've got that incredible exploration of the spaceship, which people generally remember.

[00:32:51] You've got this reanimation of one of the victims of the vampires. And then, of course, probably one of the most slowest but most popular escape scenes in movie history, Matilda May just quietly walking out of a building. The power of boobs. You could just walk straight out and everybody's like, no man in the room or in the building is going to even make a move to stop her. They're just like entranced by her. One guy tries to bribe her with a half-eaten digestive.

[00:33:20] What is that about? Yeah. It's crazy. Like she's a hamster or something. But they had a lot of problems, didn't they? I think one of the big problems they had in pre-production was finding an actress who was willing to be naked for that long. That's why it took a while. And it was only just before production, I think, that they found Matilda May. And then they had a whole bunch of problems figuring out how to film her.

[00:33:47] Because I think, I don't know if you've read these stories, but apparently the original versions of the scenes of her walking up and downstairs had to be reshot because they were just too explicit. Well, yeah. And he was, I think I read that Toby Hooper was very adamant that she shave all of her hair. And then they saw it and they were like, oh, that's not good. Yeah. And so then they had to try to figure out a way to kind of put it back on.

[00:34:14] And I'm just going, you know, reading about this, she was French, of course, famously, and like didn't speak the language. She had to learn her lines phonetically. But she, you know, was 18, which is kind of upsetting. I know that she's of legal age or whatever, but it's still... It's still vulnerable, isn't it? It's still not. Yeah. I mean, and she's walking around, she doesn't speak the language and she's being asked to like just walk in like a room full of dudes, just totally nude.

[00:34:43] I can't imagine 18 that I would have been able to do that. Like, I just don't. Yeah. I don't know. I think her agent kind of had to talk her into it a bit as well. So there's not, you know, there are aspects to this which aren't entirely amusing. Sure. But she also, when they first started shooting those nude scenes, as you mentioned, yeah, unusually, even then, apparently the stage just filled with people. And, you know, by the 80s, it was relatively common, I think, to have a, you know, to go

[00:35:12] the skeleton crew route for a full-on nude scene. Right. But this went in the opposite direction. And apparently they did eventually start turfing people out. But it was allegedly basically like a spectacle sport and, you know, something for the whole crew to get involved with. But to be fair, we should say she, I've never heard her subsequently talk negatively about the experience. And she seems to be, you know, she seems to have found it a positive experience. Sure. She said that Toby was delightful and all of that.

[00:35:41] But it's still, when you read about it, you're just taken aback by the idea of adult people asking a teenager to do this in this very highly sexualized environment. And Toby Hooper, the director, had to inspect regularly. Correct. I read that. Because she had to be, she was apparently sort of trimmed and so on, on a daily basis by the makeup artist. Right. Who originally was a 70-year-old man. Mm. Yeah.

[00:36:11] Who she found herself uncomfortable with. Why? I wonder. I can't think. But he was replaced with a hair and makeup woman who's absolutely brilliant. If you've ever seen her in documentaries and so on, she gives good interviews. Oh, yes. And she's well aware, you know, she's not taking any of the shit. Right. She knows what was going on there. Yeah. Right. The thing that I particularly find a little bit annoying is that although there are two

[00:36:35] male vampires who are also rescued in their glass cases from the derelict spacecraft, we don't even see so much as a buttock of either of those men. Exactly. I've got this down as my biggest cliche. It's that if the naked woman is exposed, the naked men are not. Why are the men even in the movie? Yes. Yeah. It's a very good question. They literally do nothing. No, they could have had three naked space women. Exactly. Why not?

[00:37:03] Also, when Matilda May's character, I'm just going to call her female vampire, when female vampire says, oh, I reached into your mind and I pulled out this form as the perfect woman or whatever, presumably then she also pulled or they also pulled out the idea of these two male characters as well. What is he doing in his mind that, you know? Yeah, that's interesting. I'd always assume because they are, because the male characters are very beautiful too. Yes. Right. They're, you know, kind of the angelic looking. Right.

