EPISODE 123 - Lifeforce

[CamberFreese 14]

The space vampires in this movie were less vampire-like than I was hoping, but I did like how the door to the astronauts' ship was shaped like a coffin: http://imgur.com/gqF2H7M.

 

Also, was anybody else really distracted by how much Carlsen looked like Sam Rockwell? http://imgur.com/ucM79ER

[AstronautDown 282]

The etymology of disaster is based on ill-starred. It's not exactly what they said in the movie, but described as a calamity derived from an unfavorable position of a star or planet.

Just want to add that "disaster" is not latin but greek (shout out to my fellow greeks, Zouks, Herc and the 12 gods!). Comes from the greek word "dysastria" (emphasis on "tri", greek spelling: δυσαστρία) which literally means bad stars. I also remember Carl Sagan mentioning this on an episode of Cosmos but unfortunately I can't remember which one...

 

P.S. Solidarity to English people and all Europeans. As a european myself, I was, literally, flipping out when they didn't know what ESA stands for!

[ChunkStyle 1160]

Now... i might be very European (which i am... greetings from Milan btw), but to me it does not seem such a long jump from disaster to: 'de', a prefix for everything bad and 'astra' -meaning star?

The word disaster really means: bad star and i am confused nobody on the show gets that... you are all educated people no?

 

Next to that i am confused that nobody knows the ESA? It is the European equivalent of NASA and launches rockets in space since 1975! Hundreds of satellites have been launched from Guyana... (french territory)

How can you be so oblivious?

 

all in all i am confused about the general knowledge about the hosts of HDTGM

 

In fairness to the hosts the ESA never had a shuttle program so they didn't have anything like what appeared in the movie.

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

 

They're greater than Moby Dick and Gravity's Rainbow combined and say a lot about humanity (in particular, how it would interact with a space-vampire).

Space Vampires on whaling ships sucking the life-force, blubber, and/or blood out of whales is a book I WOULD READ.

[VinsanityV22 500]

Man, the beginning of this podcast is a roller coaster of emotions!

 

Lennon Parham as guest: Yay

Boob Talk (should be a new segment, tbh): Heck yes

Not knowing that "ESA" stands for "European Space Agency": ... *sigh* c'mon guys. It's pretty basic stuff for us Americans to know (unless you're, like, a High School drop-out/Trump supporter), along with, like, MI6 (and we all know you're Bond fans). I'm chalking that one up to just a collective slip of the mind

 

lol

 

Awesome episode! Loving it - and the write up on Slashfilm is amazing!

[jarrycanada 2483]

Can someone please Photoshop a picture of a cereal box with the name of it being "Shriveled Raisin Tits"? Jason mentioned it at about 9:13 and I cannot get the image out of my head.

Neither can I not hear that being said to the tune of the old school 80's "Kellogg's Honey Smacks" jingle:

 

 

 

ENJOY!

 

[SevenDollarsWorthofHoobastank 226]

 

 

 

ENJOY!

 

 

 

haha!!!!!

OOOOOOOH MY GAWD!

Thank you sooo much lol!!

[Rothchilde 1]

Just want to add that "disaster" is not latin but greek (shout out to my fellow greeks, Zouks, Herc and the 12 gods!). Comes from the greek word "dysastria" (emphasis on "tri", greek spelling: δυσαστρία) which literally means bad stars. I also remember Carl Sagan mentioning this on an episode of Cosmos but unfortunately I can't remember which one...

 

P.S. Solidarity to English people and all Europeans. As a european myself, I was, literally, flipping out when they didn't know what ESA stands for!

 

Thank you so much for saving me the trouble of putting this in. I got so momentarily angry when that part of the conversation came up.

 

Word up to my etymology homies-- pun intended.

[RyanSz 3140]

After seeing this I'm honestly amazed that they put 25 million into it.

[EllenM 943]

Next to that i am confused that nobody knows the ESA? It is the European equivalent of NASA and launches rockets in space since 1975! Hundreds of satellites have been launched from Guyana... (french territory)

How can you be so oblivious?

 

all in all i am confused about the general knowledge about the hosts of HDTGM

 

Not knowing that "ESA" stands for "European Space Agency": ... *sigh* c'mon guys. It's pretty basic stuff for us Americans to know (unless you're, like, a High School drop-out/Trump supporter), along with, like, MI6 (and we all know you're Bond fans). I'm chalking that one up to just a collective slip of the mind

 

Well I'm going on record in defense of the HDTGM crew. I didn't know that the ESA was a thing either. I'd argue that it isn't terribly common knowledge, especially of late when all the space news (at least that I hear) is from NASA or Canadarm-related. Even if you learned it in high school, there's a ton of science related stuff (and other subjects too) that I've forgotten in the 5 years since I've graduated high school. Like Thomas said, he'd guessed the crew to be late 30s to early 40s. Plenty of time to have something that has no effect on your everyday life fall out of your mental periphery.

