With this weekend’s Sinners claiming to reinvent the vampire picture, I thought it time to look back at a movie that genuinely did reimagine the vampire genre, though hardly acclaimed at the time.
Elegant, atmospheric, subtle. Never thought I’d be stringing those words together to describe an offering from uber-director Tony Scott (Top Gun, 1986). Add in “slow” and this is a director reinvented. Did I mention “short?” This clocks in just over the hour-and-a-half mark. So what might have driven an audience to distraction if stretched out over a languorous two hours twenty minutes, say, or longer, as would be par for the course in these more self-indulgent times, is not an issue.
If this has become a cult, it’ll be for all the wrong reasons. A vampire picture that doesn’t play by the rules, a lesbian vampire movie that steers clear of Hammer sexploitation, a lesbian movie featuring two top marquee names, or just any picture that features David Bowie.
There’s an inherent sadness to the whole exercise, an elegiac feel comparable to the likes of The Wild Bunch (1969). Miriam Blaylock (Catherine Deneuve) and husband John (David Bowie) are so stylish and have no truck with growing those oh-so-out-dated fangs that you are willing them to succeed especially as there’s no sign of a crucifix-wielding vampire hunter.
You might wonder why the cops haven’t been alerted to a spate of killings, throats cut in serial killer modus operandi fashion, but really there’s so much else going on – emotional, not action, you understand – that its absence isn’t worth commenting upon.
So first up is betrayal – and from a serial betrayer at that – as John realizes that while he has been promised eternal life by Miriam, who’s somewhere in the region of two millennia old, she can’t guarantee eternal beauty. So when he starts to suffer from ageing, cracks begin to show in their relationship. And whether he’s aware of this or not, she’s already lining up a replacement, the classical music student Alice (Beth Ehlers) they both tutor. And when John knocks her out of the equation, his pursuit of eternal youth or at least a reversal of the ageing process leads Miriam to a spare, scientist Sarah (Susan Sarandon).
The connection between the two women is initially so subtle that Sarah picks up the telephone imagining Miriam on the other end when the phone hasn’t even rung. Sarah is perturbed/excited to discover she has gay tendencies, especially when she’s already in a strong heterosexual relationship. And she’s not that keen, either, on discovering that she has been co-opted into the vampire fraternity.
Most of this has moved along in almost dreamy style so, that come the end, a sudden burst of twists takes you by surprise. You’ll find echoes to the priestess in Game of Thrones when the aged John seeks to kiss his lover. And John’s discovery at the end that’s he’s part of an undead harem carries over to the climax of Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige (2006).
Anyone looking for cheap kicks from the lesbian sex scene is going be disappointed, this is sex arthouse-style with wafting curtains getting in the way, and pleasure delivered in subtle rather than orgiastic fashion.
Tinged with a sense of loss, and pervaded by sadness, this is a complete outlier in the Tony Scott portfolio, especially the pace which is completely at odds with the fast-editing style for which he is best known. At the same time, tension remains high, in part because you don’t really know what Miriam is up to, and because these are new ground rules by which the vampires play, not least in their enjoyment of style and fashion, the kind of garb favored by the likes of Christopher Lee only employed as pretense and not by one of the main players.
Catherine Deneuve (Mayerling, 1968) was a Hollywood irregular, not seen there in six years since March or Die (1977), and it’s surprising, never mind her choice of couture, what sophistication a French accent brings to a vampire movie. Susan Sarandon was an ideal fit for the European feel of the picture, having cut her teeth with Louis Malle on Pretty Baby (1978) and Atlantic City (1981). David Bowie spends most of the movie under a sheet of make-up so you need to get in quick for your Bowie fix, and for that short period he is quintessential Bowie.
Written by debutant James Costigan and Michael Thomas (Ladyhawke, 1985) from the Whitley Streiber bestseller.
But this is Tony Scott’s (Enemy of the State, 1998) triumph, work that you’ve never seen before and never seen since, making you wonder why he never continued in this vein.
