The undead are horny and bi-curious in 1983’s goth-erotic horror ‘The Hunger’

Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” 

We continue through our Pride series in which we cover a movie highlighting a different letter of the LGBTQ+ acronym every week. This week, it’s all about the elusive and often erased “B” with ageless vampires, neo-noir-meets-techno-punk aesthetics, and a (blood)thirsty love triangle in Tony Scott’s cult classic The Hunger.

Immortality is a very common theme often explored in horror and supernatural narratives: What would it look like if you could live forever? What would it feel like if you could stay forever young? Cinema has grappled with this almost from its inception, with sci-fi, horror, and fantasy narratives that range from Gattaca and Tuck Everlasting to camp classics like Death Becomes Her and Interview With The Vampire.

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Not to mention, the theme’s many dark implications—issues of fear and insecurity around the gradual fading of health and good looks, prolonged loneliness, difficulty of finding companionship—tend to be quite relevant to the queer community, particularly in the wake of the AIDS epidemic.

This week, we’ll talk about a movie that has made an unlikely stamp in popular culture, one that at its undying heart tackles the all-important question essential in every story about an immortal being: How can you possibly share eternity with somebody else?

The Set-Up

The Hunger is a 1983 erotic horror film, directed by acclaimed filmmaker Tony Scott (yes, brother of Ridley), marking his feature debut. It follows Miriam and John Blaylock (Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie), a couple of supernaturally attractive (and ageless) vampires—despite never being openly referred to as such.

Every night they go hunting at the hottest neo goth clubs to look for their next victims, who they seduce, bring home, and bleed to death. In their everyday lives, the two pose as a wealthy, musically-inclined couple. They’ve managed to live in this dark harmony ever since Miriam fell in love with John in 18th Century France and turned him.

However, on the 200th anniversary of his conversion, John discovers that Miriam has deceived him. She had promised him eternal life, but not eternal youth. And so, he suddenly starts to age at an extraordinarily fast pace. As the last two centuries catch up to his body, John turns to Dr. Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon), an expert scientist coincidentally studying rapid aging. When she’s too late to help John, Miriam turns her attention to Sarah as her next victim.

Take It To The Rave

The Hunger is not your traditional vampire flick, or even a traditional horror film, per se. It feels more like a visual poem (and a very explicit one at that, both erotically and horror-wise); a collection of bright-red close ups of tendons, ligaments, and gushing blood. A sumptuous score soars in the background that seems to be a combination of classical orchestra with the-up-and-coming techno sounds of the era, and three of the most attractive stars of the time shoot glances of lust, desire, and hatred at each other for over ninety minutes.

The Hunger’s biggest cultural legacy has curiously been with the goth subculture. The film became a cult classic practically since its release, and they openly adopted and embraced its aesthetics, both visual and musical. The movie is most effective when it operates at that level (an expressionistic, melodramatic gothic opera with vampiric hints), rather than as a straightforward narrative. The pace tends to be quite slow, and the plot is far more suggestive than linear.

Immortally Yours

Of course, it’s also a luscious display of unabashed sexuality by its three leads, all of whom are at their peak of their appeal (even if Bowie spends most of his runtime buried underneath tons of prosthetics).

Catherine Deneuve plays Miriam as a woman with a restrained, but ruthless thirst that cannot be quenched and who—as we discover later on—has been trying, time after time, to find someone to spend the rest of her life with. Cursed with immortality but blessed by eternal beauty, she knows she has an irresistible appeal that she uses both for the short-term victims she hunts at nightclubs, and for those she wants to cultivate for longer periods. Regardless of the intention, she always bringing them to their doom—as her personal collection of coffins will attest.

David Bowie (an artist that throughout his entire career challenged gender norms of what somebody could and should dress, look, and sound like) capitalizes on his signature androgynous appeal and makes for a perfect counterpart to Miriam. Of the two, he is the more delicate and subservient one. While she indulges in her unapologetic womanhood, he lives in the in-between space of being both an object and a fountain of desire, whatever serves him best at the time. That is until the last two hundred years come crashing down on him in under twenty four hours.

And Susan Sarandon, still at the stage of her career where she made a living out of playing naive, doe-eyed women, is the perfect target for the couple. She is the ray of hope that will liberate them. She will cure John of his curse; she will become Miriam’s new companion. It’s especially fascinating to see how at one point, Sarandon seems to be visually merging into Bowie as she falls under the spell of Deneuve: Her hair becomes shorter, her clothes brighten up, her features erase any traces of gender.

F*ck Everlasting

Not to be glib, but the movie could basically be described as the feature film adaptation of “we saw you across the bar and we liked your vibe.”

For the three creatures at the center, gender norms and sexuality do not matter. For immortal beings—as the media has told us over and over again—it stops mattering after a few hundred years of loneliness and cold encounters.

But The Hunger states that it’s less an “anyone will do” (as the toxic trope around bisexuality tends to state) and more an “everyone can and should do”. At their own risk, of course.

The Hunger is available for digital rental or purchase via Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, GooglePlay, and YouTube TV.

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