The Hunger
Director: Tony Scott
Year Released: 1983
Rating: 2.0
The chintzy premise - "vampire movie with lesbian overtones" - gets all gussied up by hyper-stylist T. Scott, who turns it into a hypnotic gothic blur. There is little of the script to challenge or update the genre: powerful Catherine Deneuve loses lover David Bowie to physical decay (like a good caretaker she boxes him up once he's a skeleton) so she takes up with a doctor (Susan Sarandon), seduces her, nibbles on her arm a bit and makes her a fellow bloodsucker. The Deneuve-Sarandon union is a sensuous scene, and Deneuve's eventually comeuppance - those past lovers reawakening and descending upon her - is grisly, though not much else remains in the mind once the credits roll.
