Life-force

THE STORY: Years ago I saw this flick, but the only thing I really remembered about it was the naked space chick...because she was hot!

The H.M.S. Churchill, a British space shuttle with a combined American/ British crew are examine Halley's comet, when the discover a spacecraft in the tail of the comet. The shuttle's commander, Colonel Tom Carlsen and a few others go into the huge alien ship and discover lots of dead bat things and three human-looking beings in crystal tubes. The beings, two men and one hot looking babe are either dead or in suspended animation. The Churchill crew take the three aliens with them. When the shuttle returns to earth the crew is dead but the alien bodies are sent to the Space Research Centre. At night one of the scientists, Burovsky, views the security monitor and sees the female alien awaken and start kissing the soldier that is guarding her. He immediately runs to the lab but arrives too late...the space chick has literally sucked the life out of the guard, leaving his dried out husk of a body on the floor. The space chick drains some energy from Burovsky but leaves him alive. Dr. Fallada, another scientist arrives but the space chick is wandering around the center. She confronts some guards but uses some kind of lightning out of her hands to disable them while she escapes. The two male aliens also come to life and escape.

Enter Colonel Caine, some kind of British security guy. Caine and Dr. Fallada make a horrifying discovery. The body of the dead guard comes back to life during an autopsy and sucks the energy out of one of the doctors. This rejuvenates the guard, but leaves the doctor a shriveled corpse. The guard is confined in a cage and two hours later he shrivels up again and turns to dust. The same happens to the doctor that was attacked. The search for the girl doesn't go very well either. another victim is found in a park. Suprisingly, the shuttle's escape pod falls to earth and lands in Texas. Col. Carlsen is in it. Caine and Fallada have him bought to the Space Research Centre posthaste. Carlsen tells them how they found the alien ship in Halley's comet and that the communications officer went nuts, and smashed the equipment...later he admits that it was he that disabled the shuttle. For some reason, Carlsen felt drawn to the space chick and opened her encasement. soon after the crew had their lives drained. Not wanting to take the aliens to earth, Carlsen sabotaged the ship and took the escape pod. Unfortunately the shuttle made it back, obviously.

Carlsen is still psychically connected to the space chick somehow. He knows through unclear means that she has hidden her original body somewhere and taken up residence in another body! Its either the body of a nurse or a patient at a mental hospital. Caine and Carlson (with some other official named Sir Percy) gain permission to talk to the nurse and the patient from Dr. Armstrong, the chief of the hospital. Carlsen somehow figures out that the alien is hiding in Armstrong's body! He and Caine drug Armstrong and demand answers from the space chick. In a totally weird scene Armstrong appears to physically be the space chick...and through some kind of telepathy forces Carlsen to kiss her/him! (in a few funny moments, Carlsen bitch slaps the [unwrite] out of Locutus...I mean Dr. Armstrong, trying to get the alien chick to respond.) She tells Carlsen that they are linked together. She took the form of a human woman out of his mind...she is his ideal woman, the feminine part of his mind. That's why he is so attracted to her. The alien chick creates a poltergeist-like disturbance that smashes the room and kills Sir Percy. Even worse, there is more bad news...the alien craft is approaching earth and taking a geosynchronous orbit over London. Carlsen admits to Caine that while in the space shuttle he shared his life energy with the female and she shared some of hers with him. The aliens that were discovered are the only ones left alive in the ship...they've been feeding off of each other, but now they've come to earth to feed. Caine and Carlson in a military helicopter, head to the Space Research Centre with the bodies of Sir Percy and Dr. Armstrong, but the alien female somehow causes the blood to ooze from the bodies. This almost makes the chopper crash. Throughout this entire thing Carlsen is almost hysterical.

Things have gone from kinda bad to really [unwrite]ed up, and they did it really quick, too. London is being quarantined. There's talk of nuking the city to stop the madness. The aliens have sucked energy from citizens, and in turn those citizens turn into energy sucking vampires, and so on and so on. The alien ship, high is orbit is absorbing energy that is somehow being routed through one of the male aliens to the female alien and into space. Carlsen overpowers some guards and heads into London. He's determined to find the body of the female alien. Caine follows behind him but goes to the space research Center to see Dr. Fallada. Fallada has discovered that the way to kill the aliens is to shove an iron spike under theirs hearts. Unfortunately Fallada has been infected and Caine is forced to kill him. Caine then makes it to some kind of church in London where all of the pyrotechnic energy swirls seem to be collecting. Upon entering he is face to face with the male alien. He kills him in the manner that Fallada described. Deeper in the church he finds Carlsen and the female alien, naked and in a passionate embrace, in the center of the energy beam. Caine tosses Carlsen his big iron spike and Carlsen impales himself and the female alien. I thought this would probably kill them but instead they teleport to the alien ship which breaks orbit and heads into space.

