Lifeforce (1985)

In 1985, Cannon Films gave Tobe Hooper $25 million, a novel about space vampires, and what he later described as the freedom to make a "70mm Hammer film." The result is LIFEFORCE, and it is exactly as unhinged as that sounds.

Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus had spent years selling action and exploitation. Lifeforce was the moment they decided they were making spectacle - real spectacle, with a spaceship full of vampires discovered in Halley's Comet, a nude woman who drains the life force of everyone she encounters, and London descending into a zombie apocalypse in the third act.

The casting of Mathilda May is its own story. Hundreds of British and American actresses auditioned, but none were comfortable with a role that required so much full frontal nudity. The search eventually moved to Europe, and word came back about a ballerina in Paris - reportedly after the 50th, 60th, or 70th audition. May's English was so limited she learned her lines phonetically. The character has almost no dialogue. It worked out.

The film failed commercially. Critics were confused. It has since become exactly what it always deserved to be: a cult object of the first order, beloved precisely because no one with full control of their senses would have greenlit it.

Cannon had full control of their ambitions. Their senses were another matter.