Hunger, The (1983)

Author: Brett Gallman
Submitted by: Brett Gallman   Date : 2013-04-17 02:57
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Written by: Ian Davis & Michael Thomas (screenplay), Whitley Strieber (novel)
Directed by: Tony Scott
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie, and Susan Sarandon

Reviewed by: Brett Gallman



“You'll be back. When the hunger knows no reason! And then you'll need to feed, and you'll need me to show you how."


Some directors take some time to find both their footing and their voice, especially when they debut with something like a horror film, an unfairly maligned genre that’s often treated as grunt work by studios. But not Tony Scott, whose 1983 effort saw him explode onto the scene with aplomb. While it’s hard to say that he emerged fully formed from the world of commercial film-making, it’s even harder to say that many of his signature sensibilities aren’t on display within the opening minutes of The Hunger. Set to the pulsing rhythms of Bauhaus’s super-appropriate “Bela Lugosi is Dead,” the opening sequence is not only an overture for the revisionist vampire film, but also for Scott’s career: it’s a bombastic, bold montage that emphatically shovels dirt over traditional vampire lore, all the while signaling the pop-addled, music video approach that Scott would patent over the next three decades.

What follows is one of the 80s’ earliest attempts at deconstructing the vampire by grounding it into the modern age: Miriam Blaylock (Catherine Deneuve) and her lover, John (David Bowie), are a couple of New York yuppies posing as music instructors. In reality, they’re an immortal vampire duo looking to feed on unsuspecting targets—or so John thinks. It turns out that he’s merely been leeching off of Miriam’s blood for the past few centuries and unnaturally prolonging his life in the process, and his lover’s promises of eternal life are hollow. Horrified, he seeks the assistance of Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon), a doctor specializing in the study of aging. Theirs is a fateful encounter that unwittingly ends Sarah into the arms—and fangs—of Miriam, who needs a new lover to replace John after he’s reduced to a glorified mummy.

Upon release back in 1983, critics saddled The Hunger with a tag that would haunt most of Scott’s career: “style over substance,” they said, and I’m not going to go so far as to say they were completely wrong. However, to dismiss the film in such a fashion is to ignore the very pertinent and contextual horrors informing it. Looking back on it thirty years later, it’s a work that feels clearly defined by the burgeoning paranoia surrounding AIDS; much like Cronenberg’s The Fly, though, it also digs deeper than that to tap into the universal fears of aging. Most vampire films explore the horrors of immortality from an existential standpoint, but the terror is made unsettlingly visceral in The Hunger, as Miriam’s lovers deteriorate into mummified husks that find themselves locked away like some kind of insect collection once she’s through with them. It’s the setup for a great, nightmarish moment later on, but there’s a more quietly disturbing moment early in the film that finds John slowly aging while waiting for Sarah in a waiting room. It’s almost surprising to see Scott play the scene so subtly given his stylistic tendencies, but its unnerving inevitability breeds a different, more natural form of body horror that’s only grown more horrific as we’ve driven ourselves further into denial about aging. We’re all nothing but a mortal coil, and The Hunger confronts the act of shedding it with an unflinching eye.

All that said, it’s also difficult to ignore that the film is a big, overblown, slightly airless fetish chamber for Scott’s aesthetics. Often taking the form of a feature length Dior commercial, The Hunger is probably just short of pompous, what with its billowing linens and smoky hazes. While this would become Scott’s signature throughout his career, this one feels a little bit more mannered and art house than his later films. The Hunger never quite matches the thunderous propulsion from the opening number, and it hazily drifts along from there. Such an approach probably doesn’t sound too appealing, but it’s an appropriate one that makes The Hunger a logical successor to the dream-like narratives woven in Nosferatu and The Vampyr. Even though Scott’s effort isn’t nearly as monumental as these films, it is undeniably atmospheric—it’s a total mood movie that thrives on its director’s overwhelming desire to style the hell out of the proceedings. Scott’s precision is impeccable: each frame feels lavish and ornate, and some sequences are nearly sublime, such as Deneuve and Sarandon’s infamously erotic love scene. Even the gory scenes feel exact and arty, with the victims’ bloods being splattered in a painterly fashion.

The Hunger often feels rather detached because of this, particularly since its characters and performances seem so distant. Bowie is easily the most empathetic of the bunch, and even he commits a rather heinous act; plus, he’s hardly the center of the film once it shifts to Miriam’s Carmilla style seduction of Sarah. Something about it is decidedly unsexy and frigid, though, which is surprising considering Scott’s later work; this is one aspect he hadn’t quite nailed down at this point, as he hadn’t yet stepped out of his brother’s shadow. In fact, The Hunger feels very much like an early Ridley Scott movie in its cold, distant posturing. Deneuve’s icy, stone-hearted turn is appropriate, but The Hunger lacks an emotional center to give its horrors true gravitas; if the film feels insubstantial in any way, it’s here. The film is undeniably cool but not particularly moving.

Like his brother, Scott quickly learned the perils of working for an overbearing studio; just as Warner Brothers ruthlessly cut Ridley’s Blade Runner a year before, so too did MGM alter The Hunger with a tacked on epilogue that renders the film somewhat baffling. While it’s not nearly as invasive and befuddling as the Blade Runner edits, it’s a superfluous scene the undercuts the film’s themes and practically moots its climax (which Sarandon herself has been quick to note over the years). That The Hunger still succeeds in spite of this is a testament to Scott’s technical acumen and grandiose vision for such an ostensibly small, intimate film. The film just feels monumental and robust for something that turns into another lesbian vampire riff.

That Scott inherited that mantle seems correct; as an Englishman, he picked up the thread that Hammer started a decade earlier with The Vampire Lovers and infused it with a dash of Rollin and Franco to boot. In many ways, The Hunger feels like an elaborate Eurotrash vampire movie that’s also being dragged into the 80s. The decade was rife with attempts to update and ground the vampire mythos into modern times; The Hunger arguably taps into the decade’s contemporary fears more effectively than later efforts, many of which were content to update the classic monster with more fashionable digs (Near Dark remains an exception in its consciously revisionist take on the vampire).

I’m not so sure I can make room at the podium for The Hunger since Bigelow’s film, The Lost Boys, and Fright Night still reign supreme; it’s perhaps not too far off, though, and hanging around somewhere like the Miss Congeniality of 80s vampire movies. Warner Brothers ended up with the film’s distribution rights and hasn’t treated it with much fanfare over the years; the studio released it onto a solid DVD back in 2004, which featured a still gallery and a commentary with Sarandon and Scott. The presentation is impressive for standard-def, but The Hunger almost begs for a Blu-ray release. Hopefully that happens at some point since the film is due for a reevaluation; as always, it’s intriguing to see the development of an auteur, and The Hunger provides plenty of evidence of Scott’s genius, even if it isn’t fully realized here. Buy it!



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