The Hunger ***** (1983, Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie, Susan Sarandon) – Classic Movie Review 87

Based on the 1981 novel by Whitley Strieber, this enchanting 1983 erotic vampire movie is one of cinema’s most crucial of its perennially popular kind. It is perhaps even more remarkable for its iconic characters and performers, entrancing visual style, ravishing music and eerie atmosphere than for its story, which is nevertheless truly compelling.

A ravishing Catherine Deneuve proves absolutely ideal as a drop-dead gorgeous 6,000-year-old Egyptian vampire called Miriam Blaylock, unfortunately cursed of course with eternal life, who takes human lovers and gives them eternal youth till she tires of them. She’s bad news, this woman. All the people that she transforms eventually grow old and die. Yet Miriam keeps her collection of ex-lover cadavers close at hand in the attic. [Spoiler alert] At the climax of the film, the mummies of Miriam’s previous lovers emerge from their coffins.

This highly chic bloodsucking horror tale is set in contemporary Eighties New York but largely made in Britain (with just a week in New York for atmospheric exteriors) to save money. David Bowie (who learned to play cello for the movie) is surprisingly effective as her much-younger, 300-year-old vampire beau John Blaylock.

John begins suffering insomnia and he has a very nasty shock when he is transformed rapidly into old age (courtesy brilliant special makeup effects and film editing), ageing donkey’s years in only a few days.

Susan Sarandon gives one of her most exciting performances as a sexy scientist doctor, a gerontologist called Dr Sarah Roberts, to whom John goes for help. But then it turns out that Deneuve’s Miriam Blaylock finds her especially toothsome.

Director Tony Scott’s film debut is a modish art movie that proved totally atypical of his work. It is lyrically romantic, eerily beautiful, chilling, stately and graceful, though it is given some startling moments and sharp edges by tasteful, fashionable nudity, lesbianism and blood-letting, plus Bauhaus singing ‘Bela Lugosi is Dead’ (Scott had found them playing in a London club) at the start of the film.

James Aubrey appears as a gory victim called Ron and a 28-year-old Willem Dafoe has only one line as a young punk at a New York telephone kiosk, the first phone booth youth. Also in the cast are Cliff De Young as Sarah’s boyfriend Tom Haver, Beth Ehlers as Alice Cavender, Dan Hedaya as Lieutenant Allegrezza, Suzanne Bertish as Phyllis, John Stephen Hill as young disco man, Ann Magnuson as young disco woman, Shane Rimmer as Arthur Jelinek, and John Pankow as the second phone booth youth.

The stupendous soundtrack (score by Michel Rubini and Denny Jaeger with electronics by David Lawson) and great music (including particularly Schubert’s haunting Piano Trio in E flat Opus 100 and Ravel’s Le Gibet), the luxurious cinematography by Stephen Goldblatt, the lovely set designs, and a fantastic love scene between Sarandon and Deneuve complete an extremely seductive package.

Musical director Howard Blake recalled: ‘Tony [Scott] wanted to create a score largely using classical music. [I went] to his home in Wimbledon with stacks of recordings to play to him. One of these was the duet for two sopranos from Delibes’ Lakmé, which I recorded with Elaine Barry and Judith Rees, conducting my Sinfonia of London orchestra.

‘Howard Shelley joined with Ralph Holmes and Raphael Wallfisch to record the second movement of Schubert’s Piano Trio in E flat. Ralph recorded the Gigue from Bach’s Violin Partita in E and Raphael the Prelude to Bach’s solo cello sonata in G, to which Bowie mimed. I was persuaded to appear in one scene as a pianist, for which I wrote a Dolphin Square Blues.’

[Spoiler alert] The studio adjusted the Strieber ending to allow for sequels to be made, adding the final scene of Sarah on the balcony, but alas no sequels came. Sarandon recalled: ‘The powers that be rewrote the ending and decided that I wouldn’t die, so what was the point?’ The thing that made the film interesting to me was this question of “Would you want to live forever if you were an addict?”‘

Roger Ebert called it ‘an agonisingly bad vampire movie’.

Two Strieber sequel novels await films: The Last Vampire and Lilith’s Dream. Other Strieber works that have been made into film adaptations include Wolfen and Communion.

Sarandon talks about the lesbian seduction scene in the 1995 documentary The Celluloid Closet.

Mysteriously, Bowie said: ‘There’s nothing that looks like it on the market. But I’m a bit worried that it’s just perversely bloody at some points.’

This was the last film of Texan silent movie star Bessie Love (playing Lillybelle), whose career began in 1915.

Tragically, Scott committed suicide on August 19 2012, aged 68.

David Bowie.

David Bowie died on 10 January 2015 at the age of 69 after an 18-month battle with cancer. The Seventies and Eighties saw him combine his glittering pop career with memorable appearances in films including The Man Who Fell To Earth, Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, The Hunger, Labyrinth and Absolute Beginners.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 87

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

The Hunger cinema release poster.

Tony Scott.

Tony and Ridley Scott