31 Days of Hell continues with The Hunger.
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| "If they ask me to play Let's Dance one more time, I'm gonna eat someone's face off." |
Best remembered for a steamy lesbian sex scene
between Deneuve and Sarandon (in the prime of her physical beauty, I should
add), The Hunger predates films like The Crow for its audiovisual tonality
and sense of apocalypse. Tony Scott’s
slick visual style with fast cutting and heavy blues hasn’t aged a bit although
there are times the set design compounded with the pack behavior of the vamps
isn’t too far away from brother Ridley’s Blade
Runner.
Opening in a nightclub with the band Bauhaus playing Bela Lugosi is Dead, intercut with images of the cold and cool bloodletting by Mr. Bowie, modern viewers will be pining for Brandon Lee to come out to dole out justice. The frequent use of classical music to suggest timelessness to the vampire’s age is particularly unique, as if the most ancient of musical compositions were only heard yesterday by the nocturnal feeders. Most interesting is the moral compass imbued in The Hunger, as a now elderly Bowie (underneath layers of remarkable makeup work) wrestles with the guilt over his decision whether or not to kill a human near and dear to him in order to survive. One area that struck me as peculiar was the vampires’ imperviousness to sunlight, whereas typical vampire lore has the fanged feeders scored by the light of day within seconds. There’s also less emphasis on the presence of prototypical sharp fangs, and only within a glimpse of flashback to we get to see one of the beasts of the night show its true colors.
Opening in a nightclub with the band Bauhaus playing Bela Lugosi is Dead, intercut with images of the cold and cool bloodletting by Mr. Bowie, modern viewers will be pining for Brandon Lee to come out to dole out justice. The frequent use of classical music to suggest timelessness to the vampire’s age is particularly unique, as if the most ancient of musical compositions were only heard yesterday by the nocturnal feeders. Most interesting is the moral compass imbued in The Hunger, as a now elderly Bowie (underneath layers of remarkable makeup work) wrestles with the guilt over his decision whether or not to kill a human near and dear to him in order to survive. One area that struck me as peculiar was the vampires’ imperviousness to sunlight, whereas typical vampire lore has the fanged feeders scored by the light of day within seconds. There’s also less emphasis on the presence of prototypical sharp fangs, and only within a glimpse of flashback to we get to see one of the beasts of the night show its true colors.
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| "And now for the best part of the movie, the kiss between two dudes dressed up as lesbians dressed up as vampires dressed up as............" |
Upon initial release, the film was savaged by critics as being stylish over substance but in recent years has garnered reappraisal for the gothic atmosphere created by Scott. No doubt the much-touted lesbian scene produced plentiful box-office returns, as this was an early time for such a hot scene to appear in mainstream cinema. However, one can’t help but feel all the buildup and cool veneer couldn’t fix the compromised finale, making The Hunger something of a disappointingly wasted opportunity. But at least it was sexy to look at.
-Andrew Kotwicki