The Hunger (1983)

Directed by Tony Scott [Other horror films: N/A]

After reading the description to this film on my TV, I expected to hate it. No use denying it – I read the plot and immediately grew disinterested. I wasn’t entirely tuned out, though, and I watched the whole film, because I’m not going to ignore a movie simply because it’s not my cup of tea. It’s also a decently-rated film.

Still, I hated this.

The first ten minutes are horrible, the next hour is slow as fuck, brahs, and the rest is also horrible. I mean, sure, you have a few pretty good and emotional scenes (such as Miriam putting John to rest), and there was that almost-sensual lesbian scene (I say almost because I don’t find Catherine Deneuve that attractive), but for the most part, this was not my type of movie at all.

Deneuve (famous for her role in Repulsion) did okay as the vampire woman. I mean, she was obviously a terrible person, so I did enjoy the end (and in fact, that ending was perhaps one of the best parts of the film), but she did a good job in the performance. I don’t know Susan Sarandon that well, aside from the fact she endorsed Jill Stein in 2016, which is who I voted for, so maybe her heart’s in the right place, but here, I thought her character lacked, well, character. She had a nice chest, but a boring character.

Cliff De Young (Dr. Giggles) is only here so I can link Dr. Giggles in the future. Seriously, De Young was okay, but like Sarandon, I didn’t get a great sense of character from him at all. Beth Ehlers didn’t appear much, but she did give us another one of the few high-points in the film when her character meets a somewhat surprising death. Kudos there.

Also, I have to talk a bit about David Bowie. I know some people, when they read this, won’t believe me, but I can’t control what hypothetical people do or do not believe – I cannot think of a single song by David Bowie. I don’t know a thing about him. When I try to think of a Bowie song, I either think of Phil Collins or Elton John. Am I close? I don’t know – I’ve possibly never heard a David Bowie song in my life, and if I have, I definitely didn’t know Bowie was the artist.

All of that is to say that I have only this movie to judge him on, and you know what? His performance was pretty good. It was also easily the most emotional part of the film, and the aforementioned scene in which Deneuve’s character is saying her final goodbyes to Bowies’ an exceptionally strong scene in an otherwise waste of a movie.

Is this stated a bit strongly? I don’t know. This movie, for as long as I’ve known about it, has been rated well on IMDb, and I knew beforehand it might not be my type of movie, so maybe it’s unfair that I went into this one with the intention of rating it at the end. But I did, and I thought it was just awful, probably among one of my least favorite horror films of the 1980’s. Watch it if it sounds like your thing.

4/10