[00:37:31] So it's logical to assume that they're also the physical ideal of someone on that ship. And I'd assumed it would be the female astronauts, but... Not necessarily, but yeah. Of course. Why should it be? Maybe all of these characters have come from just his mind. Yes. Well, I think this movie is playing with all sorts of sexual norms and that kind of thing. So, I mean, I'm fine with that. But if you're going to say that you're pulling the image of those men from Steve Railsbeck's

[00:38:01] mind, then shouldn't we see at least a buttock? To your point, Conrad? And you need to do something with it as well, don't you? Right. Because, of course, the thing is he's obsessed with her. He's not obsessed with all three of them. He's just obsessed with her. So maybe you have... Well, I suppose the female... Yeah. Yeah. You're right. There's absolutely no point to them whatsoever. I mean, they have like this very perfunctory moment at the end where he's standing there with a machine gun and whatever, but it's really throwaway.

[00:38:28] Like you could really just not have that and it wouldn't change anything. Yeah. You don't need it, do you? And you certainly don't need two of them. No. No. Because, I mean, they quickly shapeshift into other people. Yeah. It's just sort of pointless. I don't know what the purpose was. The rules are the thing. I'm a stickler for rules in my genre movies. I like to know the mechanisms of how things work. And, you know, there are films like The Thing where the mechanism of how this thing is spreading

[00:38:54] and so on, it sort of, it unfolds over time as you learn more, but it's fairly simple. You sort of get it and then you move on. This movie, it starts off with they suck the life force out of people that results in a desiccated corpse, which then goes on to need to suck the life force out of somebody else. Fine. Then you're told that she can jump from one body to another whilst leaving her original

[00:39:20] body sort of in suspended animation in a church somewhere. How does that work? Do not know. And then later on, Dr. Falada points out that the men who've been machine gunned and grenaded into smithereens, because although the sight of a naked woman, everybody just starts snogging her instantly, two high cheekboned men walk around naked. We just machine gunned them on sight, apparently. So those guys rejuvenate themselves, jump into the bodies of the guys that machine gunned

[00:39:50] them and then change their likenesses and shapeshift to look like the original guys, which is not only a new mechanism we didn't know, but also sort of defies strategic good sense because now they're recognisable, whereas before they weren't. I don't understand. It seems like they're making it up as they go along. It's almost as if whatever the plot needs to do, the rules will allow for it.

[00:40:17] It's almost like an eight-year-old is telling you a story. Yes, exactly. Now it's time for Random Trivia. So Melinda, what titillating trinket of trivia did you discover in a crystal coffin today? Hey. So Matilda May apparently had rubber soles glued onto the bottom of her feet during the scene where she walks out of the building in order to avoid cutting them on all the glass that was broken everywhere.

[00:40:43] And I just love the idea of them gluing things onto the bottom of her feet because it's not uncomfortable enough that you're just walking around nude in front of a bunch of people. Yeah. And then the other thing that I read is that Toby Hooper came up with the idea of using Halley's Comet instead of what was in the original book, The Space Vampires, which was just, I don't know, some random other thing.

[00:41:08] But just in the whole lead up to Halley's Comet being this big event in 1986, he was like, oh, let's just use that as the setting for where we find the space vampires. It's a really good idea. I think it makes it a lot more topical. I think it was originally an asteroid belt or something. Right, right. Yeah, that's right. But yeah, it's the same kind of thing. But yeah, it makes it a lot more topical, doesn't it? And it means it's moving too, which is... Right. Yeah.

[00:41:32] So you've only got a one in 75 year chance to encounter the space needle, whatever it is. Mm-hmm. And that's our trivia. So the social and sexual political interpretations of this film are wide and varied. I read an academic book which had essays from lots of different writers.

[00:41:59] One of them was saying that this is a deeply homophobic film that was made at the heights of the AIDS crisis. And it shows people being promiscuous and particularly male-on-male activity resulting in emaciated, horrifying figures. I've read someone say it's very queer positive because it depicts lots of same-sex interactions and men rejuvenating each other and turning their backs on evil women.

[00:42:28] In terms of Matilda May's nudity, I've seen suggestions that it's progressive because she isn't being exploited. Her nudity is confrontational, that she is a powerful woman and that her sexuality is good. Is it? Well, yeah, I'm not sure any of these things hold water. Well, I feel like... Okay, so she looks the way she looks. She's beautiful.

[00:42:57] There's no denying that, okay? And she elicits lust in all of the men that come in contact with her. But we can't know her. None of the women in this film are knowable. They don't have any character. She doesn't even have a name. She's just sort of a mechanism by which to elicit lust out of men and to move the plot forward. So in that sense, from just like a... Not to be this person, but the feminist read on it to me feels like

[00:43:26] it can't really be seen as pro-her or pro-women because it's just sort of like we have no idea what she actually wants. And I don't think that what she's wanting is the sex. I think she's just wanting the energy or the... Sex is just the way to get what she wants, which is not... Also not a great thing to say about women, right? Like there's just a lot of subtext there that's not great in my opinion. Interestingly though as well, it's sexual appeal is how she gets what she wants.

