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A pair of vampire lovers have their relationship disrupted when one of them starts to rapidly age.
Original review found here.
Sometimes I wonder if I try too hard to like the works of Tony Scott. The man definitely threw himself into making high concept movies across his career, though one can readily examine his filmography and question whether he really managed to really bring something overly new to a table that could only be polished so much in the grand scheme of things. Considering how much of his filmography revolved around high-octane Hollywood thrill-rides, it's odd to look back at his solo feature debut and see him do something as anomalous as an extremely Gothic tale of vampire romance (it's comparable to Zack Snyder beginning his blockbuster-heavy career with the relatively small-scale Dawn of the Dead remake). Again, the does-vampire-automatically-equal-horror question comes up and I think The Hunger manages to qualify, at least as far as its actual scenes of vampiric bloodletting go - Scott makes a hell of an opening statement by inter-cutting iconic Goth-rock outfit Bauhaus performing "Bela Lugosi's Dead" in the middle of a dingy industrial club with the two lead vampires (Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie) seducing and devouring two such clubgoers. The ensuing film...well, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Much of the film concerns Deneuve being a long-lived head vampire and Bowie being the latest in a long line of lovers she's kept and ultimately discarded as they struggle to keep up with her own everlasting life; this is a matter that's only complicated further when a degenerating Bowie seeks out a geneticist (Susan Sarandon) to try to solve his issue.
As my old review will attest, I thought this was very underwhelming upon first viewing but a second viewing has made it easier to appreciate (though not overly so), if only because of altered expectations. No longer was I disappointed that the film wasn't as capital-C Cool as I'd expected (though it still manages quite a bit of that with Scott readily demonstrating the hazy aesthetics that he and brother Ridley favoured so much), but coming to understand the ways in which it defied my initial expectations has helped me to realise its strengths. Knowing that this and Blade Runner were both made in the wake of the premature death of Tony and Ridley's other brother lends both films extra substance as both filmmakers reinterpret their grief through fantastic concepts about creatures with unusual life-cycles (whether it's seemingly-immortal vampires or deliberately short-lived androids). Even when the film opts to divert away from the overtly horrific and focus on the romantic angle (complete with softcore scenes between Deneuve and Sarandon), there's still a recognisable undercurrent of existential dread as the latter is drawn into the former's soul-sucking toxicity. Just when it starts getting a little too easy to forget that this is a horror, it will bounce back with advanced decrepitude here or arterial spray there - the pacing seems practically glacial at times, but not without purpose. As such, The Hunger benefits considerably from a re-evaluation that doesn't quite make it classic material for me but makes it clear that I was definitely missing something the first time around - at the very least, I find myself interested in seeing what Scott would've come up with if he'd kept making films in this vein.
#26 - The Hunger
Tony Scott, 1983
Tony Scott, 1983
A pair of vampire lovers have their relationship disrupted when one of them starts to rapidly age.
Original review found here.
Sometimes I wonder if I try too hard to like the works of Tony Scott. The man definitely threw himself into making high concept movies across his career, though one can readily examine his filmography and question whether he really managed to really bring something overly new to a table that could only be polished so much in the grand scheme of things. Considering how much of his filmography revolved around high-octane Hollywood thrill-rides, it's odd to look back at his solo feature debut and see him do something as anomalous as an extremely Gothic tale of vampire romance (it's comparable to Zack Snyder beginning his blockbuster-heavy career with the relatively small-scale Dawn of the Dead remake). Again, the does-vampire-automatically-equal-horror question comes up and I think The Hunger manages to qualify, at least as far as its actual scenes of vampiric bloodletting go - Scott makes a hell of an opening statement by inter-cutting iconic Goth-rock outfit Bauhaus performing "Bela Lugosi's Dead" in the middle of a dingy industrial club with the two lead vampires (Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie) seducing and devouring two such clubgoers. The ensuing film...well, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Much of the film concerns Deneuve being a long-lived head vampire and Bowie being the latest in a long line of lovers she's kept and ultimately discarded as they struggle to keep up with her own everlasting life; this is a matter that's only complicated further when a degenerating Bowie seeks out a geneticist (Susan Sarandon) to try to solve his issue.
As my old review will attest, I thought this was very underwhelming upon first viewing but a second viewing has made it easier to appreciate (though not overly so), if only because of altered expectations. No longer was I disappointed that the film wasn't as capital-C Cool as I'd expected (though it still manages quite a bit of that with Scott readily demonstrating the hazy aesthetics that he and brother Ridley favoured so much), but coming to understand the ways in which it defied my initial expectations has helped me to realise its strengths. Knowing that this and Blade Runner were both made in the wake of the premature death of Tony and Ridley's other brother lends both films extra substance as both filmmakers reinterpret their grief through fantastic concepts about creatures with unusual life-cycles (whether it's seemingly-immortal vampires or deliberately short-lived androids). Even when the film opts to divert away from the overtly horrific and focus on the romantic angle (complete with softcore scenes between Deneuve and Sarandon), there's still a recognisable undercurrent of existential dread as the latter is drawn into the former's soul-sucking toxicity. Just when it starts getting a little too easy to forget that this is a horror, it will bounce back with advanced decrepitude here or arterial spray there - the pacing seems practically glacial at times, but not without purpose. As such, The Hunger benefits considerably from a re-evaluation that doesn't quite make it classic material for me but makes it clear that I was definitely missing something the first time around - at the very least, I find myself interested in seeing what Scott would've come up with if he'd kept making films in this vein.