Somnopolis

Phelim O’Neill’s touching tribute to the late Dan O’Bannon reminded me just how much I enjoyed his work. A rather affable raconteur, with a certain raffish charm that he had in common with his collaborator John Carpenter, O’Bannon helped create some of the most indelible movie moments of the past thirty years.

Yet his contribution is often passed over in favour of those he worked with such as Carpenter, Jodorowsky, George Lucas (for whom he did some design work on Star Wars during a lean period), Ridley Scott and Paul Verhoeven.

He will never be remembered as a screenwriting mentor like William Goldman, but he often welcomed the interest of science fiction and horror fans, freely divulging anecdotes of his involvement in the genre cinema revolution of the 70s that followed Star Wars and Alien. O’Neill mentions that a book by the man himself, The Rules of Writing, is waiting in the wings. Could it rival Adventures in the Screen Trade?

Some of O’Bannon’s charm I believe came down to his admission that he had been incredibly lucky in his career. Swept away to Paris by the mercurial Jodorowsky to work on that great film that never was, an abortive adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, he nevertheless was plunged into an inspiring artistic collective that included comic artist Moebius and the inscrutable H. R. Giger. Last year I saw a documentary on Moebius that included an interview with O’Bannon, ruefully looking back on the failure of Dune, that eventually returned him to L.A. broke and bewildered. Yet for all that, I feel working with Jodorowsky gave him the confidence to continue to pursue his inspiration.

After all the wreckage of Dune provided the body, guts and all, of haunted-house-cum-Freudian-nightmare Alien. The franchise that refuses to die started with a poorly titled script by O’Bannon called Star Beast. His work with Moebius in Metal Hurtlant also ‘inspired’ Blade Runner and The Fifth Element.

But it’s Lifeforce, the comically bad ’space vampires’, film based on Colin Wilson’s novel that I think of with the most fondness. Strangely it begins in a similar manner to Alien, with a team of astronauts discovering a vessel adrift in space carrying three humanoid beings preserved in stasis pods surrounded by giant bat-like corpses. The space-shuttle returns to Earth with only one survivor, an American astronaut suffering from amnesia. Of course the three humanoids are revealed to be lifeforce draining vampires, hence the title, that soon turn the city of London into a zombie plagued warzone. With a surfeit of ambition and the budgetary efficiency of a Roger Corman production, the film rips along with the occasional wink at the camera. Patrick Stewart being possessed by the female space vampire, indicated by the Shakespearian thespian mincing it up with a curled lip, is a particular highlight for me. It is also fun, a quality that escapes many film-makers today.

O’Bannon’s legacy is secure. An American fantasist with a European sensibility. A horror and science fiction afficionado who brought the spectacular images of Metal Hurlant with him into the cineplexes of today. Without him the gamut run from Ridley Scott’s Alien to EA Games’ Dead Space would never have been.