 

I'd argue that after the moon landing, the news/broadcasters weren't interested in just rockets anymore so there would be less media coverage. If peoples' or a dog's lives are not at stake, it probably wouldn't make international news. At the very least, 1975 was Watergate, Bobby Fischer refusing to play chess and Vietnam. It was a busy year.

 

On the equivalency to MI6, I'm going to disagree. James Bond has been an international phenomenon for over 50 years, therefore it has had time to permeate pop culture and into an average movie buff's memory. If there was a series of films that were about space exploration over the course of 50 years and the ESA was involved, then your comparison may hold water but otherwise you're comparing vampires to Space Vampires.

 

Also the only other thing I know about Guyana is that it was where Jonestown took place. You'd think they'd want to hype up a space program more.

[Servo Academy 16]

 

 

 

ENJOY!

 

 

 

That English is Fuller than Full!

Lovely.

[wyldride 285]

"Two shriveled raisin tits in Vampire Raisin Bran."

[DanNicholson 83]

After seeing this I'm honestly amazed that they put 25 million into it.

 

Adjusting for inflation, that puts it at about $55 million (in todays dollars).

 

Not astronomical by any stretch, but considering Forest Gump, Captain Phillips and the Kill Bill movies were all made on budgets of approximately $55 million, you'd have to think that the investors might feel a little short changed by the results.

 

It's listed as grossing $11.6 million at the box office.

[Cam Bert 8145]

The more I think about it the more I'm confused about the curious case of Dr. Fallada.If we go back to the middle of the movie when the two male vampires awake from their pods they are immediately shot by the security guards. The spirits of those vampires makes it's way into the bodies of the guards that killed them. Then one of those guards goes to Dr. Fallada in his office to try to turn him. Luckily earlier that day he happened to be delivered a sword from the Amsterdam Museum and was able to kill the guard. However, based on when Caine confronts him at the end of the movie we know that he too is a space vampire. What I find curious is when did this happen? If like the original male vampire the spirit left the body upon death and entered him, why did that spirit not enter Caine when he killed Fallada? For that matter after killing the guard if he was possessed by the spirit why would he message Carlsen and Caine and tell them in very specific detail how to kill the vampires? We know that he was a thanatologist, was he so obsessed with the drive for death that he told them how to kill himself so he'd have a greater understanding? Or did he get turned by some random vampire after killing the guard and then decided to just chill in his lab until the end of the world? Also if Caine could just shoot and kill a vampire why did he grab the large and clunky sword? Surely he could have just shot the doorman vampire.

[ChunkStyle 1160]

Also if Caine could just shoot and kill a vampire why did he grab the large and clunky sword? Surely he could have just shot the doorman vampire.

 

I think the 3 vampires from the ship are fundamentally different. I don't think any of the victims on Earth became space vampires. It is more like they turned into energy zombies. But they were not and would never be the same as the vampires from the ship. In many vampire stories a vampire has to choose to make their bite victim a vampire. Otherwise they are just food.

[ChunkStyle 1160]

I guess we are just supposed to assume that Caine got in touch with NATO in time. But I think there is a pretty good chance a nuke was hitting London as the credits were rolling.

[SeveralCircles 426]

If I travelled from Chicago to sit in on a taping, and June was not there, my brains would end up splattered all over that shoe wall.

[babyoilbandit 81]

After hearing a movie called, "The Tit and the Moon" mentioned I had to pause the podcast and lookup that movie. Not only did a find a movie, that is described on Wikipedia to be about, "a young boy named Tete who goes on a personal mission to find the perfect pair of lactating breasts to feed on," I also found this picture.... yikes.

But the review for the movie they chose to pair with this tit-ular image says it all because bonkers is really the only word to describe everything about this movie.

You know I came here to recommend the film The Tit and the Moon. It's a legit fun film, sure it's weird as hell but that's the appeal of it. I'd say Paul should watch it and make it a Scheer's Pick, I've not seen it in years but I seem to remember there's a lot of projectile milk expressing (you know having typed that it doesn't look like the right way to phrase it but there you go). So don't be put off by the weirdness of the title and the idea, it's definitely worth checking out. Oh and there's a weird subplot about simulating blowjobs on stale bread, I've got to rewatch this.

[Cameron H. 23786]

And now to turn the criticism to Paul himself for a second. June couldn't make the episode because she was filming. Check. But that is also why the episode dropped late? This is Lifeforce level reasoning.

 

Maybe, because she was filming, they postponed the episode to give her time to be there, but filming ended up running over, so rather than delaying any longer, they just decided to do it without her...Just a shot in the dark.

 

BTW-Lifeforce is 100% reasonable.