The Magnificent 60s 
Found this:
“On 29 Jul 1980, a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. (M-G-M) press release publicized the studio’s acquisition of the Whitley Strieber novel, The Hunger, which was scheduled for publication in Feb 1981. At the time, James Costigan was hired to write the screenplay, as reported in the 5 Nov 1980 Var. Another M-G-M press release, dated 7 Jan 1981, announced the film as director Tony Scott’s feature-length theatrical debut, as well as the film debut for actor John Stephen Hill, as reported in the 4 May 1982 DV. A 12 Mar 1982 studio press release stated that principal photography would begin 15 Mar 1982 in London, England. However, the 25 Feb 1982 DV reported that all interior scenes would be filmed in London, while several street scenes would be shot in New York City. According to the 3 Apr 1982 Screen International, Costigan was still officially the screenwriter when the film began production, and Dave Goldman was the production manager for the New York City unit. Neither man is credited onscreen.
In the 6 May 1983 BAM, Tony Scott described the picture’s primary set as a “semi-derelict” house in London with an interior similar to those found in the Italian cities of Florence and Rome. Its “quality of light” and dusty atmosphere suggested what the director described as “a sort of perfumed, decadent environment.” Principal photography was completed in fourteen weeks, during which Scott received considerable scrutiny from producer Richard A. Shepherd and M-G-M executives, who were determined to keep the production on schedule and under budget, despite the director’s “painstaking perfectionism.”
In the 27 May 1983 LAT, makeup artist Antony Clavet detailed his method for transforming actress Catherine Deneuve into a 2,000-year-old vampire by whitening her skin, adding “lavender tones and smoky grey around the eyes,” then creating downward contour lines on her face, “as if the gravity of centuries had left its mark.” In the Apr-May 1983 Cinefantastique, makeup artist Dick Smith revealed that the “disintegrating mummies” used in the film’s climax were modeled after the Guanojuato mummies of northern Mexico, and took approximately seven months to create. Smith and his crew, which included son David Smith, Neal Martz, Kevin Haney, Peter Montagna, and Doug Drexler, dressed very thin actors in full-body costumes, and used puppets in the close-up shots. Makeup artist Carl Fullerton was faced with the challenge of finding a substance strong enough to maintain its shape that could also crumble into dust. Fullerton found the ideal material in a supply of poorly mixed foam latex that “baked up weak, porous and crumbly,” and asked the manufacturer to reproduce the formula. The puppet molds were then lined with a brittle wax infused with baking soda and “microballoons,” tiny glass globes that appear as dust to the naked eye, before the foam latex was added. Because the finished puppets were too fragile to transport, the molds were shipped to England and the puppets were assembled on set. Smith simulated the death of “Miriam,” played by actress Catherine Deneuve, using a puppet with a flexible skull that could be distorted with bladders. It also featured a moving mouth, eyes, and neck, all of which required seven people to operate. The age progression for actor-musician David Bowie was simple in comparison, involving a set of prosthetics that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Smith was originally scheduled for approximately two weeks of “post-production makeup effects” at Shepperton Studios, but delays in principal photography, attributed to Scott’s “reluctance to compromise his artistic standards,” exhausted the film’s budget. Shepherd threatened to cease production with less than half of the effects photography completed, but later relented and allowed three additional days.
According to the 31 Jan 1983 HR, the film’s planned Feb 1982 opening was delayed nearly three months until Apr 1983, due to the X-rating it received from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Additional time was needed to re-edit the love scene between actresses Deneuve and Susan Sarandon to qualify the picture for an R.
The Hunger opened 29 Apr 1983 to mixed reviews, several of which complimented the cast and crew, but derided the screenplay for it lack of exposition. Scott admitted in the Jul 1983 Box that his emphasis on visual style “may have smothered the plot.” Gross receipts for the opening weekend at 775 theaters totaled $1.8 million, but fell to $920,000 by the next weekend.”
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Once again, thanks for your digging.
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