Soviet vampires in space - SE Tsuki to Laika to Nosferatu

[Nilof]

Official trailer:


It's an anime this season about a vampire girl in a fictionalized soviet union, joining the space program in the late 1950s in the hopes of being the first humanoid in orbit and hopefully to the moon. The soviet government apparently plays along because they view a vampire as more expendable than a human, because vampires have more forgiving oxygen and thermal management needs, and can be used on the first test flights of manned capsules.

First episode seems to mainly set up a boy meet girl format, present the setting, and establishes that Russian space vampires eat Borscht.

[Blackstar]

This book inspired the movie "Lifeforce." Feel free to discuss.

[Zed_Noir]

This book inspired the movie "Lifeforce." Feel free to discuss.

Amusing factoid: Sir Patrick Stewart was in the "Lifeforce" movie a couple of years before joining Starfleet. 

[Jorge]

Official trailer:


It's an anime this season about a vampire girl in a fictionalized soviet union, joining the space program in the late 1950s in the hopes of being the first humanoid in orbit and hopefully to the moon. The soviet government apparently plays along because they view a vampire as more expendable than a human, because vampires have more forgiving oxygen and thermal management needs, and can be used on the first test flights of manned capsules.

First episode seems to mainly set up a boy meet girl format, present the setting, and establishes that Russian space vampires eat Borscht.

The first episode also heavily implied the vampire girl didn't join the program by choice, but maybe I'm reading too much into the fact that she was trucked into the base inside her coffin with the coffin chained shut...

[Nilof]

Official trailer:


It's an anime this season about a vampire girl in a fictionalized soviet union, joining the space program in the late 1950s in the hopes of being the first humanoid in orbit and hopefully to the moon. The soviet government apparently plays along because they view a vampire as more expendable than a human, because vampires have more forgiving oxygen and thermal management needs, and can be used on the first test flights of manned capsules.

First episode seems to mainly set up a boy meet girl format, present the setting, and establishes that Russian space vampires eat Borscht.

The first episode also heavily implied the vampire girl didn't join the program by choice, but maybe I'm reading too much into the fact that she was trucked into the base inside her coffin with the coffin chained shut...

Oh right, that's very possible. The trailer and material around it seem to imply it was by choice, but the first episode does seem to imply the opposite.

[Blackstar]

And so was brunette atomic bombshell Maruschka Detmers. WARNING: in that movie, she is hotter than the surface of the Sun.

I think you are misremembering.

[Galactic Penguin SST]

Never thought I would got to talk about anime on NSF, but here we are. 

Anyway I am watching this too and I shall say that the few historical references made in the 1st episode so far are pretty accurate, down to e.g. Sputnik 2 remaining attached to the R-7 “core stage” in orbit. I’m not quite sure about the Soviet closed cities part but I think it at least feels relatively right.

Be warned that historical backgrounds is probably not the main theme of the story and those who are not accustomed to anime’s romance stories styles will probably feel tough to follow.

[Star One]

Spaceflight related part from one of the reviews on ANN.

I have to admit that I was over spaceflight after watching the Challenger explode live on TV when I was in elementary school. Since Christa McAuliffe, the teacher aboard, had visited my school and shook my hand, it was a pretty traumatic moment for me. That perhaps made getting into Irina: The Vampire Cosmonaut a bit more difficult, although other bits and pieces, such as the casual cruelty shown by the UZSR higher ups towards Irina, also made this not quite my thing.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/preview-guide/2021/fall/irina-the-vampire-cosmonaut/.177540

[libra]

And so was brunette atomic bombshell Maruschka Detmers. WARNING: in that movie, she is hotter than the surface of the Sun.

I think you are misremembering.

Checked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeforce_(film)

Drats, got my brunette atomic bombshell wrong. Not Maruschka Detmers, but Matilda May. 

The rest of the post still stands, I can guarantee it.
 

[Blackstar]

Drats, got my brunette atomic bombshell wrong. Not Maruschka Detmers, but Matilda May. 

We could discuss May here, but we cannot post any photos of her from the movie, because I think that all of them are NSFW.

[libra]

Went browsing NSFW - nothing related to NASA SpaceFlight, obviously. I second that opinion.

Back in the mid-80's France had a knack to churn plenty of movies of this kind.
Five top brunette atomic bombshells of that glorious period
- Sophie Marceau
- Emmanuelle Béart
- Valérie Kaprisky
- Maruschka Detmers
- Matilda May

But this, indeed, is going straight toward NSFW territory, so let's stop there...

[Blackstar]

Back in the mid-80's France had a knack to churn plenty of movies of this kind.

At the risk of being pedantic, "Lifeforce" was not a French movie, although Mathilda May was French and didn't speak any English when hired for the role. It was directed by Tobe Hooper, who had directed the 1982 hit "Poltergeist," which briefly made him a hot director--until he did "Lifeforce," which seems to have really stunted his career. It was filmed in England and the screenplay was by Dan O'Bannon, who wrote "Dark Star" and the screenplay for "Alien" (which also made him a hot property). It had a pretty decent budget, which you can see in the special effects.

But it was also bonkers. I think the people involved believed they were making a goofy parody movie and they had everybody play it straight. Watching actors deliver lines like "She's not human she's an alien, she'll destroy you!" "She's destroyed worlds!" you get the sense that when the director yelled "Cut" they broke out laughing.

Unfortunately, it doesn't really work. "Lifeforce" isn't really fun enough or paced such that it became a cult hit. I think it managed to miss that elusive target that some other goofy horror films hit and thus lived on. It's watchable, but it's not fun to watch.

Well, except for the scenes with Mathilda May in them.

[Star One]

Long form review of the first three episodes receiving a rather mixed rating.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/irina-the-vampire-cosmonaut/episodes-1-3/.178589