The Hunger

The Hunger opens with goth-rocker Peter Murphy, the frontman of Bauhaus, preening for the camera while singing “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.” Imbued with the emerging music video style then popular on MTV in 1983, the sequence cuts on the beat between the band’s nightclub performance and two vampires, played by Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie. They appear in fashionable modern garb—as opposed to outmoded Old World garments—and wear their sunglasses at night. After picking up another couple, they return to their lavish townhouse in Manhattan. The immortals swap partners and seduce their prey before slicing into them with a small dagger each of them keeps around their necks, hidden in an Egyptian pendant. While they feed, the film cross-cuts to a test monkey attacking and eating another in its cage. With this jarring blend of imagery and sensations, Tony Scott’s decadent vampire film establishes a persistent interplay of stunning beauty and deadly eroticism, punctuated by sharp cuts to violence. Less a straightforward vampire or horror film intent on scaring its audience than a hypnotic, immaculately shot juxtaposition of moods, The Hunger is foremost a haunting sensory experience.

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