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With a flash of blue light and the opening rattles of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” Tony Scott’s debut feature THE HUNGER exploded into cinemas one lonely April night some 40 years ago. Following the love triangle between two vampires (Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie) and a motivated gerontologist (Susan Sarandon), this impeccably fashioned romantic horror was staked and buried by critics on release. Roger Ebert deemed it “agonizingly bad” and THE HUNGER crumbled from screens with a reputation as “stylish but hollow” (thanks, Rotten Tomatoes!), a true signifier that the world just wasn’t ready for Catherine Deneuve as New York’s messiest bisexual. Is one of the best opening sequences ever filmed not enough?
Luckily, the march of years has been kind to THE HUNGER, a timeless and unsettling poem on fears of aging, the loss of beauty, and the inherent horrors of realizing you might be a lesbian. Queer in both content and melodramatic tone, this unsubtle gothic art exhibit is as good an excuse as ever to break out your black eyeliner and take your immortal polycule of lovers to the movies. After all, whether this is your first time or your hundredth time… there’s never a bad moment to indulge in THE HUNGER.
The Hunger