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I didn't like it much back in the day, I don't think I'd like it much today. Atmospherically, it reminds me of lots of films... Maniac, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, even Goodnight God Bless (aka Lucifer)... that real scuzzy, dirty atmosphere I like, with a "backwoods" factor that so many awful movies have exploited since then... so, it's cool in that sense. Too bad the direction is kind of incompetent (in a bad way), the pacing is terrible (a flaw in all the TCM's, really, though it is entertaining in The Next Generation). I did listen to the soundtrack a few years back and thought it was rather nice, but certainly not even a 10th as imaginative, creepy, atmospheric, or just flat-out GOOD as one of Fabio Frizzi's scores.
Ultimately, it's one of those movies people cite when they talk about "true horror"! But the movie is literally... unlikeable people sitting around in the woods, talking, for 50 minutes, and then a girl screaming for 30 minutes. And then people sitting around a table with animal bones. Then, the movie just kinda peters out and ends. It's certainly easy to appreciate it, but really, there's not much to it, and it's easy for me to reduce it to such simple elements because very few of the scenes in it do anything for me. It just kinda goes from point to point, letting its "atmosphere" make up for the fact that literally nothing happens in it. Whereas if you look at the all time classic masterpiece LAST HOUSE ON DEAD END STREET.. well, it's a billion times creepier, more entertaining, more atmospheric, more sickening, more thought provoking, etc. As a child, I was HORRIFIED by horror movies and this one just bored me then. Again, watched it probably 9-10 years ago for the 2nd time and was just checking my watch.
It always makes me wonder how certain films get popular and others don't -- it's all marketing, I guess. Ever noticed no TCM movies are massacres? Almost no one ever gets killed with a chainsaw, and it certainly is never a massacre. Hell, HOLLYWOOD CHAINSAW HOOKERS (also with Gunnar Hansen) is more of a chainsaw massacre!
...I just think TCM is cheesy, in a bad way, too. I remember "IT WAS ALL THE MORE TRAGIC IN THAT THEY WERE YOUNG" in the opening narration. What? Anyway, the first 50 minutes or so are passable in creating a decent atmosphere, but then the last half hour of a woman shrieking at the top of her lungs, nonstop... extremely tiresome movie! Kind of a blown opportunity.
Tobe Hooper is just not a director I particularly enjoy very much, but I will say that Lifeforce is one of the coolest films ever.
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