Lifeforce/Beyond the Wall of Sleep - originally posted March 8th 2007

Okey, so here are my first two reviews. I've written some others, but I sat back and decided only to put up two reviews at a time. They aren't really very long, mostly because I stayed away from the tendency most "fan" reviewers have to give overlong accounts of a film's plot, which is the part I tend to skip when reading said reviews myself. Since I usually only skim for the words "gore" and "special effects" and "crap" and "brilliant" when reading said reviews, I stuck to basically talking about why a film worked, or why it didn't, mostly with regards to the above, but taking into account other factors where they are relevant.

The two reviews I chose to put up, Lifeforce (1985), and Beyond the Wall of Sleep (2006), give a little bit of a range as far as subject matter, since one is a mid-80's alien-invasion saga and the other is a modern Lovecraft adaptation horror flick.

So without further adieu:

Title: Lifeforce
Director: Tobe Hooper
Year: 1985

This 1980's sci-fi horror flick has a bunch of weighty names behind it. For one, Tobe Hooper's claim to fame was directing Poltergeist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The screenwriter, Dan O'Bannon, wrote the screenplay for Ridley Scott's Alien. Lastly, and for folks as nerdy as me, the film is based on Colin Wilson's The Space Vampires. I haven't actually read this particular story of Mr. Wilson's, but I have read a couple of his other works, most notably The Mind Parasites, which I highly recommend.

What's it got?

This flick boasted a bigger budget than Poltergeist, and it definitely shows. The effects work is enjoyable, with most of the film holding up reasonably well alongside some of the more well-known sci-fi and horror flicks of that period. It's not heavy on gore, but there are some cool zombie effects that I liked, and Mathilda May is pretty much naked for the first half hour of the movie, if you're into that sort of thing. I couldn't help but dig it, admittedly.

A word of warning before I say why I really liked this film: This was decidedly NOT a character-driven movie. The characters are pretty flat and uninvolving, even by b-movie standards, with some of the British cast coming off almost cartoony, and Steve Railsback's leading man performance as the astronaut/hero was difficult to buy into at best, downright annoying at worst. So, if you ignore the characters (and that's not real hard here) this is still an excellent film. Why? It's a totally plot-driven film, something we see very little of. Most horror and sci-fi flicks are to a degree plot-driven, but usually the movie will set up a premise and let events unravel from there. The old "set 'em up and knock 'em down" type deal. This movie just kept moving and mutating as the action progressed. Honestly, the production and plot was extremely ambitious. It starts out as a small-scale sci-fi/horror-in-space deal, like Alien, then, once the alien is on earth, sort of plays like Species (way before Species), which gives way to a body-jumping possession sequence, sort of like a supernatural version of The Hidden, which then turns into a truncated zombie film, and by the end, a straight up disaster flick, with a slightly fucked up twist-ending.. The scale keeps ramping up as the movie goes on, to the point where the ending is epic compared to the more atmospheric beginning. And this totally worked in the film's favor, and makes the sacrifice of likeable characters completely forgivable.

Taken as a whole, Lifeforce ends up being extremely satisfying, and the conclusion just sealed the deal for me. You have to admit going from what seems a somewhat unassuming humanoid-alien space scenario to the epic spectacle of mobs of bloodthirsty zombies wreaking havoc in London all within the framework of one movie definitely makes this worth checking out. And, I imagine that in some circles it's probably considered a classic for those who are really into these films, for the names behind it alone. So, I'd totally recommend it as one of the more overlooked sci-fi/action/horror movies of the 80's.

Title: Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Director: Barret Leigh, Thom Maurer
Year: 2006

This is an adaptation (a very loose one) of the Lovecraft story of the same name, which takes place in the Catskills Mountains region of New York State around the turn of the century. Without trying to re-tell the story, I'll attempt to detail why I liked this film and what I didn't quite like that much.

