The Hunger

Horrorphile

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The Hunger

June 15th 2010 07:09

“The bats have left the bell tower … Bela Legosi’s dead!” Indeed, as Bauhaus front man Pete Murphy drapes himself across a cage façade with his iconographic Gothic rock look and swagger during The Hunger (1983)’s opening nightclub sequence and the chic poseur gazes of Catherine Denueve and David Bowie complete with exotic shades and smoldering gitanes, the audience swiftly realise this is no classic vampire tale, but instead a contemporary re-imagining of the oneiric plight of the modern vamp whose bloodlust is tempered by the pressures of urban living and the grind of eternal patience.

The Hunger Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie

Catherine Deneuve as Miriam and David Bowie as John

Director Tony Scott, the younger brother of Ridley, had come from a background in advertising. In fact I believe both brothers still have their fingers in that very successful pie, albeit silent partners. Based on the novel by Whitley Strieber, the screenplay was penned by James Costigan Ivan Davis and Michael Thomas, The Hunger was Scott’s first feature. I saw the movie when it was first released (memorably so as it had an R18 certificate and I was only 14), and wasn’t overly impressed (apart from sneaking into an adult movie). Over the years my impressions of the movie were that it was pretentious, over-produced, and tedious (like much of Scott’s later movies).

Peter Murphy looks out into the dark of the crowd

Watching The Hunger again at the SFF, as the last screening in the Immortal Seduction vampire movie retrospective (it replaced Daughters of Darkness, the print of which was too damaged to screen), for the first time in nearly thirty years I was very pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. In fact, the movie has aged incredibly well, rather fittingly (and ironic), considering the movie’s main themes are longevity, decrepitude, and immortality. I think I’ll purloin a copy for my private collection.

A disco swinger (Ann Magnuson) is seduced by John

Miriam Blaylock (Deneuve) is as old as they come. No doubt she can speak fluent Phoenician, but we only get a glimpse of her Egyptian past. She met and seduced John (Bowie) in the 18th Century turning him into one of her progeny, like many other lovers before. They live an elite and lazy existence somewhere uptown in an enormous Manhattan apartment. Miriam and John enjoy the occasional company of young Alice (Beth Ehlers), a violinist, who joins them for recitals, with Miriam caressing the ivories and John straddling a cello. But John is starting to feel the pinch coming close to his pseudo-eternal flame.

The Hunger Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon

Miriam attracts Sarah (Susan Sarandon)'s attention

Dr. Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon), a sassy and successful gerontologist and author, has been involved with progressive experimental testing on longevity in baboons, with disastrous results. John reads her book and is sure she can help him with his degenerative state, but Miriam understands something deeper, and more important; Sarah will be John’s replacement, and John will join Miriam’s past lovers in the dusty, pigeon-infested apartment attic to remain in a skeletal undead catatonia.

The Hunger David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve

John makes demands on Miriam

The vampires of The Hunger don’t possess fangs, but instead slice open their victims using an Egyptian ankh pendant that sheaths a tiny razor-sharp blade. This is demonstrated most effectively in the movie’s prologue where Miriam and John invite a loved-up disco couple (John Stephen Hill and Ann Magnuson) for a few after-club drinks so the Blaylocks can sate their thirst. None of the vampire mythology’s traditional elements are at play; there’s no garlic or crosses, no bats or reflection-less mirrors. Only a torturous hunger that plagues the soul until the sweet, warm coppery taste of blood fills the mouth.

John's youth abandons him

The eroticism that has part of the movie’s initial appeal has mellowed considerably when compared to current cinematic depictions of lust, and Deneuve’s body double during the movie’s self-conscious seduction scene between Miriam and Sarah was very noticeable, but the lingering sensuality that exudes from other moments (nude lovers emerging from a pool, the erotikill from the prologue) works well. In juxtaposition the disquieting murder of Alice still retains its subversive shock power, simply because you don’t expect it to happen.

WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS!