[00:43:53] Because in a way, it's a very unsexy movie in a lot of ways because there is no sex in it. Arguably at the end, maybe there's some penetration. Well, but throughout what Steve Railsback talks about when he talks about his feelings for her is this overwhelming love. He's never loved anyone so much. He's never wanted anyone so much. He's not talking about how much he wants to bang her specifically. The way that it's talked about is almost consciously more about love than lust in a strange way.

[00:44:23] I really find that what you're saying is true because when he said that, it really jumped out at me in the film too. Because I'm like, you can't really love someone that you've never had a conversation with. Yeah. I think that's lust. And you're saying love because you're just that enamored with how she looks. But it is like a purely physical attraction. And I'm not trying to diminish that necessarily. But the whole thing reads like the Eve myth of like, she's the root of deceit and death.

[00:44:52] She is luring men as a temptress to like kill them. Like she's like a siren, you know. And that's fine, but that's what it is. Yeah. Yeah. And that's specifically what Toby Hooper says it is. If anybody's wondering, all these academics reading various different things from how things are being represented on screen, it's very clear in the commentary track on the Blu-ray. They asked Toby Hooper what this is about and he says, women are evil. I didn't even hear that.

[00:45:20] And I can see it in the film. Like that's clearly what he's saying. Yeah. I don't think there's any argument over that. And women are evil. Let me just be clear. Also, if we're talking about what the nudity represents, which I've seen people actually do, what the nudity represents is the result of Menarche Mgolin on the phone going, she has to be naked for the whole first act. Yes. And that's the only reason she's naked. That's right. Yes. And also he was very specific. I do not want to see a penis. Right. Ever.

[00:45:50] I love the line in the film later when she does finally reappear and they make a point of saying something like, oh, she's got clothes on now. And he looks so disappointed, the character who says that. She's not naked anymore. Boo. That's basically what the crew sound like in their interviews. It was more than once in that documentary, I found myself thinking, can you hear yourself? Yeah. There's two things going through everyone's mind in that documentary.

[00:46:18] It's how can I talk about Matilda May without looking like a creepy pervert? You can't. And how do I address the fact that Toby Hooper was absolutely off his head on drugs the whole time without having to actually say Toby Hooper was off? So they're constantly referring to him as kind of not really that focused or he'd forget things or he'd do one thing, then he'd do another thing. And then someone just goes, yeah, he was off his head the whole time.

[00:46:45] You can tell by looking at the behind the scenes footage of him, you can just tell he's coked out of his mind or whatever. One thing to say about the movie, the special effects are marvellous. Well, we sort of rubbish John Dykstra, but Nick Mailey, the British technician that worked on all of the physical transformation effects, he marks this as his best work, albeit not his best film, he's keen to point out. And I think he's right considering the amount that he had

[00:47:15] to do. It's quite phenomenal. Yeah, he's an accomplished guy as well. I mean, he made Yoda. He didn't design Yoda. That was Stuart Freeborn, I think, who I think was actually Nick Mailey's boss for much of the early 80s. But yeah, like you say, that the guy who made Yoda is actually more proud of his... What does it... Toby Hooper came up with the name, the Walking Shriveled, he calls them. Yeah. So the Walking Shriveled are great, great effects. And the one who sits up into the turns,

[00:47:43] especially, I remember that's, funny enough, the only thing I remember other than Matilda May about my original viewing as a 12 or 13 year old or whatever. But those Walking Shriveled are just marvellous. And I think that's all Nick Mailey's work. I feel like all of them, I'm going to call them zombies because we're saying they're vampires, but they're clearly zombies. And they are very reminiscent of both the Romero Night of the Living Dead series, as well as Return of the Living Dead, both one and three, although three haven't come out yet, I don't think. But I think the first Return of the Living Dead

[00:48:13] came out in the same year as this movie. And it really feels similar. I mean, you've even got a fully naked woman walking around hanging out. There's a lot of similarities in these weird ways with a lot of other movies. You're really right. Strangely, I'd thought about a connection to Return of the Living Dead as well, which was the famous Linnea Quigley full frontal nude. I mean, these are kind of the two most famous full frontal nude scenes of my generation's childhoods. But of course,

[00:48:43] weirdly, they're also both written by Dan O'Bannon. Right. So there's that connection too. So maybe Dan O'Bannon was a pervert. I mean, I think it's like a fixation for sure. But I think it's interesting that you've got in 1985, you've got Return of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead, which this also feels a lot like with the zombies in the lab being experimented on and all of that. And then the year before, you've got Ghostbusters and Night of the Comet, which also have some tie-ins in terms of special effects.

