So this was on the Criterion Channel, and a) it’s a science fiction movie from the ’80s, b) by Tobe Hooper, the guy who did Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Combine that with the imprimatur of Criterion’s curators and its even more intriguing description (“a mind-scrambling alien-zombie-vampire sextravaganza”), and let’s go.

So what’s surprising about this movie is that while it’s clearly pulp — it’s based on a novel called The Space Vampires, and that was going to be its original title — it’s also legitimately credible science fiction.

It starts off with a joint US/UK space shuttle going to Halley’s Comet to do some science, and encountering there an alien ship hiding in its coma, with some creepy giant bats and also some human beings unconscious in crystal coffins.

This seems silly (and it kinda is), but also: They explain it later! It’s not just some absurd thing to get the plot going, it actually makes sense, given the premise of the movie. And the space vampires (for that’s obviously what they are, no point pretending that’s a spoiler) have powers that work with reasonable consistency — at one point, I was like “oh, so they can just do X now?” and then later the movie explained what they can and can’t do. Nice.

In addition to the internal logic, it also has surprisingly good special effects. It’s clearly a low budget movie, but sometimes you wouldn’t know it. Presumably this has to do with hiring an Oscar-winning effects guy who was one of the original employees of Industrial Light & Magic.

But of course, it’s not just an SF movie, it’s also a horror movie, and sure enough, there is a lot of horroring going on, plenty of kills and gorier special effects. And a lot of nudity, given that the female spampire seduces her victims to drain them of their lifeforce. (There were also two male spampires, but they mostly just attack people; gender equality had not yet come to lifeforce-draining aliens, I guess. Nor, let’s be real, to 1980s horror directors.)

I think Criterion’s positioning of this as a minor cult classic is about right. It’s not properly good taken as a whole, but it’s surprisingly good in a bunch of ways, and interesting in a bunch of others. Recommended iff it sounds like the kind of movie that you’d be interested in.

(As a tangent, it also has Patrick Stewart in it, but it’s before he was a big star, so even though his name pops off the credits immediately, he doesn’t show up until like halfway through it, and his role is fairly small. Always weird when you have someone who’s so much more famous than any other actor in the movie in a bit part.)