10 More Awful Horror Movies With Incredible Special Effects

In Lifeforce, a group of astronauts activate an alien spacecraft, unleashing a horde of space vampires on the world.

Despite having B-movie written all over it, the SFX team behind Lifeforce can't be commended enough. Since the film deals with extra-terrestrials, bat monsters, possession, intergalactic vessels, and reanimated corpses, the SFX crew had to use every trick in the book. The visuals were brought to life with articulated robots, prosthetics, blue-screen photography, complex lighting effects, rotoscoping, and various other techniques.

The film can't go five minutes without throwing in a wowing miniature, a photorealistic matte painting, or an elaborate animatronic. Director Tobe Hooper stated that the animatronics were "so life-like that people thought they were very skinny actors with makeup appliances on them, but they’re totally mechanical and electronic."

If viewers get frustrated by the hokey characters, uneven pacing, or unstructured narrative, rest assured there is another sensational special effect just around the corner.