[00:49:12] There's also some Flash Gordon similarities, I think, as well in the spaceship, which I think was also the art direction on Flash Gordon was the same guy who did this. So I think the interior of the spaceship was designed by the Flash Gordon guy, basically. So yeah, it's kind of got its tendrils out into all kinds of other movies from that era. Yeah, a lot of British technicians as well being used because of the tax breaks, the weakness of the

[00:49:37] pound and so on during that time. Lots of these big blockbusters being made in the UK and a lot of British technicians ended up working on all of them and have these stories to tell. I think Nick Maley has a museum, actually. I believe so, yeah. I want to say it's on a Caribbean island or something. It is. Is it really? Yeah. Wow. Convenient then. He clearly did well.

[00:50:03] I mean, the last thing that we always like to talk about is the music. It seems a very odd choice. It's Henry Mancini, at least in the international cut of the movie, it's prevalently him. He'd been going through rather a fallow period in the 70s and 80s. He was best known for finger-snapping cool jazz of the Pink Panther variety and doing sort of romantic pop melodies with very catchy

[00:50:29] themes like Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany's. So picking him to do your epic Lovecraftian sci-fi horror movie seems counterintuitive. Although apparently he did score genre films in his youth in the Golden Studio era, things like Creature from the Black Lagoon. So possibly not that odd. It was just that he hadn't been famous for that sort of thing at the time. I don't know. I think it's odd.

[00:50:56] I feel like this whole movie feels like a 50s movie. Yes. It starts with the voiceover thing that feels like a 50s voiceover to one of those types of movies. And then you've got this very bombastic type of score that's just jarring. And the whole movie, I'm just sitting there going, wow, next to Lady Hawk, this is the worst score. It's like, it is pulling me out of the movie in every, like, I swear to God, if you completely

[00:51:26] rescored this movie, it might feel a whole lot better. I really think so. Well, that's interesting because the US version is, if not completely, certainly largely rescored, isn't it? And they use, because there's a video on, I don't know if you ever see the channel Good Bad Flicks run by Cecil Trachtenberg. But he did a really fun comparison between the original and updated openings. And without that score, I'm a big fan of the score, to be honest. And it's

[00:51:55] driving, pumping nature. But the American one just opens with like an alien style kind of mood piece, you know, just kind of like noises and tones and so on. And the difference it makes is extraordinary. It opens with so much less energy in the version without the score. But yeah, I'm aware it's an acquired taste. It doesn't feel like an 80s movie. It feels 50s or 60s to me because of that.

[00:52:22] Yeah. Funny enough, one note I kept making was how much it reminded me of like a late 60s or early 70s political thriller in terms of the tone and the feel of it and the look of it. Like when you see those shots of characters walking about like a really gray London, I keep expecting like Robert Redford should be one of them. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I kept thinking it really feels like a mystery

[00:52:47] science theater movie. And it feels like this island earth in particular, like it just really makes me think of that. And I kept wanting there to be a laugh track under the movie. I feel like it would it would work really, really well because I kept laughing so loud. Oh, well, we've really taken a turn here. Honestly. That was one of Tobey Hooper's influences though, because I think it's both the austere 50s golden

[00:53:14] era sci-fi that he was going for, as well as giallo horror from the 70s and hammer horror movies as well. I mean, if you put those three things in a blender, you would get this movie. That is exactly what this is. Quatermass as well. There's a lot of Quatermass going on. And I think Tobey Hooper's actually admitted to that. I think he said that he was inspired by Quatermass. You can definitely feel it. Now, I agree that Mancini's score is certainly my favorite of the

[00:53:43] two. The one that was butchered with extra bits from Michael Kamen very early in his career. So pre-Highlander, I think, pales by comparison. And at some points, I was watching it last night, and at some points, they're playing both scores at once. So there's Kamen noodling about on a synthesizer, and then there's Henry Mancini underneath it all. And you just think, oh, goodness, this is a bit of a mess. This is very much like legend then, isn't it? Where you have the Americans going,

