The immensely influential 1983 vampire movie, “The Hunger,” delivers an embarrassment of riches to the discriminating aficionado of socio-cinematic abomination. In one bold stroke, the film confirmed David Bowie as our greatest pop-star thespian since Mickey Dolenz of The Monkees, catapulted Catherine Deneuve into the inescapable limbo of the middle-aged sex goddess, and supplied an essential rung in Susan Sarandon’s astounding scramble to superstardom. But most critically for today’s viewers, “The Hunger” provides a priceless insight into what it meant to be undead and in love at the tail end of the second millennium.
Presaging his later work in “Top Gun,” Director Tony Scott audaciously kick-starts the movie with a long, repulsive, whacked-out monkey scene. (I don’t recall any specific simian denomination being mentioned, so for the purposes of this review, I shall simply call the mischievous creature, “Big Monkey.” No offense is intended. I guess it could have been a largish chimpanzee.) Big Monkey is jumping, flailing, screeching and throwing bananas, and while I’m no psychiatrist, it appeared to be more serious than your typical mid-life, pud-pulling, incarcerated-monkey depression. Frankly, it reminded me of Congressman DeLay on the floor of the House of Representatives, or indeed any Republican demagogue shrieking about gay marriage (prior to, inevitably, being discovered with someone's dick in his mouth). Moreover, Big Monkey has killed and eaten his first wife – and I know that’s usually a warning sign among moralizing conservatives on their way down the chute. Ultimately, the excitable primate collapses into a raw, nasty pile of twitching monkey meat... and I forgot my spoon!  .
These events make no more sense to me than the Clint Eastwood films featuring Clyde the orangutan. (Some might posit that I just don’t like movies with monkeys, and as a matter of fact, that’s true. Or apes. Especially those suffering from gigantism.) Conceivably, I suppose, the mental and physical collapse of Mr. Big Monkey could be a gratuitous, film-school metaphor for something – arranged marriage, the brutalizing effect of the penal system, or even the “Bedtime for Bonzo” administration contemporaneous with the movie’s release.
But wait a second...violent baboonism...vampirism...right-wing Republicanism? On second thought, I guess it does make sense.
But more to the point, I personally did not find the scene sexually arousing. In point of fact, the twisted, wet monkey flesh twitching on the cage floor really put Jeannine and me off our meat. (As is our custom, we had prepared for video night with a nice bottle of Montepulciano and an antipasto of Kalamata olives, pepperoncini, head cheese and salami.) Frankly, if not for the advertised soft-core lesbian action to come, we might have switched to “Poltergeist VI: Chesty Corpses in the Kitchen” right then and there.
In any case: adiós, Curious George, we hardly knew ye, and don’t let the door hit your hairy backside on the way to the monkey afterlife. Happily, the chimp is out of the picture, and David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve make their entrance, partying with a couple of young, hip club-hoppers: stroking their leather pants, licking their belly buttons, slicing their carotid arteries and gulping down their life’s blood like pulpy pomegranate juice. Jeannine and I looked at each other and sighed in relief: pass the salami, sweetheart, and how about another splash of this tasty red?
SHIFTING PARADIGMS OF THE UNDEAD
Ever since the renaissance of modern vampire lore, when the emphasis shifted from superstitious terror to lubricious titillation, there have been a number of comforting assumptions pertaining to the topic: fangs, coffins, stakes, garlic, crucifixes, movie-star looks, eternal lives of damnation, and so forth and so on. You might prefer Dracula or Lestat or Nosferatu, but everybody enjoys the tingly sexual frisson of seeing a young, nubile Buffy, preferably with a white, heaving bosom, drained of its ichor by an elegant fiend. If she too ends up becoming a succubus-nympho-ghoul, well then, so much the better, eh podner?
In my opinion, the talented Anne Rice, acknowledged doyenne of this half-lit realm, takes it all too far: vampires, witches, leprechauns, mummies, midgets, bed bugs and Scientologists with the heads of John Travolta and Tom Cruise. (Like most successful writers, squeezing the poor goose for every book, movie and mini-series it can birth -- until is expires of market exhaustion.) But far worse, to my scholarly sensibilities, is her carelessness with details. For example, in “Interview With a Vampire,” a family of three bloodsucking fiends living quietly in eighteenth-century New Orleans requires, more or less, a half dozen of fresh Creoles per day – remember, they don’t eat the meat, much less any pasta, vegetables or fruit. Hence, this isn’t gluttony, being comparable to a daily diet of six to eight quarts of hot, thick V-8. But anyway let’s do the math: three vampires killing six locals a night, 365 nights a year equals approximately 2200 human rinds, squeezed of all their sweet juice – out of a historical population of 15,000 to 20,000! That's a lot of neck-punctured corpses to be popping up in the public restrooms and shrubbery of New Orleans every year.
And nobody notices! No wonder they call it The Big Easy!
“Mamán! Jacques found Papa’s carcass out behind the garbage cans!”
“Merde! Well, all right, mon cher, go wash your hands, the crawdaddy jambalaya and dirty rice is almost ready.”
“The Hunger” bucks the traditional canon in a number of interesting ways. Perhaps most significantly, Mr. Bowie and Ms. Deneuve kill not with their canines but with these nifty little letter openers worn around their necks (subsequently popular with mortgage agents). They don't recoil from sunshine or garlic, they don’t sleep in coffins or metamorph into flying rodents at night -- and when feeling peckish, a little silver crucifix from Costco isn’t going to deter them from a nice fat, pulsing artery. They simply do what's necessary to put food on the table, and, in reality, they’re not so different from any upper middle-class lawyer, lobbyist, broker or pharmaceutical rep plying their trade in DC, Manhattan or LA.
