Going back to the works of Hooper now, and this might be the second most uneven film he made until this point. Other reviewers have pointed out that Hooper's career never really lived up to the promise of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and this film does little but point that out.
The spaceship Churchill has been launched to study the passing Haley's Comet. The ship, a joint American/British venture, is under the command of Col. Tom Carlsen (Steve Railsback). They find the comet without issue, but then they notice something in the comet's tail.
It's a ship, although flying city might be more appropriate as the 150 mile long ship is built more like an umbrella than a regular spaceship. Leading a small landing party aboard, they find the massive thing filled with vacuum-desiccated bat like creatures and three pods each containing a humanoid (Mathilda May, Christopher Jagger, Bill Malin). They lose radio contact with Earth, but they manage to bring the pods back with them.
After a month of radio silence, NASA sends up the shuttle Columbia to try and figure out what happened. They find the pods intact but the entire crew dead save for Carlsen. He's missing, but the escape pod is a good hint he left in a hurry.
Dr. Bukosky (Michael Gothard) is placed over the project as the bodies are taking to London for study. A team is quickly gathered to try and figure what happened to the crew and what the three humanoids are; the chief members are:
Dr. Hans Fallada (Frank Finlay)-biochemist
Colonel Collin Caine (Peter Firth)-SAS and handling the military aspect . The experts are stumped though, but their confusion gives way to horror when the female (May) wakes up and drains the life force of the doctor doing an examination. She casually leaves, with the sentries on duty claiming they were mesmerized and unable to do anything. One of the lab guards actually overcomes his lust/fear and tries to stop her, only to be drained of life.
Two hours later, the dead guard comes back to life and drains the morgue doctor, leaving the team with a horrifying problem: The more people are bitten, the more people they bite. The male vampires wake up too, but this time they are greeted with high velocity bullets, but even that doesn't stop them as they simply possess other bodies.
The plague quickly takes on epidemic proportions when Carlsen and the escape pod are recovered. Carlsen reveals that he has a psychic connection to the female, which helps them track her down after she ditches her body and posses first a nurse (Nancy Paul) then the nurse's boss, Dr. Armstrong (Patrick Stewart). The catch is all our heroes have to leave London to catch her and the alien's ship is now positioned directly over London.
Can our heroes stop the alien vampires in time?
Disjointed; each section feels like a different film. We have an Alien story first, a pinch of Quatermass (British, space travel and the horrors therein) second, and we end with a large dash of zombies. Each section is well made, but when placed together it just feels off. Not terrible by any means and certainly the most ambitious film Hooper dared to date.
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