[00:54:13] let's put in some synthesizer music. Yeah, it's too long, it's too boring, and it's not cool for the kids. So let's shorten it by 10 minutes and slather some synths on the top and it'll be fine. Of course. That's what we like. It was not fine. It debuted on the 21st of June, 1985. And as Rob says, who knows what the budget was, but somewhere between 20 and 30 million, but it only yielded about 11.6 at the box office

[00:54:41] domestically in the US. It debuted in fourth place behind Ron Howard's Cocoon, which also has shriveled aliens, but at least in that case, when they rejuvenated themselves, they revivified elderly people's sex lives rather than killing people. We're still talking about sex, though. We are. Yeah, it's sort of like the thing in E.T. being in cinemas at the same time. It's sort of like, okay, here's happy aliens and here's the bad ones. And ultimately, the happy ones are more

[00:55:09] fondly remembered and more successful in the box office. So obviously, we didn't want our gloopy parasitic monsters in the 80s for some reason. I've never fitted in. Coming to you live from the Movie Oubliant Theatre, it's the prestigious Moobli Awards. It's everyone's favourite part of the show, the Moobli Awards, where we nominate our favourite

[00:55:34] life force filching parts of the film in a number of unnecessarily naked categories. Best quote. So anything that Aubrey Morris says, Aubrey Morris plays the Home Secretary. He's just fabulous. I love him in everything I've seen him in. He's best known for Clockwork Orange. He plays Mr. Deltoid, the kind of like parole officer for Alex. So there's a scene in this

[00:56:01] movie where they manage to track a man who's like a middle-aged businessman looking type. And he's picked up Space Girl in her alternative form that she takes on, but a different, very attractive woman. And she takes this businessman off for the afternoon of his life, basically. And they need to find, they're trying to track us. They identify this guy's car from a dream

[00:56:26] that Steve Railsback has. They contact him and they ask him about it. And we don't see the interview with him, we just hear. And what we hear is he was very reluctant to talk about it. The man's totally exhausted. That was my favorite line. Okay. How about you, Melinda? Oh, well, mine happens during the space section. And it's just, I don't remember who says it,

[00:56:53] but I wrote it down verbatim. It's quote, I think there's something you ought to see in the tug bay. I didn't notice that. That's perfect. Oh, that's amazing. Although, Melinda, as you rightly point out, plot-wise, the naked male vampires are pointless

[00:57:18] and in terms of eye candy, utterly pointless because we nary get a buttock. But they do provide us with the deliriously camp moment at the end of the movie. Right at the end where he encounters one of them again with his marvelous cheekbones on display. And he comes out with the deathless line, it'll be much less terrifying if you just come to me. Best hair or costume?

[00:57:46] As I said at the beginning, the word crass definitely comes to mind. I mean, what can you do? The best costume is Matilda May's costume, to be honest. I'm going to jump off of that and say it is, but for me, it was when she was in the blood costume in the helicopter. That's a good point, yeah. She talks about how that was filmed on her birthday, which had to be super fun. And it

[00:58:14] took apparently eight hours for them to put all of that on her and they were pumping all this goo, like so that it was like blood running out of like her hair. Like, so it's her hair and like this sort of prosthetic, I don't know how they did it, but it looked really hot and disgusting. So I don't know. I think that's pretty impressive. You got to call that out. Yeah. Most Aries movement. All the zombies and all the boobs. Yes. I think that's fair.

[00:58:43] Put them together, you've got a perfect 80s movie. To be honest, this film feels so, I mean, probably the effects really, because other than that, it feels like a movie from a different era, whether it's the 70s, the 60s or the 50s, I'm never quite sure, but it's not the 80s somehow. Yeah. No, it's very true. I mean, I was just being silly when I made my decision on this one, just put the copious amounts of cocaine clearly involved.

[00:59:14] The fact this movie was made is the most 80s thing about it, I suppose. Yes. Favourite scene? It's without doubt the scene on the helicopter, which is where just all the wheels come off the movie at once. It's unbelievable. When they get on that helicopter, one world exists, and then there's a massive exposition dump. There's another massive exposition dump.

