History Film / LifeForce

* OurZombiesAreDifferent: Humans fed on by the vampires become zombie-type creatures which hunt for other humans to suck lifeforce from. Other than being without souls, they appear like normal people until a few hours wait causes them to start decaying unless they replenish themselves by feeding on someone else.

** The two male space vampires have the looks of pretty-boy, 1980s "glam" models or rock-singers, which were likely taken from the desires of the two women astronauts on the ''Churchill''.

* SpiritualSuccessor: To [[Film/HammerHorror Hammer Studios']] 1967 film of ''[[Franchise/{{Quatermass}} Quatermass and the Pit]]'' a.k.a. ''Five Million Years to Earth''.[[note]]Both films feature ancient alien spaceships discovered by accident, alien creatures with psionic powers who either take human form or possess humans, the aliens as the origins of beings (ghosts, vampires, the Devil) in myths and legends, mass unleashing of chaos and killing on London, and certain types of metal being an effective weapon against the aliens.[[/note]] (Though, of course, all the nakedness is a product of [[ExploitationFilm 1980's cinema]].)

* {{Expy}}: Dr. Hans Fallada is clearly patterned off of Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, and the actor who plays him,Frank Finlay, did indeed play Van Helsing in a BBC production of “Dracula”.

* Expy: Dr. Hans Fallada is clearly patterned off of Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, and the actor who plays him, Creator/FrankFinlay, did indeed play Van Helsing in a BBC production of “Dracula”.

In 1985, an Anglo-American space shuttle mission to Halley's Comet finds in the comet's tail an abandoned spacecraft with three (apparent) naked humans, two men and a woman, in suspended animation encased in glass pods. Later, after taking the pods aboard, the shuttle goes out of contact with ground control. A rescue mission finds that all the crew are dead, but the three people in the pods are still alive. The three not-really-humans are brought to the United Kingdom, whereupon the female wakes up and starts sucking the life out of everyone she encounters before escaping. Meanwhile, the sole survivor of the shuttle's crew, Col. Carlsen (Steve Railsback) returns to earth in an escape pod with a tale of terror.

* CosmicHorrorStory: [[spoiler: By the end nearly all the hero characters are dead or servants of the alien. The alien, after its snack, goes off on its merry way to devour other planets. The one survivor who knows anything about what happened probably won't be believed, so there will be little to no preparation for the alien's inevitable return.]]

* BuxomIsBetter: Miranda May is perhaps the ultimate example in cinematic history, representing the "feminine" in Carlsen's mind AND HOW!

* MsFanservice: Spectacularly gorgeous [[EveryoneLooksSexierIfFrench French actress]] Mathilda May, playing "Space Girl" (really), starts the movie wearing absolutely nothing, and then graduates to wearing next-to-nothing.

* ShapeshiftingSeducer: The female space vampire doesn't change her form again onscreen after she settles on the shape of a beautiful girl, and she has a habit of walking around in the buff. She took this shape directly from the mind of Colonel Carlson, as the image of the girl is his conception of the perfect woman, and uses it to draw him to her and seduce him so she can use his lifeforce in her EvilPlan.

* EldritchStarship: The vampire spaceship again, as mentioned in the previous trope.

* PyrrhicVictory: [[spoiler:The vampires are stopped from harvesting the entire planet, but at a heavy cost. The entire downtown metro-area of London is dead, and the infection may have spread even further before Caine stops it by killing the second male vampire. It is unclear what happened to Carlson, but he's no longer on Earth. And the ship itself regenerates and returns to Halley's Comet, so it can return in another 75 years to try to do it all over again]] (assuming humanity don't just nuke it on sight).

* PyrrhicVictory: [[spoiler:The vampires are stopped from harvesting the entire planet, but at a heavy cost. The entire downtown metro-area of London is dead, and the infection may spread even further. It is unclear what happened to Carlson, but he's no longer on Earth. Caine's chances of survival don't look too good with the remaining vampire zombies roaming the ruins of London. And the ship itself regenerates and returns to Halley's Comet, so it can return in another 75 years to do it all over again.]]

* ArtisticLicenseAstronomy: Halley's Comet is depicted as taking up one-sixth of the nighttime horizon. In RealLife the 1985-86 visit of Halley's Comet was one of the worst ever as far as visibility goes, with the comet barely visible even with telescopes.[[note]]Of course there were no manned missions to deep space either, and still aren't two decades into the 21st century.[[/note]]

EldritchStarship: The vampire spaceship again, as mentioned in the previous trope.

* NiceGuy: Caine, in spades.

** The two male space vampires have the looks of pretty-boy, 1980s "glam" models or rockers, which were likely taken from the desires of the two women astronauts on the ''Churchill''.

* MonstousCannibalism: Implied to be why there are only three vampires on board their ship that ''haven't'' been reduced to shriveled husks by the time it's discovered.