In addition, unlike the exploding vampire populations of Ms. Rice, in “Hunger,” Ms. Deneuve is the one and only, 2,000-year-old Ur-Vampire, who every few centuries or so, initiates just one lucky mortal to be her table mate. As we join them, Cathy and her consort David are living an urban life of enviable, if blood-soaked, sophistication and elegance, until, and this provides the crux of the tale, Mr. Bowie abruptly begins to age in a swiftly progressing decrepitude. Think of the 1968 Rod Stewart and the 2008 Rod Stewart, and speed up the transformation to a single long, indulgent weekend. This precipitates a belated heart-to-heart that goes something like this:
“What’s going on here, babe? I thought I was immortal.”
“You are immortal, darling, but …”
“But what?”
“Well, maybe I should have told you earlier, but you’re going to become repulsively old and feeble, quickly decaying into not much more than a nasty pile of skin and bones. These I shall then box up in the attic as a keepsake of our everlasting love. But, here’s the good news, dearest, technically, you will still be alive!”
“Huh! Wow! This is a lot to digest.”
“Be brave, sweetheart. It won’t be easy for me either. Remember, I haven’t been part of the singles scene since 1783.”
Ms. Deneuve neglects to tell Mr. Bowie two uncomfortable facts: first, not only will he soon look more like a cranky Jessica Tandy than a cocky Ziggy Stardust, but his blood thirst shall wax to horrifying proportions, a craving he will no longer be spry enough to satisfy. (We’ve all seen the sad, old guys in the clubs in their tweed caps and ascots.) And, secondly, sorry, Cathy’s a vampire, not a nursemaid: Mr. Bowie is going to end up screaming for all eternity with an insane, insatiable passion – amid dozens of other shrieking shoeboxes (another difficult conversation avoided, this one about 2000 years of old boyfriends). But darling, try to remember the good times... and just a little bit of rain
NEW BLOOD IS LIKE THE MORNING DEW
Meanwhile, Ms. Deneuve has her eyes on Susan Sarandon, and I don’t blame her. Do you remember Ms. Sarandon’s breakthrough role in 1981’s “Atlantic City,” where she washes her young, elastic, generous chest at the kitchen window using freshly squeezed lemon juice to rid herself of the casino clam-bar smell? Sure you do. We all do! Bravissima! Glorious acting.
These events set the table for the movie’s main course and dessert, and we’re next served a deliciously creepy, sugar-for-grandpa scene in which a decrepit but unhinged-with-appetite Mr. Bowie almost severs the neck of a sweet teenager with whom he and Ms. Deneuve play chamber music. Unfortunately, the lovely girl was off limits as food, perhaps, as in lobster fishing, because of size constraints; besides which the old fellow makes a helluva mess in the music room. Ms. Deneuve is justifiably peevish, but I couldn’t help speculating aloud if she hadn’t planned the whole thing, thus making it a little easier emotionally for her to box up Mr. Bowie and make a fresh start. Needless to say, Jeannine disagreed: “Men are slovenly and inconsiderate: nasty pigs in their piggeries!” “Yes, sweetheart, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” I didn’t point out that Jeannine hadn’t picked up a toilet brush or Brillo pad since Saigon fell to the Vietcong.
There’s a very tasteful lesbian sex scene – silky chemises, candles, gently blowing gauze – with all the tender fondling the books say women never get enough of from their brutish men. Happily, we see none of the awful grunting, thumping, eye-bulging, bellowing of coarse epithets and penile erectile dysfunction so common to heterosexual intercourse and the “fair and balanced” reporting of Fox Network News. Sapphic lovemaking -- when performed con brio, sincerity and mutual respect by attractive, silicon-free females -- has always been a favorite aesthetic of mine. Ever since my first junior-high Penthouse magazines. So pretty, so sweet, so right. For some reason, it stimulates my saliva glands and makes me swallow compulsively for the duration but, fortunately, pornography triggers the exact same response in Jeannine: gulp, swallow, eyes glued to the screen, "Another coin of organic pepperoni, dearest?" Swallow, gulp, hand snaking out blindly to the plate wavering in mid-air, "Don't mind if I do, darling." Gulp, croak, "Another rewind, don't you think?" Swallow, husky whisper, "Mmmm yes, I think we must." At the appropriate point of arousal, Ms. Deneuve makes a delicate incision to daintily sip Ms. Sarandon’s circulatory essence and, in turn, Ms. Sarandon licks up a carmine line or two off her lover's soft, full breast. Bingo! It’s done, all nice and legal, and off they go, hand in hand, with roseate post-orgasmic glow, to a Ellen Degeneres performance.
Later that weekend, Ms. Deneuve is feather-dusting the reliquaries of past consorts while humming La Vie en Rose to the horrific keening of unsated blood lust emanating therein. Alas, in the dreamy distraction of her new found contentment, she knocks the boxes over and spills rotting, generally pissed off vampire body dust-parts everywhere -- which start to twitch and sniffle toward her. Somewhat surprisingly, considering her lifestyle, this really spooks the Queen of the Damned, and she falls over the banister to plunge four stories to the marble floor of the entry foyer, breaking her spine and neck. This turns out to be almost as unhealthy for the undead as it is for you and me.
In the movie’s parting shot, Ms. Sarandon, wearing a sly, secretive smile, places a new shoe box in the attic, which shall whine and beg for blood in a french accent until the end of time. Long live the Queen!
At this point, both Jeannine and I would have enjoyed seeing the scrumptious new vampiress of the house in a long, soapy, slow-mo shower scene to whet our appetites, as it were, for the evening’s denouement to come. We all know the director filmed one, right? Videophiles can only hope it is restored on the Director’s cut DVD.
Henry E. Panky
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