[ChunkStyle 1160]

 

Maybe, because she was filming, they postponed the episode to give her time to be there, but filming ended up running over, so rather than delaying any longer, they just decided to do it without her...Just a shot in the dark.

 

BTW-Lifeforce is 100% reasonable.

 

Yeah I assume it was something like that. I just thought the explanation was funny.

[pepperjack 303]

This is bit of a tangent but a Lifeforce being a movie about space vampires reminded me of stumbling across a netflix movie called 'Teenage Space Vampires.' It had a rating of PG for 'mild alien vampire violence,' which I always thought was someone at netflix having a laugh. But it's on the imdb page:

 

http://www.imdb.com/...g#certification

[darkesword 83]

Can I just say that I've long been a fan of Henry Mancini's score to this movie, before ever actually even seeing the film? I heard "Main Title" on satellite radio once and just had to track down the entire soundtrack. It's kind of amazing that Mancini, a legendary film composer (famous for scoring "The Pink Panther" and "Breakfast at Tiffany's") did a movie like this, but apparently he did a lot of horror/sci-fi movies for Universal.

 

It's also interesting to note that a lot of Mancini's score was cut from the final print of the movie. From the movie-wave review:

Disaster struck as far as Mancini's score was concerned, though, when the film's producers decided to take it away from director Tobe Hooper and chop nearly a quarter of the film out. Mancini was either unwilling or unable to rescore it, and so his carefully-constructed score just didn't fit some of the time any more, so the young Michael Kamen was brought in to rescore some sections. Kamen took a decidedly different approach, under orders to write more scary music, and his selections (which run for twenty minutes or so, and replaced Mancini's masterpiece "The Discovery" and even meant the great main theme wasn't heard at all in the film until the end titles) are more electronic in nature, and decidedly less impressive. Kamen was a wonderful composer who was never given his due, but his contributions to Lifeforce could only be considered as a footnote not only to his glorious career, but to Lifeforce itself.

 

And in an interesting twist, Michael Kamen was the composer for the original X-Men movie, which of course starred Patrick Stewart as Professor X!

[pepperjack 303]

Ooh, and just for June. Patrick Stewart was in I, Claudius with hair as the bastard Sejanus but it was a wig!

[Cameron H. 23786]

So let me get this straight...

 

Space Vampires are, in fact, not naked people, but rather intersteller space bats that have developed the technology to travel long distances in space and have also evolved to a point where they can telepathically determine what form is most desirable to a specific individual and subsequently project that image onto any sentient organism to whom they have bonded. Furthermore, the only guaranteed way to kill these Space Vampires is by a "leaded metal shaft...through the energy center." Is that correct? If so, I have a question.

 

So basically, if my reading of this movie is correct, it's telling me that these highly evolved, technologically advanced creatures don't have the wherewithal to wear some kind of body armor to protect themselves from the one thing that can kill them? If they are just projecting whatever image they want into the mind of whoever is held in their thrall (for example, when Carlsen is interrogating Patrick Stewart, Stewart is fully clothed, but Space Girl is not), why not just be wearing full body armor all the time, but just appear to be naked?

 

Fuck--even during the Dark Ages, when humans honestly believed that hiccups were brought on by elves and fairies routinely kidnapped children, we were smart enough to know "stabby weapons cause owies" so I better strap some metal to my chest.

 

Bonus question: If Space Girl is Carlsen's idealized female form, whose "idealized" forms are the two male space vampires projecting? Was there supposed to be a concurrent story line involving a heterosexual female or homosexual man being seduced by these two vampires that we're not privy too? I mean, as far as we can tell, the Space Vampires are genderless (see: Space Girl can possess both women and men), so by including them in the story they are, at least tacitly, setting that story line up. Where's the payoff? Jesus! It's like they didn't put any thought into this movie...

[Cam Bert 8145]

Bonus question: If Space Girl is Carlsen's idealized female form, whose "idealized" forms are the two male space vampires projecting? Was there supposed to be a concurrent story line involving a heterosexual female or homosexual man being seduced by these two vampires that we're not privy too? I mean, as far as we can tell, the Space Vampires are genderless (see: Space Girl can possess both women and men), so by including them in the story they are, at least tacitly, setting that story line up. Where's the payoff? Jesus! It's like they didn't put any thought into this movie...

 

You know I thought about that too when they said she scanned his mind for ideal beauty. However, based on the other creepy astronaut she was his idealized woman too. Maybe she was a composite of the two straight men that entered that part of the ship and they just have very similar types. The one male space vampire was from the woman's mind, and the third from the forth member out on the space walk who may have been homosexual. However, like you said this does not really play a part in the movie overall. In fact the other two space vampires could have been written out of the movie completely and it would make just as much sense! What exactly do they do to advance the plot? One gets killed by Fallada so he can explain to the heroes how to defeat them. That's about it. A conclusion that could have come naturally to one of the many scientist characters in this film.