NAKED FEMALE VAMPIRE ALERT: “LIFEFORCE” SCREENS IN TORONTO THIS FRIDAY

Mathilda May in her natural state

The DLB hasn’t been to a Film School Confidential in awhile, but tomorrow night’s screening of Lifeforce (1985) at Toronto’s Bloor Cinema might just force me out of my rabbit hole.

The 1985 sci-fi/horror epic is an insane mash-up of space ships, naked vampires, sex and massive destruction that has to be seen to be believed. Tobe Hooper of Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame directs The Stunt Man‘s Steve Railsback in a manic adaptation of the Colin Wilson novel The Space Vampires (pictured below) which was partly scripted by Dan O’Bannon (Return of the Living Dead, Alien). How’s that for a genre treat?

FILM SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL TONIGHT: JOHN CARPENTERS’ GHOSTS OF MARS (2001)

Despite his busy schedule. former Rue Morgue writer and current Fangoria editor Chris Alexander continues to put on his Film School Confidential events at Toronto’s Bloor Cinema. Twice a month, Alexander screens a cult film, often one otherwise critically reviled or underappreciated by both critics and audiences. John Carpenter’s 2001 effort Ghosts of Mars certainly falls into both those categories. Described by Alexander as a “berserk amalgam of 3:10 TO YUMA, RIO BRAVO, Carpenter’s own ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, DAWN OF THE DEAD and PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES,” GOM will get a long overdue critical reappraisal tonight, June 23rd, at The Bloor.