Miriam mourns John

The ending is the movie’s weakest part; it feels hurried and doesn’t quite make sense. Sarah has succumbed to the hunger and her inquisitive boyfriend Tom (Cliff De Young) has suffered the consequences, but Sarah is wracked with guilt, and to Miriam’s dismay Sarah slashes her throat with Miriam’s deadly ankh allowing her lifeblood to spill into Miriam’s mouth. Miriam carries Sarah’s inert body upstairs. As a consequence to this incident Miriam’s undead lovers rise from their attic confines to confront her and Miriam is so overwhelmed she falls prey to the same ravaging effects she had escaped for centuries. It seems she wasn’t quite the immortal after all. But curiously Sarah hasn’t perished, and an epilogue scene shows her staring wistfully out of a London high-rise apartment, two of her younger lovers loiter in the background, and somewhere, probably the attic above, we see a coffin and can faintly hear Miriam screaming bloody murder.

Susan Sarandon and David Bowie give convincing performances, Cathering Deneuve is a little stilted (English not being her first language), but it seems to fit her character (“She’s that kind of a woman. She’s … European,” explains Sarah to Tom when he questions why a stranger would give her a beautiful pendant as a gift). Watch for a very young Willem Dafoe, and John Pankow, in a brief street scene, also a young Dan Hedaya as a detective trailing the disappearance of Alice. One of the real stars of the movie however is the “make-up illusions” created by the legendary Dick Smith and Carl Fullerton. David Bowe’s aging process is still astonishingly good.

The Hunger Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve

Also of note is the 50s-style wardrobe and costuming, and the fact that the entire movie looks like an ad for cigarette smoking! I’ve never seen a movie with so many characters smoking so often! I actually felt like coughing vicariously. There’s smoking in the kitchen, smoking in the hall, smoking in the nightclub, even smoking in the clinic (well, apart from when John is asked not to smoke as he’s waiting patiently for Sarah and aging a decade every few minutes).

One life ends and another begins

The movie features a suitably moody, broody score courtesy of Denny Jaeger with additional music from Michel Rubini (as well as a lovely Ravel piece), and Tony Scott’s signature operatic lighting style, courtesy of Adam Goldberg, is in full effect complete with bellowing sheer curtains, diffused rays of sunlight streaming through layers of smoke, and more filters than you shake a clutch of gels at. I was prepared for Scott’s visual style to really annoy me, but instead it now seems perfectly suited to the elegant melancholy that saturates the movie. I love how as viewers we can change, but a movie doesn’t. Along with Revenge and True Romance, The Hunger is Tony Scott's best movie.

NB: Tony Scott has The Hunger 2 listed as “in development” at imdb.com

Here’s the trailer:

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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Comments

6 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by David O'Connell

June 15th 2010 14:01

20/20 Filmsight
Screen Fanatic

This one's a real blast from the past. The tone of it was just right, though what I remember most vividly is my acute teenage disappointment at seeing the love scene unfold between the women - and hysterically screaming something like would you just get that fecking curtain out of the way!!!!!!!

Comment by Bryn

June 15th 2010 23:39

Horrorphile

David, hahahaha! It's curious as to what the NZ censors saw as potentially offensive to warrant slapping an R18 on the movie back in 1983. Perhaps it was the lesbian aspect, but I think the child-killing was the most disturbing element. Although watching it now, the "high impact" smoking is a worry! LOL

Comment by Catherine Stebbins

June 16th 2010 00:47

Thoughts from a Cinephile
Thoughts from a TV Watcher

i only skimmed your review for fear of spoilers but i will be sure to read it fully once I see it. I have been so in the mood to see this lately and now I will be seeing it very shortly. the combination of elements (Bowie, the 80's, vampires, Catherine Deneuve) is impossible to resist. Cannot wait to see this.

Comment by ShaunK

June 16th 2010 04:39

Screen Adventure

Cool review Bryn, the first and best Tony Scott film. loved this.

Comment by Bryn

June 16th 2010 05:12

Horrorphile

Catherine, yes, I realise one must tread carefully around my site for fear of spoilers, but I don't apologise profusely for it, I put the warning at the top of the page, and additionally I put one in the body of the review if it strikes me to do so ... which in the case of The Hunger, it did. I'm a film critic who primarily indulges in discussing a movie in the whole, if and when possible. But I understand the fear ... that's why i often don't watch trailers to movies I'm really looking forward to. I look foward to your review.

Comment by JohnDoe

June 16th 2010 20:55

Film & TV on DVD

Great review Bryn,

The Hunger is still my favourite Tony Scott film other than True Romance.

Way more style than substance to be found, but its just so pretty and glossily decadent to pass up.

Bowie and Deneuve dominate!

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