Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon, David Bowie. Dir. Tony Scott, MGM, 1983
I wish I could have been in the screening room when the execs at MGM sat down to watch the Euro arthouse erotic new wave thriller Tony Scott made of American author Whitley Streiber's vampire riff, The Hunger. Considering MGM forced Scott to shoot a new ending that contradicts the rest of the narrative, didn't spend much promoting the picture, and it lost money, acquiring the ever-popular cult following at repertory cinema showings/cable/vhs throughout the '80s and '90s, one imagines no one gave him a medal and thanked him for making the best Roman Polanski horror movie since Rosemary's Baby. That's the scale of Scott's achievement, though. The Hunger holds up unbelievably well over the last 38 years, indeed has acquired increased richness over the decades.
For me, anyway - David Bowie's third of the movie compresses all the horrors and gross betrayals of the flesh into 45 horrifying, relatable, minutes. The meditation on aging changes with Bowie's exit into a meditation on the price of what we most want. Would you embrace immortality if it meant being an addict forever? All the while, the film's fascination with blood, as lifeforce, as bearer of pathogens, an agent of death as much as life, resonates with the last 38 years of AIDS, ebola, and our ongoing pandemic. I found The Hunger a remarkably prescient as well as relevant horror picture this time around.
The first time, back in 1987, I found it stylish and sleek and darkly sexy, among the best of the music video-influenced features released in the early '80s (French noir Diva is better), but I admit to seeing it mostly so I could crack my friends up by moaning, "I think I came," following The Hunger's notorious lesbian sex scene between Deneuve and Sarandon. What can I say - 20 year-old boys in the '80s. This time, I still appreciate the scene. I defy anyone to tell me it is not basically pleasant to watch two beautiful women kiss each other's bodies. Is it gratuitous - yes, probably, but movies used to be able to frankly acknowledge that people enjoy taking off their clothes and doing things with each other and I miss that about movies and respect The Hunger for being of the older school. Besides, the leadup dialogue to the scene is hilarious - it's a great piece by two great actresses.
That's not to say The Hunger qualifies as a lost classic, at least in a crossover sense. Audiences not into vampires or lesbians or Bauhaus won't finish The Hunger converts to same. It IS a great, somewhat lost, genre picture, however, beloved by goths but not always known by horror/vampire fans who will get a kick out of it.
My biggest knock on The Hunger concerns its ending. As I said above, it contradicts the rest of the story, leaving Sarandon immortally alive at the end after clearly choosing death five minutes before. Scott's first film, he gave in to MGM's demands for a different ending rather than fight for his version. Alas that Scott had not yet directed Top Gun - his clout would have been untouchable.
Still, The Hunger was a great, unjustly ignored directorial debut, somewhat marred today by its music-video cliches, but still a resonant and, at times, horrifying ride. It's more remarkable when pondering the rest of Scott's filmography. His next film, Top Gun, is one of the top grossing movies of all time. He went on to do Days of Thunder and a slew of Jerry Bruckheimer-produced actioners starring Denzel Washington, as well as the Tarantino-penned True Romance. That last and The Hunger look and feel so wildly different from the rest of his ouvre it leads this film fan to mourn Scott's willingness to whore his gifts to schlockmeisters like Bruckheimer. Even those movies look great - Scott was a stylist to the end - but they're empty calories.
Tony Scott dove from a bridge over the Los Angeles River to his death a few years ago, suffering an inoperable brain tumor, which also adds another layer of resonance to a film about immortality and aging. He does a commentary for the film on the dvd - he did at least live to see his first film find the audience it deserved. I hope that audience continues on into this brave new world of streaming media. The Hunger is probably Scott's best film, better even than True Romance. People should know about it, not just Top Gun.
The first time, back in 1987, I found it stylish and sleek and darkly sexy, among the best of the music video-influenced features released in the early '80s (French noir Diva is better), but I admit to seeing it mostly so I could crack my friends up by moaning, "I think I came," following The Hunger's notorious lesbian sex scene between Deneuve and Sarandon. What can I say - 20 year-old boys in the '80s. This time, I still appreciate the scene. I defy anyone to tell me it is not basically pleasant to watch two beautiful women kiss each other's bodies. Is it gratuitous - yes, probably, but movies used to be able to frankly acknowledge that people enjoy taking off their clothes and doing things with each other and I miss that about movies and respect The Hunger for being of the older school. Besides, the leadup dialogue to the scene is hilarious - it's a great piece by two great actresses.
That's not to say The Hunger qualifies as a lost classic, at least in a crossover sense. Audiences not into vampires or lesbians or Bauhaus won't finish The Hunger converts to same. It IS a great, somewhat lost, genre picture, however, beloved by goths but not always known by horror/vampire fans who will get a kick out of it.
My biggest knock on The Hunger concerns its ending. As I said above, it contradicts the rest of the story, leaving Sarandon immortally alive at the end after clearly choosing death five minutes before. Scott's first film, he gave in to MGM's demands for a different ending rather than fight for his version. Alas that Scott had not yet directed Top Gun - his clout would have been untouchable.
Still, The Hunger was a great, unjustly ignored directorial debut, somewhat marred today by its music-video cliches, but still a resonant and, at times, horrifying ride. It's more remarkable when pondering the rest of Scott's filmography. His next film, Top Gun, is one of the top grossing movies of all time. He went on to do Days of Thunder and a slew of Jerry Bruckheimer-produced actioners starring Denzel Washington, as well as the Tarantino-penned True Romance. That last and The Hunger look and feel so wildly different from the rest of his ouvre it leads this film fan to mourn Scott's willingness to whore his gifts to schlockmeisters like Bruckheimer. Even those movies look great - Scott was a stylist to the end - but they're empty calories.
Tony Scott dove from a bridge over the Los Angeles River to his death a few years ago, suffering an inoperable brain tumor, which also adds another layer of resonance to a film about immortality and aging. He does a commentary for the film on the dvd - he did at least live to see his first film find the audience it deserved. I hope that audience continues on into this brave new world of streaming media. The Hunger is probably Scott's best film, better even than True Romance. People should know about it, not just Top Gun.
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