The Lucifer Complex (1978) – Film Summary and Review
I will begin this review on a negative note and say The Lucifer Complex is one of the worst films I have ever seen. I had hoped for a lot better because Robert Vaughn is in it and I used to enjoy is portrayal of Napoleon Solo in The Man from Uncle. Unfortunately, right from the start, The Lucifer Complex is terrible and, as the film progresses, it only gets worse. The acting is wooden, the storyline is terrible, and I had to force myself to endure it to the bitter end.
The film begins by showing the viewer a man who is exploring the mountainous regions of an unspecified island, at some unspecified date in the future. There is a cave in the mountains and not only is it miraculously blessed with an electricity supply; it’s also filled with computers and data storage devices. The man enters the cave and seems very familiar with all the equipment. He sits down at a console and starts going through the information stored on laser-disc storage devices on which, it would seem, a lot of the planet’s history is recorded in the form of movies, which the man watches on one of the monitors.
At first, he regards the footage from various wars and then, perhaps getting a little bored with that, he watches some girls from the flower-power generation as they dance their little tushes off (possibly Woodstock). As he watches all of this—the enlightened soul that he obviously is—he seems to see all the places where man as a species has gone wrong. Eventually, he finds some footage of a secret war. The general population never knew a thing about it, but some rather ambitious people had tried to clone themselves a new fuehrer.
Robert Vaughn plays the secret agent sent to infiltrate the island camp of Hitler’s wannabe creators, gives them a good old sorting out and generally save the day.
As the story progresses the camera flashes back to the cave now and again to remind the viewer that they are watching all of this curtsey of the unknown man’s archives. Then at the end of the film, the guy toddles off again to do some more much-needed exploring of his island and get another eyeful of the view. He seems to like the view a lot and stands staring at it all the time the end credits are rolling. Perhaps after being subjected to The Lucifer Complex he just needed to get out and get some air. I don’t blame him, I felt much the same way.
I wouldn’t class The Lucifer Complex as a horror film. Part action movie (of sorts), it falls into the sci-fi genre. However, I received the disc as part of a horror film box set I won from a horror forum. Had it not been for this, I would probably have never even heard of the Lucifer Complex.
Even if you are an avid Robert Vaughn fan, this film is going to be a hard sell and it’s certainly a poor choice for anyone seeking a horror film to watch or even a half-decent sci-fi movie.