[00:59:39] Patrick Stewart turns into a blood monster. The apocalypse happens. They get told about the apocalypse over the radio. Yes. It's just, it's, and then the helicopter lands five minutes after it took off. You just think, this was a whole different movie when that helicopter took off. And all the schlock that it had been holding off, like it's had its shoulder against the door to the room of schlock for all the movie. And then the door just swings open and it all comes pouring out on the helicopter. Marvellous.

[01:00:08] Which was so, like, to me, it was like Dawn of the Dead on cocaine. Yeah. You know, with the helicopter. That's exactly what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, mine has to be the one that I think lots of people remember, which is the guard sucking the life force out of the pathologist. Just because of the impressive work by Nick Mealy on all of these different puppets for different stages, as one is sort of deteriorating

[01:00:34] and the other one is being revivified. It's just very impressive. The combination of the physical lighting on the set and the optical work that John Dykstra is doing with all the lightning and so on in the room. The detail I love is that at the end of it, where the desiccated pathologist is thrown on the floor carelessly, the young guy looks just so pleased with himself initially to sort of, wow, look what I just did. And then, of course,

[01:00:58] comes the post-nut remorse and he gets dragged out of the room screaming in anguish. And one little detail that I would love to add that I only picked up on the Blu-ray is in the background there is a fridge with a note on it that says, please don't put lunches in here. Most cliche moment.

[01:01:24] Well, I mentioned this earlier, but yeah, the fact that there are three naked characters in this movie and the female one we see full body constantly and the two males we don't see at all. And I mean, that's just the ultimate nudity cliche really in modern movies, isn't it? For sure. Yeah, it's an absolute crime. It's like L-shaped sheets in movies in the morning after sex scenes.

[01:01:54] Yeah, I feel like it's got to be either women are evil or dreams are the way to find out everything, which was really big in the 80s with all the Nightmare on Elm Street stuff going on. Yeah, that's very true. I had ancient astronauts, which just this suggestion, you know, we find out right at the end of the movie in the dying embers after his 86th dream scene stroke flashback

[01:02:21] that these people are the source of the vampire myth. They've been here before, although how they didn't completely ravage the earth at that point, I don't know. But anyway, apparently they have. But we often saw this in 2001, of course, Alien versus Predator, quite not such a salubrious choice. Cocoon as well. Apparently they'd always been here. They were the source

[01:02:45] of Atlantis or something. There's some throwaway line. The Fifth Element. And one of our favorites, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Oh, no. And every episode of Ancient Aliens. Indeed, yeah. Best special effect. As we said earlier, the model shots aren't that great. I think that ship, because it appears in the documentary, was done as a big map painting. In which case, you know, the ship itself looks

[01:03:14] kind of cool, I think. You know, the alien vessel. All the interior is the most beautiful stuff in the movie, but that's all real. It's not, technically speaking, special effect. So it's tricky, to be honest. So I'm going to go with the exterior map painting of the ship. Yeah. It is beautiful work. And I think that the artists who worked on it were a bit miffed that their work wasn't necessarily represented terribly well in the film. No, they always are. Yeah.

[01:03:42] So my favorite moment, the scene in the mental asylum, where it just gets ridiculous that you've got Carlson screaming, let me go, holding onto Patrick Stewart's lapels whilst trying to resist his irresistible lurd of his lips. And the whole room erupts into a cyclone with furniture swirling around them and lightning effects and optical lightning effects.

[01:04:10] And apparently all of this was achieved because the room itself was rotating. So all of the stuff that is rotating around them is actually stationary. And it's the set with the actors on and the camera on that is spinning around and around and around. And I did not spot it. So it was like the Nightmare on Elm Street thing. I didn't. Yeah. Oh, interesting. Yeah. I've never noticed that. Yeah. Wow.

[01:04:36] I didn't pick it up until I listened to the commentary track. And they're talking about the fact that, yeah, the whole room was rotating. It was just an ingenious solution to difficult ideas. And an advancement on what he'd done in Poltergeist, where everything, all the furniture flying around was being matted on as an optical. Here, it's just strung up and held in place and they rotated the room instead. Oh, you two have got much better pics than me.

[01:05:04] Would you like to go again? Favourite sound effect. Well, funnily enough, the only one I could think of is one you've already cited as a line of dialogue. So the alien at the end standing on the steps who shouts, it will be much less terrifying if you come to me. I love the filtering they've used. I don't know exactly what it is they've done, but I really appreciate the effect there. It sounds great.