For starters, the filmmakers made the interesting decision to do this movie (mostly) in black-and-white. This, by default, gives the film a gritty, contrast-y look and the feeling of watching a documentary at times. It also tends to give one the immediate impression of watching an amateur student film, a somewhat arty one at that. However, not all of the movie is in black-and-white, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. It fails mostly when the action lapses into a schizo-artsy montage sequence that is sadly recycled several times throughout the movie and always seems to pop up at inopportune moments when one is hoping that some 'plot' is about to happen. It works best after lengthy tension-building sequences where we are hit square in the face with full-color, gritty cinematography that almost implies moving from dream into reality. And since this movie is about dreams and reality, well, that sort of works.

The acting is, interesting, to say the least. Most of the performances are over-blown to the point of ridiculousness. Some of the acting comes off exaggeratedly amateurish, but much of it strikes me almost as stage-acting not properly subdued for a motion picture. There are moments where this almost seems deliberate. And, in a way, it works. The presentation along with the acting make this feel like a student film, and your immediate reaction may be to dismiss Beyond as too ridiculous to try and watch. But, if you stick it out, and let the campiness get under your skin, it pays off. Your expectations become so low, the characters seeming grotesquely cartoonish, that when the meandering and choppy plot finally kicks into full gear about two-thirds of the way through, you are completely taken by surprise.

I ended up expecting so little from what presents itself as a flop, almost a parody of Lovecraft's story rather than an adaptation, that I was thoroughly caught off guard when the film turned serious. Suddenly, the cinematography is in color, the fuzzy gore-montages become distinct sequences, and the main character actually becomes a figure of menace rather than comic dorkiness. All this happens so quickly I found myself suddenly liking it all, and the climax is as unexpected as a ten gauge shotgun blast to the face after you've been laughing down the barrel of a toy gun for over an hour.

On second viewing, this change in mood feels rather calculated and you get the impression that the filmmakers wanted to take their audience on a ride. So, they give us what we expect: a beyond-schlocky Lovecraft adaptation that is laughable in its eccentricity and occasional ineptitude, with a huge helping of artsy student film sensibility that takes itself too seriously at times and populates itself with strident, egotistical drama-club rejects...and then it suddenly reinvents itself near the end as a serious horror movie with some deadly-serious ideas that ultimately works, and all without giving the feel of being two different movies spliced together. And that manipulated feeling brought me to the conclusion that the filmmakers were maybe not quite so amateurish. This little twisty-ness to the film, in place of some other routine 'twist' ending was deftly handled and makes me somewhat eager to see more from these guys.

I also have to commend the filmmakers for their decision to do this movie as a period piece rather than have it take place in a modern setting. It makes the weirdness really apparent and allows the sanitarium to have that gloomy, depraved atmosphere that otherwise couldn't have existed. The costuming and sets are pretty nicely done, which speaks to the ambition of the filmmakers, down to actually having a horse-drawn buggy in one part of the film.

The effects are ok. I don't want to spoil anything so I'll say the effects in Beyond range from so-so to pretty good for low-low budget standards. I can't say for sure if this was deliberate like the rest of the film, or if it was budgetary. Probably both. The gore effects, like I said, are mostly hidden in lame trippy montage sequences, but when you actually get to see some real action in a straight camera shot it has a little more punch behind it than if the film had just been splattered with gratuitous gore the whole time. Anyway, that's not so much the point of the story here (since there is really nothing like that in Lovecraft's original), and the gorier parts don't really take off until the lead up to the climax.

Throw in a cameo by Tom Savini, and the fact that the focus (I can't quite call him a character) of the film, an inbred Appalachian man named Joe Slaader, who goes psycho one day and kills his whole family, is played by William Sanderson (J.F. Sebastian in Blade Runner), and you definitely have to chalk this up as a serious film that uses its poorer qualities as a sort of thin disguise.

I definitely recommend this film to anyone who enjoys Lovecraft or anyone who is vaguely familiar with Lovecraft and has an appetite for b-horror movies. In some ways it follows the Gordon school of Lovecraft adaptation, i.e. take a story, juice it up with sex and gore and violence and twitchy characters, and let it rip. But this has a nice twist, and at the end, has a change in tone that convinced me these guys wanted to get across something of the feel and attitude of Lovecraft's writing more than just using his story as a spine for a splatter-fest. It may be difficult for anyone else to sit through, though, so if you aren't familiar with Lovecraft adaptations, either as a fan of Lovecraft, or as a horror fan, I'd probably steer clear.