"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!"
So the other night my friend introduced me to one of her favorite films. She lured me in with its advertising David Bowie (a god among men) as a lead role. With that in mine, I watched this film that surprised me. At first I thought I was going to get a run of a mill vampire film but what I got was a unique film that uses vampires as addicts to blood, sex and longevity. It makes me wonder if this film helped instigate the idea of vampires being more of a seductive and menacing figure than the blood hunting monsters that we know of.
The Hunger is directed by Tony Scott (the brother of Ridley Scott and directed Top Gun and Beverly Hills Cop 2) is a film that starts off with a kinky and graphic sequence of David Bowie and his mistress Queen Vampire lady played by French actor Catherine Denevue as they lure a young woman and man to their more seductive desires while the band Bauhaus plays in the background. As the seduction escalates, we start seeing scenes of a lab experiment between two monkeys. One monkey is starting to get more aggressive and as the sexual tensions of Bowie and Denevue escalate, so does the monkey's rage. Eventually, these characters unleash their primal desires for blood and Denevue, Bowie, and the monkey graphically kill and eat their partners to be as eternal life and the cost of blood start to make their connections to the audience.
After this attention grabbing sequence, we are then properly introduced to John (Bowie) and Miriam (Denevue) in their nice home somewhere in New York City. Their relationship is apparently all about their love, John is surprised at Miriam's sudden distance. When she leaves, the youthfulness of Bowie starts to fade into a much older man. As the rest of the first half of the movie continues, we wonderfully the rock start heart throb start to wither into a figure to match the centuries he has already lived.
Meanwhile, back at the lab, we get more of a look of Susan Sarandon (of Rocky Horror Picture Show and Thelma and Louise fame)'s character Sarah witness and is appealed at the behavior of the male monkey who killed and ate his former lover. We are revealed that Sarah is in pursuit of finding a way to study the aging process and wonders if it had something to do with the success of their experiment on the male. The male suddenly start to quickly fail with age as the monkey literally falls apart in decay. While this is going on, John confronts Sarah and pleads for her to help his own aging, which at first she doesn't notice and presumes him to be crazy. When she makes the discovery with her now pile of monkey ash, she find John again...two hours later and at least forty years older in appearance. John bitterly leaves Sarah who realizes that she missed the key to her experiment behind an elevator door.
The final scenes of Bowie as he grows more desperate. Hungry. He is now depicted as a sick and aged predator as his prey (the loners of New York) easily fend off their pendent stabbing assailant. Like most sick predators in the wild, Bowie finds his last gambit in the girl across the street.
When Miriam, the vampire seductress, returns home to discover a living corpse of Bowie who even after his kill cannot regenerate, she finally reveals the awful and terrible truth of the blessing/curse she had given Bowie centuries ago.
When Bowie is finally (and literally) boxed away with the rest of Miriam broken hearted lovers, Sarah personally visits the home.
Now this is when the movie for me seemed to jump ship.
For a film that flagships David Bowie, his character is almost a little too brief and when he gets put a way...quite literally...the lesbians come out to play.
The rest of the film is Mirim's seduction and turning of Sarah in some of the most sensual and veiled curtain covered scenes of 80s sex scenes.
The sensual acts of the chemistry between the actresses goes from sexual to predatory as Miriam uses her lust to allow Miriam to mix their blood. Masking a bite with foreplay, the scenes get interrupted with the intense clippings of actually seeing the blood mix, showing the underlying darkness that courses through the women's veins.
After this, Sarah now fights the new instincts that now have started to grow inside her and not to spoil how the films ends...but the climax of the film tests the women's role in their blossoming relationship and shows that Miriam might have sunk her teeth into more than she realized.
This film is something I would say is worth the watch. The sensuality of the film (I use that word a lot to describe this film) creates mysterious mythology and you can see Tony's big brother Ridley hanging an influence in an almost Bladerunner like way. What I mean by this is that the film has a background and mythology for a this world. But that is not the focus. This film is kind of the last days of one chapter closing for Miriam and the next opening the world to a larger domain.
Willam DeFoe also makes a surprising and short lived cameo appearance as just a thug wanting to use go the pay phone.
To sum up. If you like the 80s, David Bowie, vampire and classic 80s boob shots that tell an intricate story of lust and addiction, The Hunger is a film for you.
Henry rating:
7.0 / 10
"What is this film about? Vampires? Is that David Bowie! Wow! Boobs! ....what just happened? Oh I see? Wow...that was...interestingly captivating."
Later Gators,
the Mad Man in the Cheapseats
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