[01:05:34] It's very creepy. The bass rumble. Yeah, it's creepy, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's just bizarre. Yeah. Much, much terrifying if you just come through. Yeah. I don't know. I can't do an impersonation. It's very, very good. It's very creepy. They do have a nice one for the female vampire too. For her voice, it's sort of more feminine, but it has that really creepy overlay. I don't know how they do it, but it's very cool. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:06:00] I think for me, it's the person turning into a zombie sound effect. It sounds like a tauntaun on crack. Kind of like if a warthog met a lion meeting someone with horrendous constipation. It's just the worst sound you can ever imagine. And it just goes on and on and on. I love it. Yeah. My choice for favourite sound is the sound of a desiccated or shriveled, as they say, corpse

[01:06:29] being thrown on the floor because it always has this pleasingly hollow bag of coconuts sound to it. Which is really fun. Most funniest moment. I love the scene when they go down to look at the zombie things. It's a relatively minor bit. It's Aubrey Morris as the Home Secretary. It's just the look on his face and his body language as he's having it all explained to him and he realises it's all true.

[01:06:59] It's just a masterpiece of tongue-in-cheek acting. Yes. He'd never done anything like that before and I think he was bemused throughout, wasn't he? For me, it was the infected pathologist. He gets put in like a cage, like a holding cage. And at one point he just decides to commit suicide and he runs at the bars and he just turns into dust.

[01:07:24] And it's so shocking and unexpected that I was crying laughing. It was the funniest thing. Well, you've picked mine actually, Melinda, which is just these explosions on the bars. There is just something about it. It's just the greatest button on the end of these horrifying scenes of like desiccated bodies sort of thrashing around on surgical tables that they just suddenly go pop.

[01:07:51] It's almost sort of celebratory. It's really fun. And that's our Moubli Awards. Hello, this is Robert Picardo and you're listening to Movie Moubliette. It's time for us to render our final verdict. Should Lifeforce be released from its crystalline tomb to wreak naked havoc on the streets of London

[01:08:18] or should it be impaled on a shaft of leaded iron and beamed back into the Moubliette for another 75 to 76 years? Rob, you're our special guest today. What's your final verdict for Lifeforce? Oh, I think you know. I think you know. It's a canon classic. We've covered its flaws. We've covered its problems and I forgive them all. To be honest, I really enjoyed going back. I haven't seen it for a long time

[01:08:47] and I wasn't massively excited to go back to it, but I really, really enjoyed it. It was thoroughly delightful. So free it as far as I'm concerned. Okay. Melinda? I am going to stake it. I did not enjoy it at all. I mean, I guess that's not true. It was very funny. So I guess if you're either really interested in seeing a naked teenager

[01:09:12] or if you really want to laugh, you know, it's a great choice. But for me, like there's just nothing there other than, I guess, some interesting special effects and whatever. The plot makes no sense to me whatsoever. So unfortunately, I'm going to have to shoot it back into space. Oh, wow. Okay. Well, for my part, I think ultimately I concluded after watching both versions of this movie, it is many things.

[01:09:43] None of them are good. Unfortunately, it's impressive. I mean, the scale of it, the complexity of it, all of the technicians are doing their very best work. You know, it's just a wild, truly marvellous and deliriously silly thing to behold. If you're up for that, I think go for it. But I honestly don't think it's an undiscovered gem. I think it's a hot mess, to be honest. But it is a delightful hot mess.

[01:10:13] If you love hot messes, you can't get much more delightful than this. Absolutely. What I enjoy about it the most is the middle section, the whole middle, there's an hour in the middle where it's just a proper old-fashioned detective movie. Yes. It's shot on film. It's grey and it's miserable. It's full of old, bald men. Oh, yeah. I like that. I like that kind of thing. And they're doing something. Patrick Stewart is – I haven't really talked much about Patrick Stewart,

[01:10:42] but he is incredible in this. Yes. The whole scene around him is brilliant. So that middle chunk, I think that middle chunk kind of works and it's certainly enjoyable for me to watch. Yes, it is. And then, as you say, in the helicopter scene, the wheels just come off. Yeah. Blood spews out of bodies and forms a naked woman who screams and puddles on the floor. And then we find out London is in turmoil for some reason.

[01:11:07] And people are rolling around in trash while blue streaks of light destroy public transit. No idea what's happening or why. Yes. I think you're right. If it was just the middle part of the movie, if that was extended and the whole movie was like that, I think I would like it a lot more. Yeah. So, yeah, I think you're onto something with that. Yeah. Well, that's our verdict, but we ought to find out what our patrons thought. Hello, Gary. Hello. Can we have the patrons vote, please?

