Has it really been more than 30 years since this movie came out?

It is a silly movie, but filled with little unexpected delights, not the least of which is plenty of full frontal and dorsal nudity from Mathilda May, the ultimate French babe, and possessor of one of the ten best chests in the history of filmed chests.

It also has:

• Some excellent sci-fi effects by the master, John Dykstra (Star Wars). This was actually an expensive movie. It cost 25 million bucks. In addition to the outer space scenes, it portrays the burning of many London landmarks in miniatures and on sound stages.
• A musical score written by Henry Mancini. Yup, the guy who wrote Moon River, The Days of Wine and Roses, and The Pink Panther. How did they persuade him to do this movie? And why did they want him?
• Direction by Tobe Hooper, of "Poltergeist" fame. (And "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", if'n you like your horror gorier.)
• Captain Picard, delivering a small, but truly over-the-top, performance

Of course, all of those elements are more or less wasted on one of the screwiest scripts ever written, making it a space, vampire, zombie, end-of-the-world, nudie, sci-fi, horror movie. (What, no songs?) It seems that there is an alien spaceship living in Halley's Comet, and it is investigated by earth astronauts. Inside the ship, our intrepid earthlings find some dried-up bodies, some creatures that look like bats, and Mathilda May naked. Oh, yeah, and a couple of naked guys as well. They leave the bats and the dry shit behind, but they bring Mathilda and her friends into the earth ship for, um ... closer examination. Oops. Not a good move.

Well, it turns out that Halley's Comet is the source of all vampires. The vamps live in their secret nest there, and visit earth every eight decades in order to suck up earth lives. They suck the life out of earthlings, who in turn become temporary vampires for a couple of hours, and suck the lives out of other earthlings, and so forth in geometric progression until the life is sucked out of London.

Hey, I think I was in London that summer.

Anyway, the vampires have this special system rigged up where they channel all the human life-forces from earth through Mathilda May in the form of violet light beams, and thence into space where everything is absorbed by their umbrella-shaped space ship. It seems the vamps are going for the whole enchilada this time, the entire life-energy of the planet. To combat this, NATO plans to drop nuclear bombs on London, but an American guy decides that plan is overkill, and that he can defeat the vampires single-handed by driving a stake through their hearts.

Well, it isn't as dumb as it sounds. You see, he is the astronaut who was selected by the vampires to be their original earthling model. While they were studying him, they ended up exchanging life forces with him, so now he can "feel" their weaknesses, and "sense" their presence.

Never mind what I said before. It IS as dumb as it sounds.

In fact, the movie tells us, one cannot kill a vampire by driving a wooden stake through its heart. Pure poppycock and folklore! A "thanatologist" tell us that the vampires must be killed by driving a lead stake two inches below the heart. Thanatology is apparently a very exact science. I guess it has to be, because if the thanatologist drives those stakes three inches below the heart, or uses a stake with insufficient lead content, that just makes 'em really mad.