This movie probably sounds weird in my review. Well, I probably botched it up...because the movie  is entertaining. It has a brisk pace so there really aren't any slow parts. The special effects are decent and its kind of spooky. The only problem with this movie is that it started out kind of like a weird sci-fi flick, moved into a psychic thriller type of thing and then changed into a full blown end of the world Independence Day thing. I say problem, but it really wasn't. Despite some of the hokey parts, I liked it. Dr. Armstrong was played by none other than Patrick Stewart...unless you've never seen a Television you'll know what famous character he was on Star Trek: The Next Generation. the actor that played Fallada, Frank Finlay...I'm not sure but I could swear he was the magician-dude in the crappy movie Chthulu Mansion. The space chick was played by Mathilda May..I've never heard of her but she has a serious rockin' bod! I'll probably never know the answer to this either, but the helicopter pilot looks like the same actor that played Simon on the British soap opera, EastEnders. (Yeah, I watch Eastenders! Its the only soap I can stand to watch, though.)

Best Lines: "Use my body!"-The space chick to Carlsen....tough offer to refuse, too.

1.) Why is every spaceship in danger always out of communication range or has some kind of commo problem so they can't send for help or warn anyone? It really doesn't wash with this flick...because this is a research ship sent to study Halley's comet! Didn't anyone think communication with the ship while its scanning the comet would be important?

2.) Somehow I doubt that I could be enthralled with a great looking naked chick if she was dead a few seconds ago...especially if she was some weird ass alien dead chick. The guard doesn't have that problem. When the space-chick revives he doesn't seem too shocked. Me? I'd have been late for the door.

3.) Wow! Its a good thing all three guards are on duty when the space chick begins walking around! You'd think there'd be more security around the Space Research Centre...especially when they have the bodies of actual extraterrestrial in there! These guys don't even seem to be aware that the space chick is out and about...but she's been walking around for about five or so minutes by now.

4.) If Col. Kane didn't want his identity or involvement known by the press, why'd he announce himself in a room full of freakin' reporters and cameras!?

5.) Wow! Patrick "Captain Jean-Luc Picard" Stewart!! When was this movie made and didn't he ever have any hair? Plus, why does he call Colonel Carson "commander"?

6.) How the hell did Dr. Fallada come to the conclusion that sticking an iron stake under the heart area would pierce the alien's energy center and kill them?

7.) Whoa! When Caine kills the male alien he turns into a Bat-Dracula thing before he dies! This alien isn't too bright either. He stands there, absorbing the energy streaming in from the city and tells him Caine something along the lines of "Resistance is Futile". (He doesn't actually say that but its close enough) Caine then turns him into a shish-kebab with the big ass sharp iron pike he's carrying. Was the alien trying to intimidate Caine? He must've been, because he sure didn't put up any kind of fight. Its sort of stupid to threaten someone when you're defenseless, isn't it?

NUDITY AND SEX: Oh, yeah...The space chick is nude A LOT!

HUH?: Fallada has a theory that all of the legends of vampires are because of these aliens visiting Earth before. Hmmm. that sounds cool in a science fiction kind of way, but then, it doesn't make a lot of sense. If the aliens ship comes along, say every 76 years with Halley's comet, and they suck life-energy from others to stay alive, then why didn't they just stay on Earth way before now? Think about it. If they visited Earth in the last century they would've been practically unstoppable. If they visited earth in the 1700's they would have been completely unstoppable. So why leave, especially when we discover that the three aliens are the only survivors of their race...the others I guess starved to death! Those three alone could have ate like kings in the 1800's when Halley's comet came near earth! We hadn't even discovered flight! they had a huge ass spacecraft! Its not like these aliens had any morals against killing earthlings! They could have bred us like cattle!

Why is the ship in the tail of Halley's Comet? Are they stuck there? Um....NO! because the ship was seen leaving orbit of under its own power at the end of the movie...hell, it came into Earth orbit under its own power! So the aliens could have just bebopped over to Terra at anytime! Why didn't they?

So, Carlsen lands in the escape pod and they send him immediately to London from Texas before he tells anyone what happened? Carlsen is a US Air force officer! I think the USAF would have debriefed him first.

Speaking of the shuttle's escape pod, it was smaller than a Port-A-John! I didn't see any other pods either so I guess there was only one...for a shuttle with a crew of about ten! (or more maybe!) Plus, the shuttle looked like a simple landing module, the kind that the Apollo astronauts used to reenter the atmosphere...only a lot smaller. So what good is it? It can only save one person and only if they have an emergency while in earth orbit. Also how'd the shuttle beat the escape pod back to earth? I don't think Carlsen flew that dinky little pod to earth from outer space.

THE TALLY: For science fiction fans this movie is a nonstop aliens killing dudes flick. There's not much violence (and most of the violence is Carlsen acting unstable and bitch-slapping Armstrong) There's a lot of nudity, but since Mathilda May is kinda hot, that's a good thing. (If only she was Robyn Harris....rooowrrrr.) Its an older movie, so it doesn't have intense gross-out scenes in it. The shriveled up victims of the aliens look kind of like the Crypt-keeper's high school gang or something...still, not a bad pick if you want a sci fi movie.