[01:11:39] They set it free. Oh. So, does that mean that we set it free? The patrons do have the casting vote. They do. Yeah, they were there to break all stalemates. So, the patrons have set it free. Marvelous. I'm honestly glad. I'm honestly glad that they did because while I don't love it, I feel like it's probably, you know, good enough in the sense of it being, like you said, a canon classic, but it probably needs to go free. I think it does, yes.

[01:12:08] So, some comments from our patrons. Jasmine, always reliable with her review, says, anytime someone tries to tell me Toby Hooper is an excellent director, I have this as one of my negative bullets to fire as to why he is completely overrated. The movie digs itself deeper and deeper with every silly bit of corner cutting and the genre jumping gets very frustrating after a while. Also, if I wanted to watch a softcore porn movie with a sci-fi element,

[01:12:38] which I don't, I would seek out one of the Flesh Gordon movies. At least then I might be halfway entertained. Hold this thing back into the vacuum of the oubliette. Thank you for making me look less harsh, Jasmine. Jasmine's great. Love it. And Chazilla said, it's going to be really hard for me. That's what she said. To not go straight for the low-hanging boobs. I mean, fruit on this one.

[01:13:08] I just hate to be known as the moobly with the boob obsession, but it's too late. In all seriousness, I love this film. It's just one film on a long list that I could discuss the characters' themes and minutiae for hours. Rail's back is so tormented by the space vamp. Firth really pulls off the raincoat. Great effects. Matilda May can haunt my dreams any time. And probably has. I'm sure.

[01:13:34] Well, to note that Chazilla is currently celebrating his wedding anniversary, so congratulations to him and his wife. Ah, nice. Yeah. But that's the final verdict. The casting vote is cast. Off you go, Life Force. You're free. Woohoo! I think we might regret that. Oh, yeah. Well, Rob, it's been amazing as always. Where can people follow you and find more of your insights into this kind of weird and wonderfulness?

[01:14:04] That's an ominous recommendation. YouTube is all I really do nowadays. I'm on Blue Sky as Bad Movie Bible, but I'm not really a social media guy. YouTube. Yeah. Do you have any forthcoming things that you can tease on YouTube? I'm doing... Well, yeah. You mentioned I posted a Robocop video recently I've been working on for a few months. And coming up, I'm just doing just a short little thing on some of the best worst movie monsters of the 80s.

[01:14:33] That'll be a couple of weeks, probably. Ah, brilliant. That might be around the time that this comes out. Nice. Fingers crossed. Yeah. Excellent. Check that out, everyone. Melinda, thank you so much for stepping into The Breach and guest co-hosting at such short notice. Where can people find more of your fabulous content? Well, right now I'm not putting out my own content yet. But as you probably know, Conrad, you and I are working on a really fun show that should be premiering later this year. So stay tuned for that.

[01:15:02] Otherwise, you can find some of our previous content, meaning yours and mine, on retroblasting.com or on YouTube under the Retroblasting name. Indeed, yes. Check out some of our previous Dreamland podcasts. Yes. And if you'd like to follow us, we're everywhere on social media at Movie Oubliette. You can support the show at Patreon where you'll get bonus content, voting rights and a general feeling of benevolence and goodwill.

[01:15:30] And we have merch on Redbubble and a YouTube channel with some excellent video essays featuring Melinda Mock. Yes. So, Conrad, what will we be doing next time? Well, next time we're flying over the Atlantic and following the American science fiction thriller... Looker. Ooh. Yeah.

[01:15:53] It's written and directed by Michael Crichton of Jurassic Park fame and starring Albert Finney and James Coburn. Wow. I have not heard of that one, actually. Looking forward to that. No. I think it involves naked women again, oddly enough. So you've got a trend going on here is what I'm sensing. I think we do. I think it's AI generated naked women or something along those lines. I haven't seen it for a very long time and I don't remember it at all. Clearly noteworthy.

[01:16:23] Probably why it's in the Oogliot. Definitely so, yes. And this one was voted on by our patrons who picked the winning item out of my most recent haul from the Warner Archive sale. I see. Okay. Thanks, Warner. Yeah, indeed. So, until next time, everyone. Bye for now. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

[01:16:55] Bye.